Chapter 18 Family Dinner
Family Dinner
WALKER
We pull up to Rosemont with her hand still in mine.
I hold it a beat longer than I need to before I get out to open her door.
It would be the most natural thing in the world to keep holding her hand all the way up to the front door.
But that’s not what this is, so I drop it.
My youngest brother Tanner is in the round pen, working Wild Rose's newest addition, a two-year-old colt yet to be broken.
Tanner makes his living on the back of rank bulls, but he's always had a way with horses too.
For a man who chooses to spend eight seconds getting the hell thrown out of him for sport, he has a gentleness with animals that'll bring even the most skittish of them around.
Jonah goes bounding up to the fence line, both hands wrapped around the top rail, boots hooked on the bottom one. “Uncle Tanner!”
“Jonah, my man!”
He swings down from the horse in one fluid motion, boots hitting the ground soft, and passes the lead rope to the new ranch hand. Trevor? Tyler? Shit. Some towheaded kid from Texas who's been here three weeks but is proving his worth so far.
“Walk him out,” Tanner tells him, and turns toward the fence.
My son clambers over the fence and goes running into his arms and Tanner swings him around before putting him down and tipping his cowboy hat in greeting to Sadie.
“You must be Sadie,” Tanner says, flashing that grin that’s charmed the skirts off of many a buckle bunny. “Heard a lot about you. Pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Likewise,” she answers.
She doesn’t appear dazzled by him. Which is surprising. Tanner’s a good-looking guy, and he uses it to his advantage. But he might as well be a potted plant for all the interest Sadie’s showing in his charms.
She smiles politely at him the way you smile at someone's very enthusiastic golden retriever.
“You’re a friend of Cassidy’s, right?” Tanner asks. “How is she?”
“She’s good. Starting her residency at Johns Hopkins soon.”
His eyes darken briefly. “She still with that douchebag?”
“Her fiancé, you mean?”
“Like I said.”
“Yeah, they’re still together.”
There’s a rare flash of longing across my little brother’s face, but it’s gone so quickly I start doubting what I saw.
Then he looks to me, and the grin comes back. More diabolical.
To Sadie, he says, “My big bro better be treating you right.”
“He’s the perfect gentleman,” she says, eyes sliding towards me.
Yeah, the perfect gentleman. At enormous fucking cost to my sanity.
Tanner snorts.
I don’t have time to give him shit for it, because then Dad emerges from Rosemont. He gives Jonah a big hug and pulls Sadie in for a gentler one.
“I miss seeing you at the bookstore, Sadie,” he tells her. “Nobody else knows all the best mysteries coming in.”
“About that,” she says, and then she takes a hardback book from her purse. “Went down there the other day. Had my old boss give me a copy of ‘Tiger’s Eye’ that just came in. It’s not supposed to be on the shelves yet, so don’t tell.”
Dad’s whole entire face lights up.
It’s the single best host gift anyone could have ever brought him.
And then the two of them are off, talking about books as Dad guides her inside, and Tanner’s gaze meets mine. His eyebrows shoot up.
“They’re old friends, apparently,” I grumble. “He invited her to swim in the lake all alone, did you know that?”
“And that’s a problem because?”
Are all the men in my family fucking stupid? I wish Josie were here. She’s a nurse. She could tell them about the dangers of freezing water.
“It’s not safe!” I explode.
Tanner just bursts out laughing.
And I don’t get the joke, but I know it’s at my expense.
“Where's Rafe?” I ask. He's always been a good buffer between me and my annoying brothers. The one person on this ranch who knows when to talk and when to just hand you a beer and leave you alone with it.
“One of the mares is colicking,” says Tanner. “Vet's still out there, and so is Rafe.”
That tracks. Even with the vet there, Rafe wouldn't leave until he knew she was out of the woods.
“Which mare?” I ask.
“Daisy Mae.”
Jonah wrings his hands, looking anxious. “Is she going to be okay?”
Tanner swings Jonah up onto his shoulders and keeps his tone light. “Rafe thinks so, pal. So that means she will be.”
Jonah gives a single nod, immediately reassured. If Rafe thinks so, that's good enough for him. It's good enough for all of us.
We all head inside.
Dad has Sadie by the wall of family photos, the ones that march all the way back to the 1800s, generations of Rhodes staring back out at them. He's in full docent mode, one hand gesturing at a stern-faced man in a cavalry hat, while Sadie listens attentively.
Jonah runs up and slots his hand into hers without preamble. He stands there listening to Grandpa's history lesson too, and every once in a while he tips his face up like he’s checking she’s really there, like he can’t quite believe his luck.
I know the feeling, kid.
Slade and Tanner come up on either side of me. The three of us stand there watching for a while.
“Kid adores her,” Tanner murmurs.
Slade takes a sip of the beer in his hand. “So does the old man.”
They’re talking about Dad, obviously. But when they both look at me with stupid smug looks on their faces, I know they’re implying I’m the old man in question.
I just glare.
“Don't bore Sadie to tears with your history lectures, Dad,” Tanner calls out. “She'll never come back.”
“You hush,” Dad says good-naturedly, waving him off without even turning around. He offers Sadie his arm with old-fashioned formality, and she takes it with a smile that looks truly charmed rather than politely tolerant. “Come on JoJo, let's give our guest of honor the grand tour.”
Guest of honor.
I watch my father lead Sadie and Jonah deeper into the house, already gesturing expansively at the vaulted ceiling, probably launching into the story of how my great-great-grandfather built this place with sixteen men and a mule team over one brutal winter.
Sadie glances back once over her shoulder, catches my eye, and smiles.
And I realize abruptly that I might just be grinning back.
Tanner chuckles beside me. “I think Dad's trying to adopt another daughter.”
Slade gives me a cryptic look. “Or getting cozy with his future daughter-in-law.”
I turn to look at him. His expression is perfectly neutral, which on Slade is the same thing as a shit-eating grin.
I realize something else, then. This family dinner that Dad orchestrated is as much about roping Sadie into the Rhodes family circle as it is about seeing me and my brothers.
Maybe more.
“Come here,” I say to my brothers, jerking my head toward the kitchen. They follow me in, and I wait until I can hear Dad's voice echoing down the hallway, deep in some story about the east wing addition, by the sound of it, before I turn around.
“Listen up.” I keep my voice low. “You knuckleheads be on your best behavior tonight. No weird comments around Sadie. I don't want you making her uncomfortable.”
“We wouldn't dream of offending your nanny,” Tanner says. His eyes brim with barely contained laughter. “Your beautiful, sweet, precious… employee.”
Slade leans against the counter, arms folded. “Besides, if she can handle your surly, foul-mouthed ass on a daily basis, she can handle anything this family throws at her.”
I open my mouth, about to extract a vow of obedience by any means necessary.
“We'll behave,” Tanner says, holding up both hands. “We already like Sadie more than we like you.” His eyes glint as he adds, “I always wanted a cool sister-in-law.”
By the time we sit down to eat, I realize I worried for nothing.
Sadie doesn't need my protection here. Not even close.
She holds her own in the rapid-fire crossfire of three brothers who grew up sharpening their tongues on each other around this exact table, who communicate mostly in insults and have since we were old enough to talk.
My family loves her too. It’s obvious in the natural way they all fall into jokes and stories, no awkward silences.
Just easy, like we’ve been doing this forever.
Tanner leans over to me at one point and whispers, “You picked the right cradle to rob.”
If looks could fucking kill.
I watch Sadie fit herself into the contours of my family with perfect ease. When my brothers start asking her about herself and she tells them that she’s going to be a teacher, Dad looks to me with a sneaky smile.
“Don’t suppose you could teach my boy some manners while you’re at it? I thought I did, but I clearly bungled the job.”
Sadie's blue eyes find mine across the table, sparkling. “We're working on it.”
“Sadie doesn't like when Dad says bad words,” Jonah interjects.
My father is beaming. This is the best night he's had in months, I can tell. “And is Dad being better about that?”
“He’s trying,” Jonah confirms. “But he says he keeps fucking it up.”
Everyone cracks up. Everyone except for me.
“Jonah!” I bark.
“What?” he says innocently. “It’s what you said.”
“It’s one thing for a grown-up to use that language. You’re a kid. You’re not allowed.”
“Monkey see, monkey do,” Tanner says in a sing-song voice.
“It's called modeling behavior,” Sadie offers. “One of the most powerful forces in child development.”
The conversation moves on after that, but I keep dwelling on her words.
Modeling behavior.
What am I modeling for my son?
I work. I provide. I show up every single day, which is more than I did for the first few years of his life when I was constantly traveling. A choice I made that haunts me to this day.
But Jonah isn't watching my bank account. He's watching my face. He's watching whether I laugh, whether I seem excited for something, whether I seem happy.
I'm not sure I'd pass that test right now. But I'm starting to think I want to.
I keep glancing at Sadie, trying to quell the deep possessiveness stirring within me.
It’s not just her beauty that’s got me spellbound. It’s not just the need to have her body against mine again, though God knows how bad I want that.
It's everything else. It’s the fiery flash in her eyes when I say something that pisses her off. The smile she gives me when I say something that pleases her. The way my son reaches for her hand without looking, like she's always been there and she's always going to be.
I want all of her. Not just the parts she's already given me, the sharp tongue and the sass and the sparkling energy that's been lighting up my world from day one, minute one.
I want to be the reason she smiles. I want to be the one she tells her secrets to at two in the morning, tangled up in the bedsheets together.
I want to watch her laugh at my brothers’ terrible jokes and argue with me about song lyrics and hold my son’s hand and sit with me at every table, every day, for the rest of my life.
I want it all.
And I want it so badly it scares the hell out of me.