And all kinds of benefits.
So many benefits it could almost make her head spin, except this was about friendship. Only friendship.
There will be no head spinning, she lectured herself sternly, setting the table in the kitchen where the Mortimer sisters gathered every night for their family dinner. Friends do not spin, no matter what benefits they might enjoy.
“That smells like Aunt Helen’s stew,” Charity declared as she came in through the side door, bringing a rush of snow with her. She stepped out of her boots and pulled off her knit hat, shaking the remaining snowflakes out of her dark curls. “I must have died and gone to heaven.”
“It will be a pale imitation,” Hope replied from the stove, though she was smiling. “You might not want to get too excited.”
“It will be amazing,” Charity said fervently.
She smiled at Rae, then disappeared into the house, singing all the way. Only to reappear a few moments later, having changed into cozy flannel pajamas and what she called her house boots, fuzzy slippers with rubber soles.
Charity dropped down into a chair at the table.
“How was church today?” Hope asked. “Ripe with all the usual whispers and gossip?”
Charity rolled her eyes. “Theresa Galace accused me, not in so many words, of having designs on Pastor Jim.”
“Pastor Jim is old enough to be your father!” Rae protested, though she shouldn’t have been shocked. Charity was the church secretary, a position a great many members of the congregation felt she did not deserve, given her youth.
Something they made clear in all kinds of ways.
“Theresa Galace is obviously projecting,” Hope said from the stove. “And she could be his mother.”
“Pastor Jim is a hot commodity.” Charity shrugged at Rae’s expression. “His poor wife has been dead over a year now. The ladies line up to see him every day. Luckily, they no longer come bearing casseroles, but you may be surprised to learn that for certain segments of the Longhorn Valley female population, this fall is a time of great spiritual upheaval that only the pastor can help them navigate.”
They were all laughing about that when Faith swept in, tall and regal with a cloak swirling around her as if the snow dared not fall upon her head on her quick walk from the store to the house. Rae had always found the oldest Mortimer sister particularly intimidating. Living under the same roof with her hadn’t changed that. There was something about Faith that always made Rae feel as if she ought to apologize.
But she’d discovered long ago that it only made things worse—or more awkward, anyway—if she did.
Maybe the lesson was, no family was perfect. Or even comfortable all the time.
“That almost smells like Aunt Helen’s stew,” Faith said when she came back into the kitchen after she, too, went off to her bedroom to change her clothes. Though her version of loungewear looked like an upgrade. She inhaled as she paused at the stove. “But without the rosemary?”
Hope rolled her eyes as Faith glided to the refrigerator to pour herself a glass of wine. “I appreciate you being disappointed in advance.”
Then she made a small production out of dishing out the savory-smelling stew into bowls.
Rae knew better than to catch anyone’s eye in the middle of these sisterly exchanges. She concentrated on the fresh bread she’d baked earlier—the contribution she’d been grudgingly allowed to make. She grabbed the basket she’d put it in and carried it over to the table. Then she accepted the glass of wine that Charity handed her, having liberated the wine bottle from Faith.
“I don’t think I expressed disappointment,” Faith was saying. “I said that there’s not the same amount of rosemary that Aunt Helen puts into her version. It wasn’t a personal attack, Hope.”
“It’s your turn to cook tomorrow night,” Hope pointed out as she started shuttling the heavy bowls of stew to the table. “You can do it correctly and wow us all. I can’t wait.”
“Well,” Rae said brightly once Hope set down a bowl of stew at every place and sat down herself. “I don’t know what this is supposed to smell like, but it looks delicious to me.”
Across from her, Charity shook her head slightly over the rim of her wineglass.
“Are you leaping to Hope’s defense?” Faith asked, giving Rae the full force of her attention. “Honestly. I know Hope is very sensitive, but I wasn’t attacking her. I promise.”
“This is Faith being helpful,” Hope explained in an exaggerated tone. “She wants to help me.”
“Bread?” Charity asked, thrusting the basket at Rae.
Rae took it gratefully. Though she only found herself relaxing again when the arch, barbed conversation subsided and they all started talking about their bookstore, the major unifying force between them. That and their insistence that they were all single forever because they were cursed.
“I didn’t realize you knew Jensen Kittredge,” Rae said, much later, with her belly full of stew and too many slices of bread slathered with butter. She was sitting back in her chair, contemplating whether or not she wanted to celebrate the choices she’d already made tonight with dessert.
“Everybody knows Jensen Kittredge,” Faith replied.
Faith was neither Rae’s particular friend nor Rae’s sister, so there was no opening for Rae to ask her why, exactly, she had to make every conversation a battleground. She knew Hope had asked her sister that very question on more than one occasion. But there were never any satisfactory answers.
“That’s not what I meant.” Rae already regretted attempting to have a conversation with Faith. “You know him enough to actually sit and have a conversation.” She wanted to stammer under the force of Faith’s gaze. She didn’t, somehow. “About his brother’s ex-wife, even.”
“Is that an accusation?” Faith asked coolly.
Rae blinked. “No! No, of course not.” She cast around wildly, not sure how this conversation had gone off the rails so quickly. A glance at the other two Mortimer sisters was not helpful. Charity was still shaking her head. Hope looked entertained. “I always think of Jensen as someone who talks around you, loudly. Not someone you would sit and have an actual conversation with.”
“I have all manner of conversations, Rae,” Faith replied. “Even with the likes of Jensen Kittredge.”
“Oh, come on,” Hope burst out then. “Will you stop?” She didn’t wait for Faith to answer. She refilled her wineglass, then leaned over to fill Rae’s as well. “Don’t pay her any attention, Rae. She’s been in a mood all day.”
Charity laughed. “When is she not in a mood?”
“She’s having a full-blown panic attack,” Hope continued. “A responsibility overload, you might even say. Mom and Aunt Helen were supposed to be coming home for Thanksgiving. They promised.”
“Their promises are worthless,” Charity said airily. “Why am I the only one who realizes this?”
“I don’t care if they come home for the holiday.” Faith sounded as if, actually, she minded very much. “Any holiday. The last thing I need is Mom barreling through the house, ordering us all around.”
“Faith suffers from oldest-child syndrome,” Hope said sweetly. “She doesn’t feel alive unless she feels truly forced to be overly responsible for something.”
“Thank you for dinner,” Faith said primly. She rose from her seat, swept up her glass of wine—and the wine bottle—as she went, and then left the room.
“The question is,” Hope said as Faith walked into their family room, “what kind of night is it?”
Charity made a face. “You already know the answer, Hope.”
They heard the television go on. The sound of Faith arranging herself in her preferred position on the couch, so she could slam her wineglass and wine bottle down on the side table with abandon. Then the opening notes of the program she’d chosen began to play.
“The eight-hour Pride and Prejudice,” Charity said in mock astonishment. “And here I was sure it was going to be a Keira Kn
ightley kind of a night.”
“Stop talking about me,” came Faith’s voice from the other room. “I’m not pausing the show, so if you want to watch, you’d better get in here.”
Charity did exactly that, while Hope and Rae remained at the table, grinning at each other.
“I only promised you a room,” Hope said quietly. “Not domestic bliss.”
Rae took another piece of bread, because she could do what she wanted. “Why isn’t your mother coming home for Thanksgiving?”
Hope rolled her eyes. “Who knows? I could tell you the excuse she gave, but that’s all it is. An excuse. She doesn’t want to come home.”
“Do you want her to?” Rae pulled the thick slice of bread apart with her fingers. “When she’s not here, you’re the co-owner of a bookstore. If she comes home, you’re just an employee again. I’m not sure you’d like that.”
“I don’t know that I want my mother to come home,” Hope said after a moment. Her gaze met Rae’s. “But it would be nice if she wanted to, you know?”
That scraped at Rae, though she looked away, so her friend couldn’t see.
“I’ve got the dishes,” she said. And the Thanksgiving thing must have been bothering Hope more than she wanted to admit, because she let Rae do it.
Rae was just finishing wiping off the table when Hope sailed back in from the other room, where she’d left her sisters laughing.
Hope leaned back against the counter. “Are you going out tonight?”
“Not after you told me I was dating incorrectly, no.”
“I think that maybe, just maybe, I suggested that you actually date people awhile before you settle on one. As that’s the actual purpose of dating.”
“Says the woman who refuses to date anyone.”
“If I wanted what you say you want, I would,” Hope said simply.
Rae felt entirely too … naked, suddenly. As if Hope were seeing things in her it had never occurred to her to even look for.
“I don’t want to go out tonight,” she said with as much dignity as possible. She inclined her head toward the other room, where, on-screen, the Bennet family was very noisily discussing the new arrivals to Meryton. “Should I make popcorn?”
There was only one answer to that. Once Rae had made a few heaping bowls, she brought out the various toppings that the sisters preferred. Then she settled down in her own seat in the armchair next the couch where the Mortimers piled together, all the dinner table squabbling forgotten. She pulled her feet up beneath her, gazed at the screen, and found herself completely unable to pay attention to the show she’d seen a thousand times before.
Was Hope right? Had she decided to pick someone simply so she wouldn’t have to spend any time choosing? That hardly made sense.
Just like the fact that she hadn’t started her divorce proceedings didn’t make sense.
But the real truth was, when she closed her eyes and tried to daydream about divorcing Riley and dating Tate Bishop, she just … found herself thinking about Riley.
Who she’d seen this morning, in the dark, when he’d picked her up while she was walking to work and presented her with her coffee done just right. And had then taught her a few things about herself right there, in the dark, with his hands all over her.
Benefits, baby, he’d said with a grin before he’d driven away.
And despite Pride and Prejudice and this cozy house she got to live in with friends, she found herself daydreaming about that until she went to bed.
Then dreaming about it all night.
When she got to the shop the next morning, she opened it up and settled into a new day that might or might not offer her further benefits. It was a slow morning. When the bell jangled over the door while she was fussing over an anniversary arrangement for an older couple she knew from church, she looked up quickly, her body already shivering into awareness.
But it wasn’t Riley.
It was her grandmother.
“Um, hi, Grandma Inez,” Rae said, standing straighter. And trying not to sound alarmed. “I didn’t know you were coming into town.”
Inez cast an eye over the shop, looking for flaws. And, if the way her lips curved down was any indication, found many.
But then, all Inez looked for was flaws. Therefore, flaws were all she found.
Rae knew that and still, when Inez turned that same look on her, found herself standing straighter as if this time she might actually impress the woman who couldn’t be impressed.
Someday, she thought, she would grow out of this.
Someday, she wouldn’t care anymore whether or not her grandmother loved her. Or was even vaguely supportive of her.
But today was apparently not that day.
“I had lunch with Marisol Dewitt,” her grandmother replied, and paused as if she expected Rae to … genuflect, or something, at the name of one of the old ladies her grandmother played bridge with while plotting the downfall of their many enemies. “Can you explain to me why our family is not providing the floral arrangements for the Harvest Gala this year? For the first and only time in decades?”
Rae blinked. She glanced down at her calendar, but that was more of a reflex. Because she already knew that there was a Harvest Gala issue. She had her designs tested and ready, but no confirmation. Something she’d meant to call about, but she’d been distracted.
By her benefits.
She felt certain her grandmother would use a different word. Like selfishness.
And she also knew the answer. She’d meant to follow up on it before she’d gone racing off to Riley’s place after the confrontation in Cold River Coffee that had led to all these supposed benefits in the first place. Amanda.
“I don’t think we’re not doing the arrangements,” she said to her grandmother as soothingly as possible.
Not that it appeared to help.
Or did anything for the rising tide of guilt inside her that she’d completely dropped the ball on this.
Why hadn’t she even looked up how to start the process of divorcing? Why was she letting Riley distract her when she was supposed to be moving on? Why was she pretending she wanted to date other people when she very clearly didn’t?
What was she doing?
“How can you not know?” Inez asked, aghast. “You’re supposed to be in complete control of the Flower Pot. You’re supposed to have a handle on all events, not just those little weddings you like to do. Do you need more oversight?”
What Rae needed, she thought darkly, was to get her head on straight.
A few rounds with Inez and the sheer injustice of having her ability to run the shop no one else in the family cared about—until they did—called into question might just do the trick.
“I haven’t been able to get the committee chair on the phone,” she said quietly, still standing too straight. Still too aware that she was a failure in her grandmother’s eyes no matter what she did. And still too affected by the judgment she could see in Inez’s gaze—especially when she was judging herself so harshly at the same time. “But I’ll be sure to chase her down and fix this, Grandma. I promise.”
14
Riley spent the better part of each day convincing an uppity horse or two to settle down. Some days, the horses won. And knew it, more often than not. But today, he left them feeling that he had the upper hand, for once.
When he finally left the stables, there was still some daylight left. His boots crunched into the cold earth as he walked across the yard, his eyes not on the light spilling out from the ranch house where he’d grown up, witness to his parents’ various wars—cold and hot alike—but across the frozen pasture to where his grandparents’ house stood. There was smoke coming out of the chimney, and Riley knew that if he headed over, his grandparents would be puttering around the way they always were. Easing into their evening with their time-honored rituals and habits that Riley had always found more comforting than he liked to admit.
He could smell the wood smoke in the air, fightin
g with the fresh, cold scent of the coming winter, and that, too, was a comfort. It reminded him of being much smaller, sneaking out of the ranch house while his mother shouted and his father growled out his patented nonresponses. He and his brothers would run as fast as they could across that pasture no matter if the snow was nearly over their heads. Riley could remember the cold like a tight fist around his chest, his breath coming in short, hard scrapes. The exhilaration and terror of being out in the night, as if he had to be careful or he’d slide straight off the world and into the heavy, dark sky.
He couldn’t tell if he missed that feeling or longed for it.
It made him think of Rae.
Everything makes you think of Rae, he growled at himself.
Riley swung into his truck and headed down the drive, thinking he would take the dirt road over to his grandparents’ house even though it was the long way around. The road was currently nothing but two deep, parallel grooves in the few feet of snow remaining from the last storm, but this time of year, a ten-minute drive was better than staggering across that pasture in the snowdrifts.
Or maybe you still think the sky is going to get you.
He was smirking at that as he bumped his way down the drive. But when he got down to the fork that headed out to the county road, eventually, or back over to his grandparents’ house, there was another truck in the way.
Zack.
Riley maneuvered his truck out of the set tracks while Zack did the same, so they could come up alongside each other, driver’s window to driver’s window.
His grandfather liked to cackle and call this kind of communication old-school email.
Zack wasn’t in uniform. He rarely was. Even when he was on duty, he preferred the emblazoned SHERIFF on the side of his truck and the badge he wore pinned to the front of his coat to make his announcements for him.
And Riley could have worked up an objection to the way his oldest brother looked at him then, all cool-eyed and assessing, but that wasn’t a sheriff thing. It was just Zack. Becoming a cop and then winning the sheriff’s position had only made his natural inclinations worse.
Secret Nights with a Cowboy Page 17
