by Liza Kendall
Deck shook his head and shut the door for him.
Rhett didn’t want to talk, and Declan seemed to understand. The ride was a lot of jostling and bumping, courtesy of some sections of road that needed repaving. All the while Rhett got to enjoy a soundtrack of Declan muttering a string of barely intelligible words and phrases. The ones Rhett could decipher were all swear words.
“It’s not Grady’s fault,” Rhett finally muttered.
Declan turned, his face full of fury. “I try not to act without thinking, Rhett, I really do. Try not to say things without thinking . . .”
Rhett braced himself to take whatever Declan was about to dish out.
“But I swear to you”—Declan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel—“Grady better steer clear for a while, ’cause I’d like to show him what you get when you treat my brother the way he’s treated you.”
Rhett’s mouth dropped open and then slowly closed as he managed a smile through his bloody teeth and busted lip. Declan looked like a ball of righteous indignation spoiling for a fight. For him.
What would he say when he found out why Grady was mad or how Rhett had messed up with Jules?
“What are you looking at?” Deck asked gruffly. “I don’t know why everybody thinks I’m such an angel.”
“Aw, give me a break,” Rhett said. “You’re Silverlake’s patron saint of neighborly kindness.”
“No wonder I’m single,” Declan said. “Sounds boring as hell.”
They’d reached the crossroads where the road to the Holt Stables split off with the main road toward town and Silverlake Ranch after that. Declan slowed down, and then came to a stop, the truck idling at the Y. Rhett looked over in confusion, because, dear Lord, all he wanted was to lie down, close his eyes, and make everything go away.
“Where do you want to go?” Declan asked.
“To bed.”
Declan sighed, staring straight out the windshield. “Firehouse or the ranch.”
“Ranch,” Rhett said.
“Probably a good call. Grady might have gone to the firehouse,” Declan said, nudging the accelerator.
That’s not why I picked it.
That said, if Rhett thought he was looking at some peace and quiet, the better call might have been a noisy, crowded firehouse full of people who wanted to punch his lights out. There were two new vehicles in the parking area by the main house and two more Braddocks standing on the porch waiting as Declan’s SUV pulled in. Oh, no. Lila kept her own hours, but Jake must have traded shifts to come home. Both of them looked serious.
Small town, serious faces. They knew.
Wonderful.
“Looks like the cavalry’s here,” Declan said.
“You know,” Rhett said to Declan. “You knew about Jules when you said you’d stand up for me.”
“I’ll always stand up for you,” Declan said. “You’re my brother.” He got out of the car before Rhett could answer and opened the door. His head still swam as he awkwardly lowered himself out of the vehicle and then suddenly there was Jake on one side and Declan on the other and Lila holding open the heavy double oak doors to their home.
Their home.
The old wagon wheel still hung to the right of the doors, and Pop’s old bootjack nestled under a rustic bench that Deck had probably made, stained, and sealed himself.
His brothers got him arranged on the brown leather couch in the great room, where Rhett drank in the gold and green vista of the land before he turned to stare into the massive fieldstone fireplace. The logs in it blazed; the flames full of heartache, rejection, and memories of better times.
Over the mantel hung that same wedding portrait of Mama and Pop; Mama with that mysterious, secretive little smile of hers and Pop looking proud and challenging—as if saying to the world, This woman is mine, from this day forward. Mine alone.
Rhett swallowed a lump in his throat. How he still missed them both. They’d all been in denial after the head-on accident that killed them both. Rhett had “seen” both his parents in crowds for months afterward. Mama—he’d sworn he’d seen her in Griggs’ Grocers, picking through the apples one morning. And Pop—at the old Sinclair gas station, where Rhett, as a kid, had always loved the green dinosaur on the sign.
He’d “seen” them on the old porch swing, too, where they’d liked to sit on spring evenings, before it got hotter than the devil’s own pitchfork in the Texas summers.
The last he’d talked to Mama before that fateful day, he’d been in trouble. For eating one of the banana cream parfaits she’d prepared for her Bible study group the next evening. But there’d been eight of them . . . and often times a lady or two would have to take a rain check, and so there’d be extras left over. Which sneaky Ace would steal before anyone else could make a move.
* * *
“Everett Steven Braddock!” Mama’s last words to him. “For shame. Give me that parfait glass, this instant.”
She’d caught him red-handed. With whipped cream still on his upper lip.
“You are on dish duty for the rest of this week, young man. Understand?”
Rhett had nodded. Tried not to laugh at the overly severe expression on her face that told him she was trying not to laugh.
She shook a finger at him. “Do you have something to say to me?”
He’d hung his head. Fingered the yellow banana stain on his T-shirt. “Sorry, Mama. But they looked so good . . . You’re such an amazing cook—”
“Don’t you try to sweet-talk me.”
“But it works.” And then he had grinned.
“Out! Get out of my kitchen. And don’t come back until all of your homework is done . . .”
* * *
Rhett stared out of the plate glass window to the left of the massive oak double front doors. The Braddock land had woken for spring and stretched for miles until it greeted the sky in a sunlit purple-rose as the day drew to a close. The land was a patchwork of different pastures and crops.
There were white-fenced paddocks with a few horses grazing in them. There were neat furrows marching in orderly battalions toward the gully that fed the stock pond where he could see cattle grazing.
Rhett took in the improvements that Deck had made to the house. The weathered pier-and-beam architecture, the apex of the ceiling soaring twenty-five feet, at least. His brother had left either side of the house an open expanse of glass framed in by the rough cedar walls. Oaks shaded the house to both the left and the right. It was almost like sitting outside, in an elaborate tree house. He felt that he could climb right into the cradling oaks, as they’d done when they were kids.
He remembered the time they’d convinced Lila to climb into a mesh laundry sack, and then hung her from a branch, swinging, for a little too long . . . incredible that Lila would speak to any of them today, really.
Something fuzzy and wet nosed under his palm as he lay there: Declan had acquired a dog named Grouchy, who’d escorted him in with a lot of sniffing and tail-wagging. The critter looked like Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street, and Lila had sewn him a “trash can” with a pillow lid. It lay on its side in front of the fireplace.
Rhett scratched Grouchy behind the ears and then with his foot rubbed the dog’s belly when Grouchy flopped over and exposed it. And then a cat with a mangy-looking tail walked into the room, walked up to Rhett, and stepped on Grouchy in order to lean over and sniff Rhett’s fingers.
Declan, Jake, and Lila came into the room; they’d been talking in low voices in the kitchen.
“Whose cat is this?” Rhett asked.
“Mine,” Deck said.
“You have a cat?” Rhett asked in disbelief.
Lila and Jake appeared to suppress smiles.
Declan did not look amused.
“Who is this man and what has he done with my brother?” Rhett asked.
Declan rolled his eyes.
“Want some coffee?” Lila asked.
“Beer?” offered Jake.
“Bourbon?” Deck suggested. “A double?”
“Yeah,” Rhett said to Deck. “Thanks. Got that Angel’s Envy I sent?”
“Sure thing.”
Lila put her hands on her hips. “The prodigal son returns to be a papa?”
Rhett sighed. Trust Lila to be subtle: not. “I’m not prodigal—or if I am, I’ve earned the right to be. I’ve made plenty of dough.”
Jake eased himself into an armchair and eyed him. “Let’s forget about money. Let’s go ahead and talk about this elephant in the room, okay?”
“The pregnant one,” Deck said, handing Rhett a tumbler full of bourbon and ice.
“Way too much ice, man. Wrong way to serve a high-end bourbon.” But he took it.
“Shut up and drink it, Fancy.”
“And I doubt that Jules would like being referred to as an elephant.” The bourbon slid down his throat like the good Lord in velvet slippers, as Pop would have said. Rhett took another large swallow.
“I meant the topic, not the girl, and you know it.”
“She refuses to marry me,” Rhett said to nobody in particular. “I did ask.”
“Was that before or after Grady pulverized you like a steak?”
“I didn’t know before he hit me. She hadn’t even told me.”
Jake folded his arms across his chest and swore softly. “Grady’s little sister. How did this happen?”
Rhett looked at him caustically, out of his good eye. The one that Lila hadn’t covered with a bag of frozen peas. “The usual way.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t. Leastways, not with the big head.”
“Idiot,” said Lila, but with compassion in her voice. Actual empathy.
Huh.
“What are you going to do?” Declan had returned with two Zilker Parks & Rec pale ales for himself and Jake, and a glass of wine for Lila.
Rhett didn’t answer.
Grouchy sniffed the air with great hope, but it got dashed.
“No Hound-Hefeweizen for you, Grouch.” Lila scratched him with the toe of her spike-heeled purple boot. “Sorry.”
Grouchy looked devastated for all of two seconds and then crawled into his “trash can” headfirst, leaving them all to behold his magnificent hindquarters.
Funny, Rhett felt like doing the same thing. Mooning all of his siblings might feel better than facing them in this situation. Gone was his high-and-mighty stance as their financial benefactor and occasional bully. He was here as the knave of hearts.
He’d gone and knocked up a local girl. Done what Pop had told them all he’d tan their hides for doing. The irony of it just about choked him. So he swallowed more Angel’s Envy with too much ice, because there really wasn’t much else he could do.
You’ve taken some big blows to the head . . . Shut up. Please.
He’d asked the girl to marry him and she’d told him to shut up. Really?
That didn’t happen to a billionaire every day.
In fact, it was quite possible that he was the one and only billionaire it had ever happened to.
An old Southern expression popped into his mind. One day a rooster; a feather duster the next. “All right, everyone. Let’s just sit down and talk this through.” Declan took charge, since Rhett sure wasn’t going to.
“Is Grady ever going to forgive me?” Rhett asked Jake.
Jake cracked his neck and eyed him dubiously.
“Tell him, will you? Tell him I asked Jules to marry me. She said no.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell him,” said Jake. “Do keep in mind, though, that this is your former best friend, a firefighter who owns an ax and has a friend who owns a distillery full of whiskey barrels.”
Rhett winced.
“Not helpful, Jake,” Lila told him. She sat down on the end of the couch where Rhett’s feet were and with strange tenderness pulled off his new Lucchese boots. She set them on the floor and pulled his feet into her lap.
Rhett tried to process that his feet were now actually being rubbed by his little sister. Who did, frankly, give a damn. He closed his good eye because it stung with unexpected moisture, and that was unacceptable, unmanly, and virtually un-Texan. They’d all been raised via the John Wayne model of masculinity, and that wasn’t going to change no matter how politically incorrect it got. It just was what it was, and they were proud of it. Always would be.
“Who are you, and what have you done with my little sister?” he asked her, swirling the bourbon in his glass. “The one we hung from the live oak in the laundry bag?”
She grinned. “I’ll get you, my pretties, all of you. I will. One day. Just not today.”
“Good Lord, how you screeched when the neighbor’s dog started nosing your behind through the bag,” Declan mused.
“And how our behinds burned after Pop got through with us!” Jake put in. “I couldn’t sit down for a week.”
“I got chocolate pudding,” Lila said dreamily. “It was almost worth it.”
“Focus, Braddocks,” Declan said. “Let’s review the situation: Rhett and Julianna Holt are having a baby, God help the poor critter.”
“Hey, I resent that,” Rhett said.
“Quiet. You’re not in charge. We are all four of us going to figure this out. First question: Do you think she’ll change her mind about marrying you?”
Rhett thought about that, bitterly. “No. She’s made her answer pretty clear.”
“All right. Second question: Do you need to see a lawyer?”
Rhett stared at him. “What for?”
“She may sue you for child support.”
“I can promise you, Deck, that she will never have to! What are you saying, that I’m some kind of scab? A deadbeat dad? I don’t think so. Jules and the baby will want for nothing. Ever.”
“No need to be so prickly about it. Third question: Will you stay in Dallas? Would she consider moving there, if so?”
“Jules is no city girl.”
“And you’ve got a company to run there.”
“Yeah . . . I can come home—” Rhett stopped. Had he really just referred to Silverlake, Texas, as home? “I can come home every weekend, though.”
“Fourth question: Does she want to see you every weekend?”
Rhett stared at him.
Declan stared right back. “Valid thing to ask. Will she let you be part of her life?”
“I . . . I don’t . . . know.”
“Will she sue for full custody? Will you have to sue for part custody?”
Rhett upended his bourbon and set down the tumbler with a snap. He opened and closed his mouth.
“Jake, get him another, will you?” Deck gestured to the glass. “Looks like he needs it.”
“I want to be a part of my baby’s life,” Rhett said. “From the very first second.”
“Will she even let you be present at the delivery?”
Rhett’s mouth fell open. “Can she stop me?”
“You need to consult a lawyer, Everett.” Declan looked as serious as Rhett had ever seen him. “You may be a big shot, but trust me: On this, you are in over your head. You are a mushroom in the dark, buried in—”
“Got it. Thanks, bro, for pointing that out.”
Jake returned and handed Rhett another hefty tumbler of Angel’s Envy.
“Thanks.”
“You’re cut off after that one. You need to figure out all of this,” Jake informed him.
“Duly noted,” Rhett said wryly.
“He probably shouldn’t be drinking at all with a possible concussion, you morons.” Lila got up, her wineglass now empty.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Rhett grous
ed.
“Seriously debatable.” Jake grinned.
“I’m going to be an auntie!” Lila twirled in a giddy circle. “So I’m going to trade this wine in for a Tito’s, rocks.”
“Got Deep Eddy,” Deck said.
“Okay, that works.”
“Hey, do you remember when Pop took us to swim there, at Deep Eddy Pool in Austin?” Jake asked. “That pool was freezing . . . colder than Barton Springs.”
“I remember you feeding my Barbie’s head into the mouth of your big plastic shark,” Lila said, with a dark look at Rhett.
“Was that me?”
“Yes. That was you. And now I will get my revenge. Can you imagine the fun I’ll have with your baby?”
Rhett shuddered. “Please, Lila. No matter what we did to you when we were younger . . . please don’t do any of it to my kid.”
“Mwah ha ha ha!” Her eyes gleamed. “No promises.”
“Great. I think I’m going to need another drink,” Rhett said.
“Have you even eaten anything?” Lila asked. “I could make you—”
“No!” Jake and Declan said urgently.
“Jeez, you’d think there was something wrong with my cooking.” She looked at Jake. “I’m not eating anything Declan could make, so you’re it.”
“Lucky you. I swapped some fresh eggs and honey for one of Dottie’s lasagnas the other day. It’s in the fridge,” Deck said.
Rhett watched as he lay on the couch while his family went into high gear setting up the meal. Despite the circumstances, the troubling aspects of his situation, the disrespect, and the mock threats, Rhett found himself grateful. He was comfortable and comforted and at home.
Here at Silverlake Ranch . . . which he’d left behind so long ago. Go figure.
“Why do you think Jules said no?” Lila asked Rhett once they were seated and served at the dinner table. That was weird enough in itself: four of the Braddock siblings eating dinner together at the massive walnut table that had been around since Mama and Pop’s time. With actual place mats. And napkins—though they were paper, and not the cloth that Mama had always insisted upon.
