Chapter Five
A nother six inches of snow fell during the night. Buried in it, Billy could barely find the stakes he and Jake set out a couple of weeks ago. He walked along the icy creek, an offshoot of the stream that tumbled down the mountain, imagining the view from their back window. Children playing in the meadow. Emily’s garden in the spring.
It had to be perfect.
He and his brother weren’t just building a house here. They were creating a family with Emily—a life.
From the time Elijah Brooks and Levi Gantry laid the first cornerstone, Brookside had an unwritten tradition—a man provides a home for his wife. Back then, folks came together and built an entire town. These days, more often than not, an existing structure would be renovated for a newlywed triad to move into together.
Emily likely thought they’d make their home in one of the houses in town, as most folks did. Jake’s work was there. Their parents. The shops. School. But for a good, long while now, Billy and his brother had something else in mind.
This place.
An equal distance from the ranch, her mother’s Dutch barn, and town, the location was ideal. They’d build her a home with their own hands while bonding as brothers, and surely that would lay a solid foundation for their future. He and Jake had put a lot of thought into it.
Matthew Brooks and the town council granted their approval. They only had to meet with an architect to come up with a design, start construction, and keep their project a secret from Emily. Billy could already see the look on her face. Bringing her home here after the wedding was going to be the best surprise ever.
He kicked a rock into the creek. “Jake, get your ass over here. I just got an idea.”
“What is it?” he asked, calling out from yards away.
“C’mere, will ya?” Billy waved him over as if that might hurry him along. “You won’t be able to see what I’m sayin’ from all the way over there.”
A flash in front of his eyes, the vision came to him out of nowhere, striking him like a lightning bolt.
His sheepskin coat flapping as he went, Jake trudged through the snow. “Okay, I’m here.”
“We need to move the stakes.”
His brows pulling in, he cocked his head. “Why?”
“Because we’re gonna move the house.” Noting his brother’s flat gaze, Billy went on before he could protest. “Just a little bit. See how the creek curves right here?”
“Yeah, and?”
“Instead of putting the house alongside it, let’s build over it.”
“Uhh…”
“Hear me out. Say we put a few bedrooms and the kitchen here on the downhill side. A big ole screened porch and an outdoor fireplace…” Billy took a leap across the six-foot-wide channel, landing on his ass in the snow. “…and our room can be over here on the far side. Maybe an office for you upstairs. Then we can have a living room with enormous windows on either side spanning across the creek. What do you think?”
“Keep going.”
He stood and pointed in the opposite direction. “Plenty of room for a small barn over there for the horses. A workshop. Whatever we want.”
“A little greenhouse for Emily so she can have her flowers all year long.” Joining him, Jake smiled.
“You’re seein’ it, ain’t ya?”
“I think I do.” With a grin, his brother slung an arm over his shoulder. “You’re a fuckin’ genius, you know that?”
“Nah.” Billy paused to chew on his lip. “I mean, we don’t even know if it can be done.”
“I’m no structural engineer, but I think it can.” With a nod, his grin widened. “They build bridges, don’t they?”
“Sure they do, but can we?”
Framing. Drywall. That stuff was easy. He’d worked on lots of projects for folks around town—even helped Mr. Mathers put up a new barn this past summer—but something like this was beyond their skill set.
“Heh. We’re gonna need some help.”
No shit.
A puff of white billowed from his lips as warm breath made contact with the chill December air. “Yeah, I reckon so.”
The two of them stood in silence for a moment, listening to the murmur of the creek. The rustling of the pine. His shining gaze taking in the peaceful, snow-covered landscape, Jake parted his lips to speak, and softening his baritone voice, it took on a wistful timbre. “Emily’s going to love it here.”
No doubt, brother.
All three of them would.
“She’s gonna freak when she sees it,” Billy said, bouncing in his boots. With a lightness in his chest, he bumped shoulders with his brother. “Don’t know how we’re gonna keep her from findin’ out, though. I ain’t no good at lyin’.”
“Me, neither,” Jake said with a chuckle. “We’ll just have to be creative with the truth, then, yeah?”
Truthful, almost to a fault, is what they were. It’s how they’d been raised. Lying simply wasn’t in them.
Billy looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “S’pose so.”
“C’mon.” Jake tugged on his arm. “Betcha Justin’s got supper ready by now. You can tell him all about your ideas.”
“Why would you want me to do that?”
“Because they’re good, and he can put ‘em on paper,” Jake said, giving him a good-natured shove. “If the architect can see what you see, then maybe he won’t think we’re plumb fuckin’ crazy.”
Justin didn’t say a word. As soon as Billy described the house, his father put down his fork and got up to snag his sketchpad and a charcoal pencil. A sought-after artist, his paintings hung in galleries from New York to San Francisco. Fingers flying over the paper, he drew, erased, and smudged until a most incredible rendering of the vision in his head appeared.
Stunned by the likeness, the crusty bread in Billy’s hand fell onto his plate of chicken cacciatore. “How in the hell did you do that?”
The natural stonework, the placement of the timber wood trusses—every detail was exactly as he’d seen it.
His chest puffing out, Justin gave his head a little shimmy, and he chuckled. “I got it right then, I take it?”
“You sure enough did, Daddy J.” Billy grinned, sopping up the gravy with his fallen piece of bread. “Unfuckinreal.”
“William Gantry, you better watch that mouth of yours.” With a lift of her brows and a tilt of her head, his mother tried to look stern. But Carrie couldn’t quite pull it off. It was the upward twitch of her lips that gave her away.
Billy leaned across the table to kiss her cheek. “Sorry, Ma.”
“I must say, the concept is brilliant.” She released a smile then, her exquisite features softening. “You should go into home design instead of hanging around them smelly, old barns.”
“But that’s what I wanna do,” he insisted, dark eyes locking with cornflower blue. “Told you, Mama, I’m gonna train horses with Tanner.”
He had a way with them. Even Tanner said so. They had big plans to expand the equine side of things at the ranch, breeding the finest Friesians, Shires, and American Quarters in all of Wyoming.
Scratch that. In the entire U. S. of A!
“ You are the son of a physician.” His mother reminded him, tapping her pointer finger on the new Restoration Hardware dining table as if he’d somehow forgotten.
“And a painter.” Justin pursed his lips with another shimmy of his head. “More polenta, dear?”
But Carrie ignored his offer. “Your brother threw away med school for…”
Maybe Jake didn’t want to be a doctor, Mother. Ever think of that?
His brother did well serving Brookside. He had a seat on the town council, took on the historical preservation project, and often presented lectures at the school. Jake had a 4.0 GPA in college, for chrissakes. Graduated summa cum laude this past May with a major in history and a minor in political science from the University of Wyoming in Laramie. Of course, he helped at the ranch some, too—especially during calving season in spring and with the cattle roundups in fall, same as most every man in Brookside did.
“And you…” Carrie turned her attention back to him. “…you want to waste your talent mucking stalls?”
Justin’s steel-blue eyes narrowed. Pressing his lips into a thin, tight line, he shot his husband a look.
“Carrie.” Drawing his wife closer to his side, Victor kissed her brow. “All we’ve ever wanted is for our boys to be happy. Just look at them, honey, they are.”
“I know, but…” She pawed at his chest, all but melting into him.
“No buts, sweetheart.” He traced her lips with his finger to quiet her. “Billy and Jake are fine, exemplary young men. We’ve raised them well. Now, let them be.”
Then, holding her face in his hands, Victor kissed his wife. When he released her, Carrie nodded. Blush staining her cheeks, she bit into her lip.
“I’m sorry, boys. I don’t want you to think for even one minute that I’m not proud of you both, because I very much am.” Then she gazed at her husband. “It’s just that I always hoped at least one of them would follow in your footsteps, Vic.”
“Medicine is a calling, Carrie, honey.” His fingers swept through her long, blonde hair. “And not everyone is called to it.”
“Well, I hope someone gets the calling soon, so you can retire, old man.”
“I’m not old yet, woman.” Sitting back in his chair with a chuckle, he winked. “Give it another twenty years.”
Victor Gantry was forty-seven. Billy wouldn’t call that ‘old’ exactly, but he understood what his mom was after. More time with him. She waited for his dad to finish with undergrad, and for Justin to come of age before they got married. Then there was med school. After that, his internship and residency kept him away. And all the while, she was at home with her brother and a baby. It’s no wonder Billy didn’t come along until six years later.
A doctor’s life is not his own.
Patients come first.
Victor missed out on a lot.
Billy could count on one hand the number of times his dad made it through Christmas dinner or a birthday party without the phone ringing or someone knocking at the door.
“You’ll always be young to me, my love.” Justin blew Victor a kiss, then, looking back at Billy and Jake, he returned to the matter at hand. “Anywho, this house is going to be just marvelous.”
Swallowing his chicken, Billy smiled so big his cheeks hurt. “I wish it was spring already. Can’t wait to get started, ya know?”
“It’ll come,” Justin said with a gentle squeeze to his shoulder. “So don’t go wishing your life away, son, because trust me, time moves quickly enough.”
Not to him. Wishing and waiting was all Billy ever did. For graduation, the wedding, and everything that would come after. He was more than ready to leave his youth behind, and for his future to begin.
“You boys taking Emily to the bonfire tonight?” Carrie asked, spooning some polenta onto her plate.
I guess she wanted more, after all.
“We are.” With a single nod, Jake poured some wine into a glass.
“Yeah, and Tanner’s bringin’ Arien.”
“What about Kellan?”
What about him? Was he supposed to know what the broody fucker’s plans were? Emily made no mention of him when she informed Arien she was going to the party and Tanner was taking her.
“Dunno. Ain’t you talked to him?”
“I haven’t.” Jake emptied his glass in one swallow, then shrugging his shoulders with a tired sigh, he said, “It’s the last party of the year. He’ll be there, I reckon.”
And the last one he’d get to be with Emily. By the time they resumed, after winter and calving season were over, she’d be eighteen and off-limits until he came of age, too.
On second thought, maybe he shouldn’t be wishing for spring to get here so badly.
Billy reached for the wine bottle and refilled his brother’s glass.
Not giving a shit who saw him, he tipped it back.
A whole fucking year without her.
And it was going to be a long one.