Chapter Ten
His sleepless nights and long days working the ranch caught up with Brett a few days after Trish’s arrival, and for once he didn’t manage to wake up early enough to beat everyone else out of the house.
He liked being gone before anyone else was up and about, and he liked getting back after everyone else had gone to bed.
Then he didn’t have to talk to anyone. No. He didn’t have to talk to her. Or see her.
Except not talking to her, not seeing her, hadn’t stopped him from thinking about her, from wondering what she was up to.
But whenever he ran into his brothers out in the pastures or in the barn, or if they waited up for him like they had a couple of nights ago, he didn’t let himself ask about her.
He didn’t want to care, and he certainly didn’t want anyone else to think that he did.
He would not let Trish Dempsey get to him. He would focus on what mattered to him: the ranch, the cattle and his family.
He grimaced with guilt that his family came last. And they had since her arrival. He’d been avoiding them as much as he’d been avoiding her. Maybe he was a little annoyed with Blake and Liam for being so agreeable to working with her and so accepting of her plans for the ranch.
Had she started on them?
Remembering how she’d nearly fallen off the staircase in the bunkhouse, alarm flashed through him. What if she got hurt trying to fix things up the way she wanted?
He shouldn’t have been avoiding her. He should have been making sure that nothing happened to her.
Despite how little he’d seen of his daughter after she’d become an adult, Frank Dempsey had loved her with his whole heart.
Brett had kept the ranch running for Frank, but he needed to also make sure that nothing bad happened to his daughter and to his unborn grandchildren, too.
He also needed to thank her for securing the contract that he and Blake hadn’t been able to.
Sure, that had been her fault since she was the reason the estate hadn’t been settled sooner. But she’d secured that contract now. She hadn’t had to do that. But she had. She’d settled the will, too.
And he hadn’t thanked her for anything yet.
So when he awoke a couple hours later than he usually did, he searched the house for her. She’d left the door open to her dad’s suite, and it barely looked as if she’d touched it or brought anything into it. She wasn’t in it or anywhere else in the house. But her truck was in the driveway.
Worried that she might be in the bunkhouse, Brett rushed across the yard toward it. But as he passed the barn, he caught the soft lilt of a singing voice. It could have been Frankie’s, but Frankie’s van was gone. Nobody else drove that rattletrap, which meant she must have taken it somewhere.
So who was singing?
The voice drew him into the barn, and he understood that old myth about mermaids luring sailors to their death with their singing. He wouldn’t have been able to resist finding out who this was even though part of him already knew.
He blinked to adjust his eyes to the dim light in the barn. But he still couldn’t see her. She had to be where her cousin usually was, so he walked over to the stall where Cocoa was kept with the kittens. He leaned over the top of the stall door and peered inside the small area.
Trish sat on one of the bales of hay, and the calf leaned across her knees as Trish fed it. One of the kittens was in the crook of her free arm, and the other one was curled up beside her. She finished the lullaby she’d been singing and leaned down to kiss the top of the calf’s head.
“You are as good with animals as your cousin is,” Brett commented.
He must have startled her because she jumped, disturbing all the animals that had gathered on and around her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
She pressed her hand to her heart and breathed in deep. “I’m fine. And I’m actually only good with farm animals, not all animals. I have a scar from my mother’s dog to prove it.” She held up her hand.
He opened the stall door and stepped inside to get close enough to see whatever she was showing him. The scar was so small that he hadn’t noticed the fine white line on the side of her palm. “And you still want to open a petting zoo?”
She sighed wearily. “I just said that I have no problems with farm animals. That’s partly why I want to do the petting zoo, because the animals on the farm were always easier to take care of than pets like my mother’s aggressive dog.”
“What’s the other part of why you want the petting zoo?” he asked, as he’d been wondering why she was so set on opening one at the ranch.
“The summers I spent here were so magical,” she said. “I loved taking care of the animals and spending so much time outside in the fresh air.”
He understood that all too well; he’d missed so much when his family had moved away from Willow Creek.
“I want other kids to experience that magic,” she said, and she touched her belly. “Not just me or even my kids. But I shouldn’t have said anything because now you’re going to use this—” she held up her hand again “—as another reason that I shouldn’t proceed with the camps.”
“It’s not just my decision to make now,” he said. “And I thought I was already outvoted on it.”
“Is that why you’ve barely been around the past couple of days?” she asked, and then her face flushed a bright pink. “Not that I noticed or…”
“Cared?” he finished when she trailed off.
Her skin color deepened to rose. “Well, I thought you were probably pouting.”
He chuckled, then sighed himself. “I don’t know if I was pouting, but it did sting that my brothers couldn’t understand my concerns about the petting zoo and kids’ camps.”
“I expected them to side with their big brother,” she said. “That as the oldest, you’re the boss.”
He chuckled again. “I don’t want to boss anyone around,” he said.
“And I don’t need to with my brothers. They know what needs to get done around the ranch, and they don’t need supervision.
That’s why we all work so well together.
” And that was why he knew they would pick up his slack today.
They did that for each other without anyone having to ask or anyone complaining about extra work.
But he wanted to make sure that Blake and Liam didn’t work so much that it affected their relationships.
“I want to work well with everyone, too,” Trish said. “That’s why I haven’t started on my plans.”
“How will you and I work well together when we don’t want the same things for the ranch?” he asked.
The truth was, the ranch wasn’t the only thing they had differing opinions on.
They obviously didn’t want the same things for their lives, either.
Brett wanted the peace and quiet of spending his days on horseback, working the ranch; he wanted to focus solely on the Four Corners.
Trish wanted the chaos and noise that kids brought.
“We both want the Four Corners to be successful,” she pointed out.
He nodded. And then he remembered why he’d sought her out. “I owe you a thank-you,” he said.
She arched a dark eyebrow. “For what?”
“For reaching out to that purchaser and getting a contract with them,” he said. “Blake and I tried, but we couldn’t get him to agree to it.”
“Because of the dispute over ownership of the ranch,” she said. “That was my fault. I just tried to fix it.”
“You did fix it,” he said.
She smiled. “Does that bother you? Is that why you’ve been so scarce?”
He sighed. “It’s just a lot for me to process, Trish,” he admitted. “You didn’t come here just to explain yourself. You’re moving in.”
“I haven’t done that yet,” she said.
“Why not?” he asked. “I looked in your room. You haven’t touched any of your dad’s stuff.”
“I know that I need to,” she said. “But I haven’t quite been able to bring myself to start packing up his things, probably for the same reason you haven’t sat in his chair in the den,” she said, her voice cracking.
“It’s hard,” Brett acknowledged. “But I know that he would have wanted us all to move forward, and to put his things to good use at a shelter or something.”
She sniffled and nodded. “I know. There are so many things that could be useful to someone else. And that makes me feel selfish for keeping everything. But I guess getting rid of his stuff makes me feel like I’m losing him all over again, even though I know he’s already gone. ” A tear slipped down her cheek.
Brett found himself moving closer to her. He dropped down to his knees next to the calf and the bale of hay where Trish sat. Then, using the pad of his thumb, he wiped away her tear.
Her pale brown eyes widened, and her lips parted as if his touch surprised her. Or maybe it affected her like it affected him, making his skin tingle and his heart beat faster. And the sudden urge to lean closer, to press his mouth to hers overwhelmed him.
* * *
One minute Brett’s thumb was on her cheek, wiping away her tear. The next, he was stumbling backward in his frantic haste to get away from her. He tripped over one of the calf’s gangly legs and sprawled onto his back on the floor of the horse stall.
The kittens jumped up with their backs arched. One of them dropped down from the hay bale and pranced across the floor toward Brett, who had yet to move.
Had he felt what she had? That sudden rush of attraction? Or had he just noticed that she’d felt it, that for a brief moment she’d been tempted to kiss him? Maybe that was why he’d backed up so fast that he’d fallen—he’d been horrified that a heavily pregnant woman was about to kiss him.
The kitten pounced on him. And then the other one jumped down to join her littermate.
Trish tried to stifle a laugh that bubbled up, but it slipped out between her lips anyways.
“Mmm-hmm, very funny,” he muttered, but his lips were curved into a slight grin.
“What happened?” she asked.
He sat up, with the kittens in his lap, and shrugged. “Lost my balance.”