Chapter Two
Once he’d gone to bed, Brett hadn’t been able to sleep very deeply or for very long. Having Trish in the house made him uneasy for so many reasons.
He didn’t trust her. Her text to Maci in which she’d promised to explain everything when she arrived didn’t mean that she was going to back down from contesting her father’s will, just that she was going to explain why she was doing it.
After meeting her and seeing how pregnant she was, Brett could figure out why she was doing it. She wanted the ranch for herself and for her children.
And part of him understood and respected that. He’d even been concerned when she’d looked like she was about to pass out from exhaustion. So he hadn’t pushed her to talk. Instead, he’d wanted her to get some rest.
If only he’d been able to get some sleep himself, he might be able to think clearer.
But he woke up at the crack of dawn, before anyone else was awake, and he fed the animals in the barn, including the calf that had lost its mother earlier that month.
Frankie had been mothering it, feeding it with a bottle.
She usually slept in the stall with it, too. But last night she’d been in her bed.
A couple of the barn kittens kept Cocoa company.
The two black kittens snuggled up against the little brown calf.
Brett sighed as he petted them. He wanted to focus on the cattle; he and his brothers had more than enough work with the beef business.
But someone had dropped off a litter of kittens.
They’d managed to find homes for three of them, one with Brett’s widowed dad and two with Maci.
Liam and Elise had adopted an orange one who’d moved into the house, which left these two yet to find homes.
No wonder they’d bonded with the orphaned calf.
One of them rubbed against his hand and purred. He scratched under its chin, and it closed its eyes as if in bliss. They were cute.
An image of Trish popped into his head. She was cute, too.
Her dark hair just barely reached her shoulders, and with its wild curls, was even more unruly than Frankie’s long spirals.
Trish had brown eyes like her cousin, but hers were very light brown.
Almost the same color as the black kitten’s, whose eyes stared at him unblinkingly.
Trish had barely been able to keep her eyes open last night, she’d been so exhausted. She would probably sleep in today. Or so he hoped.
He wasn’t ready yet to hear her explanations. What he’d already learned about her unsettled him. She was recently divorced and very pregnant and had what looked like all her worldly possessions packed into that big truck and trailer. She had plans.
And Brett had a horrible feeling that those plans were going to affect him whether he wanted them to or not. But he wouldn’t let himself think about them or about her. Instead, he focused on saddling his horse and then riding out to check the pastures and the cattle.
After he returned to the barn, and had unsaddled and cooled down his horse, he walked around the corner of the barn to where his truck was parked.
Fortunately, the keys were in it, so he hopped inside and started it up.
As he drove down the long driveway toward the street, he glanced into the rearview mirror and peered at her vehicle through the dust his tires had kicked up.
The trailer was there, but the truck that had hauled it to the ranch was gone.
She must have gone somewhere, but it was clear she was coming back.
And planning to move in, which left Brett wanting to move out.
Despite how big and sprawling the ranch house was, it was already starting to feel crowded.
Liam was married with a baby living there, and Frankie hadn’t gone back on the road. And Blake…
Now that he was with Maci Bluff, would he move out or would she move in?
Trish and those babies that were due in a couple of months would push the house to capacity. Lucy had just begun to sleep through the night; he couldn’t imagine having two newborns crying nonstop.
If Trish moved in, Brett wasn’t sure that he could stay, regardless of whether she continued to contest her father’s will or not. If he lost the ranch, where else could he go? And what if he didn’t lose but had to find some way to work and live with the woman who’d tried to take it away from him?
Mulling over what he might do and because he’d had no idea where he was headed, he was surprised when a little less than an hour later he turned into the long driveway that led to Ranch Haven.
He’d just been there the day before, for his grandfather’s birthday party and he’d had no intention of returning so soon.
It was as if his truck had just driven him here, or maybe his subconscious.
Sadie March Haven, his new stepgrandmother, insisted that all the Lemmons had a home at the ranch. His younger brothers and sister certainly felt that way—they came and went without ringing the doorbell. They even called Sadie Grandma now, which she clearly loved.
But when he stood on the front porch minutes later, Brett couldn’t quite bring himself to turn that doorknob without ringing the bell first. And the word Grandma stuck in his throat when she opened the door to him.
Maybe he was still slightly in awe of this woman.
Sadie was a legend around Willow Creek, Wyoming.
She stood over six feet tall in her cowboy boots.
Her white hair was tied back in a long, thick braid.
And her hands, which were rumored to have fought off wolves, were as big as his, but now her knuckles were swollen with arthritis.
She’d worked hard and long her entire life.
And she’d endured so many losses. She was probably one of the strongest people he’d ever had the privilege of meeting.
That was why he was here: he needed to borrow some of that strength of hers.
“Brett, are you okay?” she asked, her voice husky with concern. She reached out to him, clasping his shoulders. While she pulled him into the house, she didn’t pull him into a hug as he’d watched her do with his sister and brothers.
Maybe that was just because she respected that he wasn’t a hugger, though.
He’d never been particularly affectionate with anyone, which was why he had usually been dumped whenever he’d dated.
He had to take his time to get to know a person and for a person to get to know him before he let anyone in.
His dad was like that: quiet, thoughtful, independent.
Frank Dempsey had been the same way as well.
Maybe that was why they’d become friends so quickly.
“Brett?” Sadie repeated his name as a question, and her grasp on his shoulders tightened a bit.
He released a breath and nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“You look exhausted.”
“I am,” he admitted. “She came back last night.”
“Trish?” Sadie asked.
He nodded again.
“Did she explain herself?”
“Not yet,” he said. “And I probably should have stuck around to hear her reasons but…” Emotion rushed up on him as he relived the past few months. Losing Frank and then the limbo of the will being contested. It had all been too much.
And now Sadie did what she’d done with his siblings, she pulled Brett into a hug.
He found himself winding his arms around her and holding on tightly, as if he hoped some of her strength would transfer to him.
Because as the oldest of his siblings, he’d always felt like he had to be the strong one.
The one who’d held it together when they’d been forced to move away from Willow Creek as kids and to the big city that he and his brothers had hated.
He’d been the one who’d held it together when their mom died. When their grandma died…
And when Frank Dempsey, Brett’s best friend and mentor, died, he’d held it together then, too. For so many years, Brett had forced himself to put his own feelings and fears aside so that he could assuage his siblings’ fears and feelings.
Now they all had someone who would do that for them. Liam had Elise, and Blake had Maci, and Livvy had Colton. And Brett was alone. More alone than he’d ever felt in his life despite living in a house full of people. And that was why he’d come here.
So he wouldn’t feel so alone.
* * *
Trish was a little older than Frankie and Maci, so she’d had her license first and had driven the route between the ranch and Maci’s house many times over the summers she’d come home.
She knew it well, and her lawyer had verified that Maci still lived there, that she still drove the same vehicle she had since high school, and that she also rented office space in Willow Creek.
So, to know all of that, he must have been spying on her, just as Maci had accused him of doing.
Trish needed to learn more about those accusations and the will.
Fortunately, since she’d woken up so early, she’d caught Maci at home instead of at her office.
She would have gone on to it if Maci’s little SUV wasn’t parked in the driveway and there wasn’t a light on inside.
Yet she hesitated to ring the bell or knock on the door.
Those summers long ago, she would have just walked right in, but she wasn’t the teenage girl she’d once been any more than Maci and Frankie were.
Even though Frankie had helped her change the sheets in the main bedroom suite at the ranch, she’d barely spoken to her.
Trish had felt strange being in her dad’s room now that he was gone, and she would have liked Frankie to stay with her, the way they used to when they were kids.
Trish had felt like a little girl again, afraid of whatever monsters might be lurking in the dark.
But Frankie had refused; maybe she believed that Trish was the monster. She hadn’t admitted it, though; she’d just said, “You’re tired. We’ll talk tomorrow. All of us, together.”