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“I don’t—”
“Oh, please come,” Sydney put in. “This will be my first one, too, so if you come I won’t feel like such an outsider.”
Leave it to Sydney to make it seem like Kaitlyn would be doing her a favor. She had the knack with people, and Ry admired it, and her. And again envied his brother more than a little for having found such a perfect match.
“I don’t drink,” Kaitlyn said flatly.
“No problem,” Mom said easily. “Slater—he runs the place—makes the most wickedly delicious peach lemonade.”
“And if you go,” Cody said, “we can use that to pressure Chance into going. Between that and Ariel pushing him, we’ll get him there.”
Ry stayed quiet, both to see what Kaitlyn would do and because he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t say something stupid. Her brow furrowed slightly, as if she were trying to remember something, but she seemed to push it aside as she leaned back in her chair and scanned the others. He saw the corners of her mouth twitch before she said, “Y’all are really something.”
“What we are,” his mother said cheerfully, “is a united front. Right, Rylan?”
She was looking at him a little too pointedly, as if she were very aware he hadn’t said a word. He wanted to shrug and say “Whatever,” noncommittally, but he could guess what that would get him. Then he realized—felt, maybe—Kaitlyn was looking at him. Waiting. As if it was his answer that mattered, that would decide whether she went or not. And he wasn’t sure how that made him feel.
That seemed to happen a lot with her.
“Sure,” he finally said. “You should come. It’s a good time.”And you haven’t had many of those, have you…
It wasn’t a question, even in his mind, because he already knew the answer.
She lowered her gaze for a moment, then looked back at his mother. “Thank you. I’d like that.”
Ry was still pondering what he’d let himself in for some time later, after they’d adjourned to the great room for another hour or so, when he realized Kaitlyn and Cody were deep into a conversation. It was apparently about photo software, using terms that left him thinking it couldn’t be more foreign to him than if they’d been planning a space excursion. When he found himself feeling a twinge of resentment at the sight of her and Cody with their heads together, alarm bells went off in his mind.
What the hell? What are you—jealous of your little brother?
He fought down the idea, but it put an edge in his voice when he finally said, “Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll drive you back to the inn.”
He felt awful the moment he saw her expression change from animated to polite. “Oh. Of course, it is getting late. I should go.”
Kaitlyn stood up quickly. His mother’s look at him could have sliced bread. But then, suddenly, her expression changed, as if something had occurred to her.
“I’m so glad you stayed,” she said to Kaitlyn.
“Thank you so much for having me. The food was wonderful, and the company more so.” She glanced at Ry. “I’ll get my things.”
“I’ll go get my truck.”
He was glad to escape his mother’s watchful gaze. For that matter, all of them were watching him a little too closely for comfort.
They were a couple of hours past full dark, and the truck’s headlights arrowed down the road as he headed toward Hickory Creek and the inn. It was also cold tonight, maybe headed for a freeze. He hoped they were prepped for that, but then he smiled to himself. Keller would never miss something like that. His brother was rock-solid, and the ranch was in his blood and bones.
No, he’d be the one who’d completely miss what needed to be done. Hoses would freeze and split, spigots develop leaks, stock go without water until he finally realized and broke through the ice on the water troughs, while he was lost in his head somewhere. Even Cody would do better, because one of his fascinations was the intricate weather monitoring system he’d set up. It was also one of his most frustrating projects, and once after a storm he’d been sure would skirt them had hit with a vengeance, he’d said glumly, “The thing I’ve learned about predicting the weather is that nobody can be always right predicting the weather.”
Remembering that storm, the towering clouds, the thunder, lightning, and pouring rain, he wondered yet again if there was a way to capture that in leather. He’d thought about it before but had never come up with a way to really capture the power and energy of a Texas thunderstorm. More depth maybe, but that would require a thicker material than could be comfortably worn. So it would have to be a saddle, a part that wouldn’t need a lot of flex. Or maybe a bag of some kind, a briefcase or maybe even a purse. Mom might like that. Or she was always looking for donations to sell for her various fundraising booths at the Christmas Market or the Bluebonnet Festival. He could—
A movement from the passenger seat snapped him out of his thoughts and off of autopilot. Kaitlyn was pulling her jacket closer around her, and he belatedly realized it was cold in the truck cab as well. He reached down and turned on the heater.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked.
She shrugged. He’d never met a woman who did that nearly as much as she did. “I thought it was off for a reason, like it didn’t work.”
“No,” he said dryly as he slowed going into a dip, “it was off because I was off, in never-never land as my mother says.”
She was quiet for a moment before she said, “And what beautiful thing will be born of that?”
