by Liza Kendall
“About five hours ago you wanted to kill me, Jules,” he said, clinking her own beer bottle with his and eyeing her quizzically.
“Sorry about your shoes,” she muttered into the vicinity of his chest, while trying not to remember what it looked like shirtless.
“What’s that? Oh, no worries. They’ll clean up fine.”
“I sort of doubt that . . .”
“There are more where I found these. So, can I ask what’s brought on your change of heart?”
She shrugged. “I guess it just took me a day to, um, get used to the situation.”
“A whole day.”
“Yeah.” Her chin came up on its own to challenge his skepticism. “And now, I’m having, you know—grace about things.”
“Grace,” he repeated, his eyes filling with amusement, at her expense.
She thought of her fall into the wheelbarrow and flushed. “Would you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“Laughing at me.”
“Not a chuckle passed my lips.”
“It’s silent mocking. You’re worse than Grady!”
“I’m filled with the utmost admiration for you, I swear.”
“Liar.”
“I actually mean that,” Rhett said quietly. “I’ll admit that I didn’t stop to think about whether you’d be unhappy about me buying the stables. I just listened to my friend’s problem and came up with a way to solve it. You know: x plus y equals z. That’s the way my brain works—in equations.”
“If we’re at z,” Jules said, “then it doesn’t leave us far to go in the alphabet.”
There was a pause while Rhett cast her an unfathomable look. “Maybe it means that we need to start over with a.”
“Huh.” Jules gazed down at her beer bottle, her eyes unaccountably landing on every a on the label. “I think you should maybe go back to mocking me, after all. I’m not sure how to deal with you when you’re nice.”
That slow, lazy grin of his made her stomach roll over like a dog exposing its belly to be scratched . . . or kicked. “I’m always nice.”
“Oh yeah?” She deliberately dragged up the memory of him leaving her without so much as a dawn goodbye kiss, back in Dallas. “I guess you’re just not a morning person, then.”
She had the pleasure of seeing his face fall.
“Jules—” Rhett set his beer down on the bar with a snap. “I—”
But she interrupted him. “So you own the Holt Stables now. Does that mean you own all of the horses, too?”
“What? Oh. Yes. Land, buildings, livestock.”
“You don’t get Don Quixote.”
He shot her a mystified look. “Who?”
“My donkey. He was a rescue. My rescue. He was just a little, tiny, starved, and abandoned colt when I found him. And he’s mine.”
“O-kaaay,” agreed Rhett. “Where’d you find him?”
“Way out past the Lundgrens’. He was trapped in some barbed wire and all cut up. Hadn’t eaten in days, was totally dehydrated. Would have died if I hadn’t loaded him into my truck and brought him to the vet. She put him on an IV immediately. I woke up every four hours to feed him once he was off it.”
Rhett picked up his beer again and evaluated her. “That was very sweet of you.”
Jules snorted. “I’m a lot of things, Braddock. But sweet ain’t one of ’em.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
He leaned forward and brought his lips to her ear. “Because you sure tasted sweet to me, that night.”
Her face flash-fried and her heart rate sped up. Jules pressed one hand to the pounding in her temple. She wished he didn’t still have the power to affect her so much. She sighed. Her brain might know exactly who Rhett Braddock really was deep inside, but her body sure wasn’t getting the message.
She pushed the neck of her bottle into his chest to push him away, ignored his wicked grin, and slid off her barstool. “Excuse me, Rhett,” she said coolly. “You enjoy that beer. I’ll see you around.”
“Yes, you will,” he promised. “Tomorrow at eight A.M. out at the stables. So we can take a look at the books.”
Ugh. There was no avoiding him. Her stomach flipped as she exited Schweitz’s. What fresh hell would Rotten Rhett put her through then?
Chapter 5
With regret, Rhett watched her go. What other girl could demand a donkey with a straight face and look that good without even dragging a comb through her hair? It looked like the feathers of an angry rooster, tied up in that rubber band. She’d ditched the rubber barn boots for scuffed western mules, but other than that she hadn’t changed clothes before coming to Schweitz’s. She still smelled of physical exertion and outrage and horse. And she didn’t give a rat’s ass.
Rhett did admire that about her. She was who she was, with no apology. With Jules, there was no cover-up and no varnish. Her face was bare of makeup, her nails free of polish and clipped short. But she couldn’t disguise that rockin’ little body of hers, even when she draped it in what looked like one of Grady’s old flannel shirts. The shirt hung down almost to her knees, for chrissakes, and yet he could still discern her curves as she strode away.
As she disappeared through the door of Schweitz’s, Rhett suddenly became aware that everyone in the bar seemed to be studying him, whether overtly or covertly. He felt . . . as if he no longer belonged—even though Lila had broken the ice for him, bless her.
Rhett found himself threading his way back through the bar to his sister, where she held court. Good Lord, had she changed in the last decade or so. She’d gone from a scrawny and rebellious teenager, frankly a pain in the neck, to . . . wow. Dark hair like his. Sky blue eyes like his. Dressed like some kind of rock star, which was entertaining. Purple, spike-heeled boots in a python print. Where she’d found those, he didn’t know. Wasn’t sure he wanted to know, frankly.
She’d paired them with skinny jeans, way too much cleavage, and a dark green, cropped leather jacket. None of it was in style . . . but it wasn’t out of style, either, because it was so unusual. Somehow, the getup came across as creative.
The peacock feather earrings made him laugh. Lila had morphed from an annoying little blue jay into a peacock. When did that happen?
She looked up as he approached. Appraised him frankly. “Ever-Rhett, honey. Ditch the cuff links, roll up your sleeves, and stay awhile.” She slid an arm around him and gave him a squeeze.
His breath caught at the unexpected affection. The understanding, compassion, and tenderness in her voice.
“Otherwise people’re gonna think you’re a right ’rageous a-hole.” Lila grinned.
Rhett stared down at her. She was trying to rescue him. A parade of memories went through his mind: him and Jake and Ace stuffing her into the sofa, piling cushions on top of her, and sitting on her while she screeched. The time they’d dug a hole and buried her to the neck in dirt, telling her they’d pay her a dollar if she stood for it. And then stood around laughing at her when she couldn’t get free.
Deck had grounded them for a month for that—not that they’d paid any attention. What was Deck going to do when he came home and found them gone, anyway? Take away their Dinty Moore stew, or their sloppy joes or SpaghettiOs fresh from the can? Maybe threaten not to buy any more TV dinners? “A: I don’t care what other people think.” Anymore. “B: I am a right ’rageous a-hole.”
She looked up at him, somehow wise to him. When had she gotten wise? “No. I don’t think so. You just have the act down, real good.”
Rhett sighed. “What exactly is my crime?”
Lila wrinkled her nose. “Oh, you know. Outside money buying up the town?”
Rhett stiffened. “I’m still Rhett Braddock from Silverlake, Texas.”
His sister cocked her head. “Are ya?” And with those words, she
set down her beer and proceeded to remove his cuff links.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he said mildly, trying, and failing, to manufacture some outrage.
“Making you real again.”
“I am real.”
She examined the cuff links in the dim light of Schweitz’s. “Tiffany?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Meh.”
“I don’t recall asking you for your opinion. Besides, I think you’re a little jealous, Peacock.”
Lila grinned. “Maybe of how much they’re worth. How about I hock them, split the proceeds?”
“Excuse me?” He couldn’t help laughing. “You don’t have my permission to do that.”
She dropped the cuff links into her crazy-colored handbag. Then she slid both arms around him this time and hugged him as if she’d never let him go. “Yeah? Well, you didn’t have my permission to leave for over a decade and not come home to visit us. I missed you, you butthead.”
Something cracked open inside Rhett. While he tried to sweep up the broken shards and piece them back together, Lila rolled up his sleeves, French cuffs and all, until they lay folded just below his elbows.
“There,” she said with satisfaction. “Now you look somewhat normal.”
“You done bossin’ me around, little sis?”
“No.”
Rhett shook his head with a smile. “Well, hit me.”
“Call Jake.”
“I will. That all?”
“Go see Declan,” Lila said. “He’s the first one of us you should have seen. Don’t make him the last.”
Rhett didn’t feel so much like smiling anymore. “Why do you think I’m here? It’s not just the Holt place. I’ve been worried about him since we FaceTimed the day of the fire.”
“You should be. He’s not himself. I know he’s always kept his feelings locked down, but ever since the ranch fire . . . Maybe it’s denial. I don’t know, but he’s down.”
Rhett glanced away, suppressing the unwelcome worry building within him; Declan was supposed to be the strongest of all of the Braddocks. This new version of his brother made him uncomfortable. Of course, there seemed to be a new version of all of them. He looked back at Lila. “What are you doing with yourself now that you can’t plan events out there in the Old Barn?”
“I haven’t really had a choice: I’ve been expanding my outside events business. And I got a major new client.”
“Oh yeah?”
Lila took a large gulp of her drink. “Uh-huh. Silverlake’s town council. You haven’t heard, bro?”
He shook his head.
His little sister grinned. “I’m producing all of Fool Fest! And since you’re here, you can stay for the extravaganza.”
Rhett stared at her. “Lila, I haven’t been to Fool Fest since I was thirteen.”
“Well, welcome home, fool. Welcome home.”
Rhett laughed. “You can’t really say that until I step foot on the ranch.”
Lila arched an eyebrow. “You’re not scared to go and see Deck, are you?”
“What the—?” Rhett gave her a cocky grin. A cocky, Dallas boardroom, I’ve got this grin. “Let it go, Lila. I am not scared of my own brother. I was planning to head out there tomorrow. I want to take a look in person at the damage on the Old Barn, see if I missed any opportunities with the insurance. But, far as I know, we’re ready for a good old-fashioned barn raising.”
Lila’s face didn’t light up the way Rhett expected it to. “What?” he asked.
“Declan doesn’t want to rebuild. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
Rhett stared at his sister. “Since when? He loved that barn.”
Lila stared at the toes of her purple pointy boots for a minute and then looked up. “I guess he finally learned the same lesson you did, Rhett.”
“And what’s that?” he asked.
“How to walk away without looking back.”
* * *
Jules slouched out of Schweitz’s, a scowl threatening to overtake her face. There was only one person who would understand her in this mood, and that was Aunt Sue.
I’m trying to have grace, she’d said to Rhett. Or something like that. And he’d laughed.
Because she was mostly graceless: That was true. She embraced her gracelessness mostly because Aunt Sue had taught her that being a lady, like Mom, was overrated.
Being a lady meant relying upon men to be gentlemen—and that was a dangerous position to take in this chaotic world. Rhett had certainly been no gentleman the morning after their . . . whatever it was. He’d been a prize pig.
She rattled and squeaked in her Chevy over to Aunt Sue’s tiny two-bedroom place about fifteen minutes away. In defiance of her neighbors, Sue had painted it periwinkle, with the front door and shutters a pale aqua color. A stone hedgehog guarded the door, flanked on the other side by a pot of geraniums that spilled to the wooden floorboards—also aqua.
In the flower beds out front stood not rosebushes or something equally feminine, but a variety of cactus and succulents.
Jules knocked and yelled, “It’s me!” Then she let herself in with her key.
Inside the tiny house, it was cool and dark, the shades drawn against the insistent Texas sun. Two apartment-sized, brown leather couches wearing quilts faced off on either side of a little stone fireplace, an oval oak coffee table between them. It was piled with magazines and books. Sue’s fluffy gray cat, Stinky, snoozed under the table, barely opening one yellow eye to acknowledge her presence.
“Hi, hon,” Aunt Sue called from the kitchen. “C’mon in.”
“Did you know?” Jules asked, stomping in. The kitchen was painted a cheerful butter yellow and sported decorative Mexican tiles. A dream catcher hung in the one tiny window that faced out over the back garden, where Sue grew her own vegetables.
Sue turned from the sink, where she was washing some radishes, tomatoes, and peppers. Her white hair was twisted up on top of her head and secured with two wooden chopsticks, the ends permanently stained with soy sauce. She wore long turquoise earrings, a tie-dyed dress with a gray sweatshirt slung over it, and no shoes. Her toenails were painted sparkly turquoise. “Your father only just called me. You all right, hon?”
“Oh sure,” Jules said. Then, “No.”
Sue shook water off her hands and reached for a dish towel. She surged toward her niece and enveloped her in her arms. “It’s all gonna be okay, baby girl. Gonna be fine.”
She smelled of organic rosemary shampoo and homespun sunshine. “When?” Jules accepted her embrace, the tight squeeze of reassurance. “And on what planet?”
Sue rubbed her back.
“And couldn’t Dad have just talked to me before he sold the place out from under me? Given me a heads-up?”
Her aunt sighed. “It’s not Billy’s way. He avoids conflict at all costs. He wouldn’t have wanted to hear what you had to say or have wanted to override it. He knew it would upset you.”
“But finding out this way upsets me so much more!”
“Yes, but he can now stick his head in the sand and not hear you,” Sue said, more than a little bitterness in her tone.
“And he sold it to Rhett Braddock, of all people.”
“You’ve had a crush on him since you were a kid.”
“That’s ridiculous, Aunt Sue.”
“But true.”
“No, it’s not! And if I ever did, believe me, that is not the case now. He is a . . . a . . . oh! I don’t even have a word bad enough to describe him.”
“You saw him in Dallas, right? When you took that hunter-jumper up? And you came back in a terrible mood.”
Jules shrugged. “Let’s just say he’s changed. And now he’s here. Ugh.”
“So you’ve already run into him?”
“You could say
that. He’s sent me flowers, and I’ve bought him a beer.”
Aunt Sue’s brow wrinkled. “But you don’t have a word bad enough to describe him.”
“No!”
“You always buy beers for people you hate?”
“Aunt Sue, don’t you see? I cannot let him know that I hate him. And like Bridget says, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ So yeah, I bought the jerk a beer,” she said gloomily.
“Coffee, hon? With a nip of something stronger in it?”
Jules looked into her aunt’s pewter-gray eyes and nodded. “The worst of it all is that I’m so worried about Dad, and I feel guilty for being so mad at him—because he’s sick.”
“Guilt,” Aunt Sue said, moving toward the coffeepot, “is a downright useless emotion. Kick it to the curb.” The bitterness came back into her tone as she said the last words. “I spent too many years feeling guilty. Second-guessing.”
Jules fell silent. The tragedy in her aunt’s past had shaped not only her outlook, but her entire life.
“I don’t feel guilty anymore,” Sue said as she set up the coffee. “Anyway. The two emotions are different things. And you can be worried and mad at your father at the same time. Need permission? I give it to you.” She pulled a bottle of Baileys out of a cupboard and set it down with a snap on the counter. “Billy will be just fine. The sale of the property will give him the funds to get treatment. And there are mighty fine doctors at MD Anderson, hon. He’ll be in good hands.”
Jules nodded. “I just can’t believe that they all knew—Mom and Grady, too—and nobody told me. They’ve treated me like a child. I’m really mad at them, too.”
“Your mother does what Billy tells her to do. You know that. And Grady’s his boy . . .” Aunt Sue walked over and set her hands on Jules’s shoulders, looking into her eyes. “Listen. I don’t—” She bit her chapped bottom lip. “I don’t have kids of my own, hon. And I don’t have much. Just this little place, here. But I want you to know that it’ll be yours, one day. That no matter what Billy’s done with the land, you’ll have a house of your own, a place to go. All right?” She squeezed her niece’s shoulders.
