Chapter Five
The Bennet Ranch
Aly didn’t like to analyze why she was happiest when she had a big dinner to prepare. Why bustling around made her feel settled and needed and good.
Some things were best not analyzed.
Besides, this was nice. She wasn’t making a dinner for everyone because there was something terrible going on. She was having everyone over for dinner just because.
She didn’t want more trouble. She didn’t want more pain. She wanted everyone to find some of the happiness she had in the darkness of this past year. She wanted spring to be a new start for everyone.
She wanted them to be a family.
So she bustled around the kitchen even after Nate, Sam, and Cal showed up. She could hear the steady hum of conversation coming from the dining room.
There was something really beautiful about the Bennet brothers starting to get along.
They’d spent their lives mostly at odds, thanks to their terrible father’s machinations.
But they were finding ways to … be brothers now.
No matter how different they were. No matter if they agreed on everything or not or understood each other or not.
They were family. Her family.
Aly could only be happy that after years of friction and separation, her and Sam were friends again. And that Sam and Nate had found each other and weren’t letting all the ways their childhoods and adulthoods had likely screwed them up stand in the way of love.
Aly was quite certain that was what Cal needed. A partner. His brothers would always be there now, Aly herself would always be there for him, but there was something different about having a partner. Something different about falling in love with someone. It was healing.
He was too alone. Too separate. His career might have brought him success, but it had never brought him contentment. Maybe there was something besides romance that could bring him contentment, but she didn’t know what it was.
And yes, no one was alone anymore, like Landon had said, but that didn’t mean Aly couldn’t see if there was more Marietta had to offer Cal than just a job and a family.
So she’d invited Jill to dinner too. Maybe it was foolish to see if putting her best friend and her soon-to-be brother-in-law in the same room might offer some … romantic sparks, but Aly wasn’t forcing anything. She was just creating an opportunity.
Jill had a kindness and an empathy about her that Cal needed. Cal had that … swagger, that determination that Aly thought Jill could use.
Of course, he also had a parade of issues he needed to work through, but she couldn’t make two people fall in love with each other. So she wasn’t forcing anyone to take on anyone else’s issues. Because Cal wasn’t alone in having issues. Jill had Glenda, and Glenda was a bit of an issue.
“What are you plotting?”
Aly looked up from where she’d been stirring the mashed potatoes. She hadn’t heard Landon come in from the dining room. Because she had been plotting.
He didn’t need to know that. Not when he looked vaguely disapproving but relaxed, instead of tense or worried. He was a lot more relaxed these days, and just that filled Aly with a kind of contentment she had been missing all these years.
So much bad had happened, but there could still be so much happy. So much hope for a future.
She smiled at him, filled to the brim with love.
And conviction that she should do something for Cal. “I love you, you know.”
“Now I’m really suspicious.” But he dropped his mouth to hers and murmured the words back to her, before kissing her.
“Hell. What is with you all?” Cal muttered. “Did no one hear the door?” Then he strode off, presumably to answer the door.
Landon kissed her again, making her smile.
*
Jill didn’t know why Aly had invited her and Grandma to dinner. Based on how weird Aly was being, Jill wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
But it would be an opportunity to talk to Cal about the book proposal, and her agent was getting irritated with her not responding to emails about it.
Jill had to admit she was kind of enjoying holding someone else up for once, but the enjoyment was short-lived because…
She wanted to write the damn book.
Why did she have to have a conscience? Why had she thought this wouldn’t be complicated? Okay, she’d known it would be complicated, but when an idea didn’t want to let go, it was hard not to forgo complicated because those complications would come later.
Later was now.
She parked her truck next to the row of others. Sam and Nate were here, and she assumed the big SUV with the temp tags was Cal’s new vehicle. She sure hoped it was Cal’s and not some new stranger to be added to the mix.
After the past year, Jill was done with new people and surprises and heart-breaking mysteries.
She glanced over at her grandmother. Well, she wasn’t done, because she was still hoping Sam would find some explanation for her grandmother.
Grandma looked back at her, the placid expression on her face slowly turning to one of frustration. She lifted her hands to sign in her rudimentary way.
Stop staring at me like I’m dying. Then she pushed the car open and carefully got out of the truck.
Jill blew out a breath. She wasn’t worried about her grandmother dying these days, at least not in any immediate way, but she was worried.
She got out of the truck herself. Watched as Grandma walked up to the house with certain strides. She’d fully recovered from her stroke and was even looking sturdier and doing better than she had been last year at this time.
Jill knew she should be happy with that—content not to rock the boat.
But she wasn’t.
She followed Grandma, carrying the rolls Grandma had spent the afternoon making. When she made it onto the porch, Grandma had already knocked.
After a brief wait, the door opened.
To Cal.
He eyed them both, and Jill couldn’t read the expression on his face. Blank seemed to be the prevailing response. Still, his mouth curved into a smile that she wondered if anyone fell for. It was a charming smile. He was a handsome guy.
But there was nothing behind that smile. Just a terrible blankness that made her heart hurt and made her absolutely not want to bring up what she needed to.
“Hi, Cal.” She managed what had to be an awkward smile.
She knew she’d have to face him, have to talk to him, but she hadn’t been ready for him to answer the door. Hadn’t been ready to already feel sorry for him.
“Jill. Glenda.” His smile was faker than hers. “Come on in.”
Grandma went in first, and Jill followed. Cal closed the door behind them, and Aly appeared looking flushed and happy, so Jill moved toward her, holding out the container. “Grandma made rolls.”
“Oh, thanks, Glenda. You make the best.” Aly ushered them into the dining room, fluttered around putting the rolls on the table and making sure everyone had something to drink.
Grandma took the empty seat in between Landon and Nate, so Jill was forced to take the only other empty seat. Right next to Cal.
Which was fine. They all sat. They all ate. They talked about the weather and the ranch and Landon and Aly’s upcoming wedding. Sam shared a funny story about an Honor’s Edge case that involved a very nefarious pet goat.
Jill wanted to relax, but when Aly made no grand announcements, when nothing happened but a very nice dinner with friends, Jill didn’t know what to think.
After a year of pain and suffering, uncomfortable secrets and scary threats, a normal dinner with friends just … didn’t seem possible.
But they ate. They chatted. When Aly and Landon started clearing the table, Jill helped them.
“Are you guys in wedding countdown mode yet?” she asked, scraping off plates and stacking them next to where Landon rinsed and loaded the dishwasher.
“Not yet. My dress is supposed to get here any day now. Maybe then it’ll start feeling real and stressful, but it’s such a small wedding.” Aly shrugged as she put away leftovers. “As long as you guys are there, we’ve got an officiant to make it legal, and I look nice, I’ll be happy.”
Cal strode into the room. Jill thought he looked a little stormy, but he had that pleasant smile on his face that had all that horrible blankness behind it.
“Thanks for dinner, Al. See you guys later.”
“Oh, but—” Before Aly could finish her sentence, Cal was gone.
With Aly scowling after him. Then she looked down at her pile of leftovers.
“Oh, he forgot his leftovers,” she said brightly. “Can you run this out to him?”
It took Jill a minute, and Aly shoving the container at her, to realize Aly meant her.
“Um, sure.” She didn’t know why it had to be her, but it would give her a moment alone with him to bring up the book.
She didn’t quite understand the disapproving look Landon was shooting Aly but figured that was between the two of them. So she took the Tupperware full of food and followed Cal’s path out of the house.
He’d made it to his SUV, but hadn’t gotten in yet, so she called out his name. He stopped, but he didn’t look back at her. Or close the distance. Which meant she had to walk through the yard and slush and cold to meet him at his truck.
“Aly wanted me to bring you this.”
He looked down at the extended container, then at her. Slowly, as if he wasn’t sure if he was being handed leftovers or a bomb, he took it. “Okay, thanks.”
“No problem. Um, listen. You, uh, know how I was writing that book with …” She lost her courage and her words in one fell swoop.
She wrapped her arms around herself because it was freezing, and she was starting to shiver since she hadn’t put her coat on to run the leftovers out to him.
“If you can’t say it, you probably shouldn’t write it.”
Stung, Jill straightened. “I can say it,” she muttered.
She wasn’t a coward. She wouldn’t be a coward. She was just trying to be … to be kind.
“I wrote the proposal, and my agent wants to send it out. She thinks it’ll sell and—”
“Great.” He jerked open his car door and tossed in the container, before hefting himself up in the driver’s side.
Jill didn’t know what else to do but move so he couldn’t close the door just yet. “I just didn’t want you to be blindsided. I wanted to keep you in the loop so that—”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t … don’t what?”
He looked down at her, looking incredibly pissed off in the dome light of his car. Pissed off enough she took a step away from the car door, because she wasn’t convinced he wouldn’t try to close it on her.
“Don’t keep me in the loop,” he said sharply. “Don’t mention it. Do whatever the hell you want.”
“Oh. Well, I’m … sorry.”
“If I wanted your sorry, I would have told you not to do it last year. You’re the one making it a thing, and you’re the one making it weird. So don’t.”
Then, because she was out of the way now, he slammed the door shut in her face.
Which wasn’t exactly the behavior of someone who wasn’t making things weird.
But if anyone had a right, she supposed it was Cal.