Chapter 26
Tanner
“I see that you took my advice and made sure the entire town knows that you and Hannah are back together,” Devon said as we chatted at an impromptu barbecue my mother was hosting this afternoon. “Did you ever warn her about the matchmakers?”
It was getting a lot colder than it had been earlier in the fall, so we were barbecuing on my mother’s massive, covered patio that had infrared heaters, and my brothers and I had lit two firepits that sat on opposite ends of the patio.
Mom liked to entertain outdoors, and she made sure that cold weather didn’t keep her from having the barbecues she loved so much.
It was just friends and family.
Still, there was a decent crowd here.
My mother never did quiet, lightly attended events.
She’d just hosted Thanksgiving dinner not long ago with a ton of people attending, including all of my family, Hannah and her mother, Lauren, Reese, Silas, Charlie, and anyone else in town that had no family to go to on the holiday.
So, this impromptu barbecue had been a surprise, but my mother loved a good party, and she never went long without having another one.
It had been a few weeks since Hannah and I had returned from New York, and they’d been some of the happiest days of my life.
Her business had launched successfully, and she was over the moon about the interest she’d had in mobile services in Montana.
“No need to tell her about the matchmakers,” I informed him. “I’m making sure that everyone knows that she’s mine.”
“No doubt about that,” Devon said drily. “You two can’t keep your hands off each other.”
He was right.
When I wasn’t touching her, I was watching her.
She was on the other side of the patio at the moment chatting with my mom, her mother, Lauren, Anna, and Reese.
Silas and Charlie weren’t far away. They seemed to be in a lighthearted conversation. The two of them had been friends for years, and they liked to give each other a hard time.
“I noticed that there seems to be something happening on the acreage next to Mom’s ranch,” I said to Devon. “Any idea what’s happening there?”
I’d driven by that property today, and I’d noticed quite a few trucks coming and leaving from that location.
“You haven’t heard?” he said, sounding surprised.
I finally stopped watching Hannah and looked at Devon. “Heard what?”
“The wayward cousins are moving back to Crystal Fork,” he informed me. “The old house was demolished. They’re building homes there.”
“Asher and Cole?” I asked.
Devon raised a brow. “Do we have any other wayward cousins?”
Okay, that surprised me, and very few things surprised me anymore.
Yeah, they owned the land, but I had assumed they were never coming back to Crystal Fork.
The two of them owned one of the most successful tech companies on the planet.
It was based in Austin.
“Why in the hell are they coming back here?” I asked.
He shrugged. “They plan on breeding horses. Rumor has it that they’re turning their everyday operations over to a CEO and stepping down. If that’s the case, it probably doesn’t matter where they live.”
In some ways, that made sense. Asher was around Kaleb’s age and Cole was only two years younger. They’d been busting their asses for a long time to become billionaires. My brothers and I had considered doing that ourselves, but now that our company was established, we didn’t really need to turn things over. We could pick and choose our acquisitions.
Asher and Cole’s tech company was a whole different business.
They’d probably spent every waking moment running that company.
My cousins were the offspring of my uncle, my father’s younger brother.
My father and his brother had never been close. My uncle had been a heavy drinker, and he’d never been a pleasant person to be around.
My dad had always hoped he’d get rehabilitated at some point, but that had never happened, and he’d had some pretty questionable morals.
Eventually, my father and my uncle had stopped speaking.
My uncle had owned the land next to the ranch because it had been inherited from my grandfather. My dad had gotten the majority of the land for his ranch when my grandpa had passed away, but my grandfather had never entirely disinherited his second son, even though he’d been an asshole.
That property wasn’t as vast as my dad’s ranch, but it was significant acreage.
“How does Mom feel about that?” I asked.
“She’s thrilled,” Devon replied. “You know her. She always wants family back in Crystal Fork. Maybe our family was never close to our uncle or his kids, but she’s hoping she can repair that relationship.”
“The town probably won’t be thrilled,” I said drily. “Half of the people here still think they murdered their father.”
There was a huge scandal when Asher and Cole were younger.
My uncle had been murdered when my cousins were younger. Asher had taken Cole to Austin because their mother had died years ago, and I didn’t think the two of them had ever looked back.
The murder was still unsolved, but the police had never had any evidence to prove that Asher and Cole had done it.
But the gossip had been rampant in Crystal Fork.
Some believed that my cousins had murdered their father.
Some didn’t.
“I don’t think they did it,” Devon informed me. “I talk to Cole once in a while. I think part of the reason they’re coming back is to figure out who murdered their father.”
“I don’t think they did it, either. You talk to Cole?” I questioned. “Hell, I’ve tried to reach out to Asher a few times, but he’s never taken my call.”
We barely knew our cousins. They had both been standoffish as kids, and incredibly unsocial, just like their father.
Then again, with the father they had, I was surprised they were still sane.
“Asher is a dick,” Devon told me. “But Cole is a little more social. I wouldn’t say we’re close, but we keep in touch once in a while.”
“There has to be a reason why they’re coming back,” I mused. “They could breed horses anywhere. Hell, they live in Texas.”
I was pretty sure that Devon was right. They had some unfinished business here in Montana.”
“I hope Mom isn’t disappointed if they don’t really want to communicate,” I told Devon. “I know they’re both Remingtons, but they’re not like the rest of us.”
Devon grinned. “I think she’ll figure out a way to get close to them. She always felt bad that they wouldn’t let her or Dad help them when they were young.”
“They tried hard,” I reminded my younger brother. “Just like Dad tried to help his brother. None of them wanted anything to do with us.”
“I’m not sure our uncle would allow it,” Devon pondered. “And once those two were suspected of murder by some of the people in this town, I think all they wanted to do was see Crysal Fork and their old life in the rearview mirror.”
“You’re probably right,” I agreed.
Asher and Cole hadn’t had an easy life growing up.
Looking back at the situation as an adult, I suspected that my uncle was pretty abusive, but my cousins had never admitted to that abuse. Although I knew that my father had asked them if they were being abused. Many times.
“I can’t believe you haven’t heard about the return of the black sheep Remingtons,” Devon commented. “The news has been a hot topic here for a while now.”
“I was distracted,” I said, my gaze returning to Hannah.
She was one hell of a distraction.
Neither one of us was looking back at our old relationship or the mistakes we’d made anymore.
What we had now was too damn good to be spoiled by what had happened in the past.
She’d been busy with the opening of her business, but true to her word, she’d done everything in her power to make me happy.
Hell, I still didn’t think that she realized that just seeing her face made me fucking ecstatic.
She ended her busy day at my house for dinner, and to my relief, she almost always cooked.
If she’d had to eat my cooking, she might eat at my place less often.
Hannah knew when to stop working and pay attention to the people in her life.
That was one thing that hadn’t changed about Hannah.
She had coffee in the morning with her mother at The Mug And Jug before Sweet Mornings opened, and they had lunch together at Charlie’s at least once a week.
My mother had started driving into town to have lunch with Joy and Hannah, and Hannah checked in on my mother almost as much as she did with her own mom.
Hannah and my mother had been close at one time, and I was glad to see that they were renewing that tight relationship.
Honestly, Hannah had stepped right back into the community and my family like she’d never been gone.
She treated Anna and Lauren like the sisters she’d never had.
I knew that Lauren was relieved to have another close friend in Crystal Fork since she’d just returned here after a long absence herself.
Lauren wasn’t as outgoing as Hannah and Anna, so I was glad those three were close.
Luckily, Hannah’s mother had easily accepted the fact that Hannah and I were back together.
In fact, she seemed to approve, and she was treating me no differently than she had when Hannah and I were engaged.
I looked back from the group Hannah was in to find Devon scrutinizing Reese like she was a specimen under a microscope.
I knew that look.
I’d seen it every time Devon was trying to figure out a problem.
“Something wrong with Reese?” I asked Devon.
He shook his head slowly as he averted his gaze from the pretty, auburn haired woman. “There’s something that isn’t adding up about that woman,” he said suspiciously. “And for some reason, she hates me.”
I smirked. That probably pissed him off because Devon could charm almost anyone when he chose to do it.
“Hannah loves her,” I told him. “And I happen to like her, too. She’s a hard woman not to like.”
“Have you ever wondered why she’d take a job in a place where she has no family or ties? She moved from the city to the middle of nowhere in Montana. There’s something wrong with that,” Devon said with suspicion clouding his tone.
I shrugged. “She said she has no close family. It doesn’t seem that strange to me that she wanted a change.”
“In Crystal Fork, Montana? I think she has secrets,” he said seriously. “I don’t like it. I’m going to figure out exactly what they are.”
Devon’s gaze flitted back to Reese, and I chuckled. “You’re being paranoid because you can’t charm her into submission. Are you attracted to her?”
He sent me a frustrated look. “Are you serious? She’s probably at least a decade younger than I am.”
While it was true that Devon generally hooked up with women his age or even a little older, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t be attracted to Reese.
Normally, he preferred women that didn’t want entanglements and were married to their careers.
Reese was a sweet, quiet woman that seemed to be a lot more balanced.
“She’s attractive,” I said, trying to pry information out of my younger brother.
“She’s a pain in my ass,” Devon said in an almost hostile voice. “And she’s evasive about her former life in the city.”
I laughed because the woman had obviously gotten under Devon’s skin, and I’d never seen that happen. “I think you’re just annoyed that you can’t charm her, and she won’t tell you everything you want to know. She’s entitled to her privacy, Devon. She doesn’t know you.”
“I’ll get to know her,” he vowed. “Hannah is like a sister to me. If she’s getting close to Hannah, Anna, and Lauren, I want to know what she’s hiding.”
I grinned as I watched Devon continue to glare at Reese.
I’d never seen my brother get riled up by any woman, and it was highly amusing to watch.
Women didn’t ignore Devon.
They generally fell at his feet.
It was interesting to see a woman who didn’t fall for any of Devon’s bullshit for a change.