Chapter Sixteen
Sheena put a sweater on and put her hair in braids. She looked nearly tame. Seasonal, perhaps. Festive, even. Which seemed like it should be the goal for baking Christmas cookies.
Denver had already gone out to work. They’d had breakfast together, and then she had settled in to wait for Bix to come and
pick her up.
She was still feeling weird about . . . Well. Everything. Being sort of folded into the family last night. Seated around the
dinner table like she was one of them.
It had been a big group thing a lot like the town hall meeting. But it was different. Because Denver didn’t seem so separate
there. Not with his siblings. She got to see him being part of something. It had been . . . nice.
She pushed at the warm feeling in her chest, because she was certain that it was dangerous. She shook her head.
It’s not dangerous. He’s just a guy.
This was all circumstantial. They were working together, so it made sense for them to spend the night together, and to see each other basically every day. It was all in aid of sex. But they had conversation because it was polite. She even made basic conversation with her one-night stands.
So there. That was all.
She poured herself some coffee in one of Denver’s thermoses, and then went to the front door to watch for Bix’s truck.
It didn’t take long for her to pull up. Bix was small and blonde, with a pixie like face and the demeanor of a particularly
tetchy ferret.
She was a very funny match with the straitlaced Daughtry. Who was definitely the most straightlaced of the King brothers.
She and Denver were so much alike.
Without really trying to, she went through the pairings.
Arizona was edgy next to her husband, Micah, who seemed steady and laid-back.
Justice was wild, while Rue seemed exceptionally organized, a soothing influence. Fia and Landry were a little harder to gauge.
They had the new baby to look after. They also had a teenager, and they gave off serious parental vibes.
Still, it seemed like the couples did best when they were opposites. Not that she and Denver were a couple.
She opened up the front door, then closed it behind her, moving quickly down the steps, and she got into Bix’s truck.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” Bix replied. “Ready to bake?”
“Not really. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t either,” said Bix. “But it’s nice that they include me. I’m not that helpful. But it’s . . . it’s crazy to be part
of the family. I mean, I have a family, obviously. I didn’t pop up out of the hole in the ground. Even if it feels like it
sometimes. But, you know. It’s just . . . I don’t know. It’s nice.”
“I have a family,” she said. “My sisters. I raised them.”
“Like Denver.”
“Kind of,” she said.
“With the Kings . . . just relax and let them do their thing,” said Bix. “I find it’s futile to resist them. They all think they are so tough and bad. But honestly, they’re the nicest people that I’ve ever met. Anywhere.”
For some reason, that actually scared her little bit. Because if the Kings were the nicest people that Bix had ever met, and
Sheena was planning on leaving, it just made her plans feel kind of small and sad. She didn’t like that.
“Come on, they have to be a little bit annoying.”
“It’s a lot,” said Bix. “Especially when you’re like me and you’re basically used to living by yourself. I’ve had to acclimate
to having people around. Person around, even.”
She was used to having people around. She wasn’t like Bix. It was just . . . she was used to it in a different capacity. She
occupied a really specific space in her sisters’ lives.
The same way that Denver did.
He took care of her effortlessly, because he was treating her the way he always treated people.
What have you done to take care of him?
Well. That seemed a lot like reciprocity. And she wasn’t necessarily in the market to go thinking like that, considering that
she wasn’t trying to do a relationship. She really wasn’t.
But it made her think. About what he was used to. About what he had gotten in his life and not before.
And if there was anything she could do . . .
She cleared her throat and looked out the window. The whole area that they lived in was beautiful. Small towns nestled in
mountainous pockets, all the way out to the ocean a couple of hours away.
But there was something particularly beautiful about Four Corners Ranch.
It was eighty thousand acres of ranchland. A fact that for some reason was buried in the back of her brain.
Hell. There were information plaques about it in town. Seeing as it was the biggest ranching spread in the state of Oregon.
Though, she always felt like it shouldn’t be, on a technicality, since they worked the land together, but it was technically
four separate parcels.
Not that she had a horse in the race of who had the biggest ranch in the state. But maybe it was just an attempt for her brain
to minimize the King family, and everything they had.
She had been to Sullivan’s Point for the town hall meeting, and had seen the gorgeous, brightly painted farmhouse, with the
chandelier hanging from the weeping willow. But she had never been inside.
“It’s a lot,” Bix said, by way of warning as they walked up the front steps.
She was about to ask what Bix meant by that, but then the door opened, and they were greeted by four redheads.
Fia, Quinn, Rory and Alaina. “Welcome,” Fia said, essentially dragging her inside.
And that was where she got a good look at exactly what Bix meant.
The kitchen cabinets were painted a cheerful yellow, the dining table a brilliant turquoise.
The whole place had been attacked by color. It was definitely not what you would expect in a traditional farmhouse, but it
was brilliantly quirky.
Sheena couldn’t say she was usually fond of quirk.
But it was impossible to resist the Sullivan sisters.
There were mixing bowls in all shapes, sizes and colors set out on the table, along with large glass jars of milk, bowls of
eggs that still had dirt on them from the chicken coop. Thick slabs of butter that had definitely been hand churned, and not
purchased at the store. A watering can full of raspberries, and a bucket full of blackberries.
“From the greenhouse,” Fia said, gesturing to the fruit. “We try to keep things going year-round. And we’ve got a system that allows us to do that. I just prefer to have everything fresh. It isn’t that we couldn’t freeze them—I just don’t like to.”
“Fia is type A about berries,” Alaina said.
“Yes,” said Fia. “I am.”
Fia’s red hair was up in a bun, and she was wearing a polka-dotted apron, a burp rag draped over her shoulder and a wrap with
her little boy snug inside on her front. She looked cheerful, even as she was wrangling a baby, and Sheena did not think she
would have such a good attitude if she was trying to work and hold an infant.
Not that she ever would. She flashed back to last night with Denver. No. They were very good with condoms. Probably because
he carried similar paranoia. Also, she was on the pill. She had never believed in taking chances. Neither with disease nor
pregnancy. So condoms and birth control pills were always the order of the day.
She didn’t want a baby.
She ignored the strange, wistful stab in her chest. It only got worse as she looked around the kitchen. At all of the beautiful
things.
At this moment. That’s what it was. An intense, colorful explosion of home. Togetherness.
Lila, Fia’s redheaded teenage daughter, was helping with the proceedings too. As were Rue and Arizona. Along with Violet and
Evelyn Garrett, who Sheena had never met before.
While Fia got the recipes and ingredients put in order so that they could establish a good workflow—her words—Evelyn introduced
herself and treated Sheena to the most insane story she’d ever heard.
Everyone in town knew that Sawyer Garrett had ordered a bride on the Internet. Or rather, had placed an ad online looking for a wife after he had ended up an unexpected single dad. But actually hearing the story directly from Evelyn was something else.
“This was such a culture shock,” she said. “I lived in the city for most of my adult life.”
“Which city?” Sheena asked.
“Sheena,” said Evelyn. “There is only one city.”
Behind her, Violet, Evelyn’s sister-in-law, was rolling her eyes and making faces.
Evelyn turned around. “Yes, Violet?”
“Nothing. But I think you overestimate the geographic reach of New York. We just don’t think about it as much as you think
we do.”
Evelyn laughed. “Yes. I have picked up on that since moving out west.”
Now that she had said it, Sheena could hear the New York accent in the other woman’s syllables.
Then it seemed like it was storytime for everybody, which Sheena was fascinated by. The ways in which these women had found
love, and found themselves here, was fascinating. Violet had moved from Copper Ridge after meeting Wolf Garrett when he came
to stay at the bed-and-breakfast that she managed. They’d had instant chemistry, and it had produced an unplanned pregnancy.
Sheena gave another quick round of mental thanks to the birth control gods.
The Sullivan sisters, of course, had been born and raised here, but Alaina had ended up married to Gus McCloud, and now did
most of her work over there.
Quinn and Rory had married off the ranch. Quinn had married a rancher at a neighboring property, while Rory had married hometown legend and military veteran Gideon Payne. Arizona had found love when she’d reconnected with a man from her past.
Sheena had already heard the story of how Bix had ended up trying to make moonshine on the King’s land when she had been found
by Daughtry the cop, but she happily listened to it again as they started to put cookie dough together. Which then led in
to Rue’s story. She and Justice had been best friends for years, and it took her getting left at the altar by another man
for them both to finally realize they were meant to be together—not just as friends.