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“Yes,” Britt agreed between sips. “And Maggie seemed to enjoy it.”
Her mother smiled. “She’s an amazing woman.” Her tone shifted just slightly as she added, “Those Rafferty boys certainly clean up nicely.”
And that easily the image that had caused her restless night was back. Not cowboy strong Keller, or Chance with his ramrod straight, chiseled features, or even Ry, notorious among the women of Last Stand for his wild good looks. No, what haunted her was her lifelong nemesis, who had absolutely no right to look as good as he had last night. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen him dressed up before, she had at various functions, and even the Christmas ball. But somehow last night seemed…different. As if she’d never seen him, really seen him before.
Maybe it was the way he’d avoided her. Or the way she’d caught him glancing at her even as he did so. He usually just ignored her, as she did him, whenever they were required to be in the same place at the same time and other people were around. By tacit consent neither of them wanted to prod the all too efficient Last Stand grapevine by giving it something juicy to feed on.
But last night he’d been hard to ignore. The contrast of that incredibly well-fitting black suit with his blond looks was beyond striking. She was honest enough to admit that. She was even willing to admit that half the reason it looked so good was the body underneath it. After all, she’d seen him half-dressed twice lately.
And she’d had crazy dreams after those encounters, too.
“Britt?”
“What?” She refocused abruptly. “Oh. Yes, they do clean up nice.”
“The bane of your existence looked especially nice.”
“Mmm.” She was not going to get lured into that discussion.
“I loved his suit. And I asked him how he got his string tie tied so perfectly. He said it was mostly a geometry problem.”
“Well, that figures,” she muttered.
Her mother laughed. “I swear, you two are enough to make me believe in predestination. You came into the world at practically the same moment, in the same hospital. The minute you saw each other in the hospital lobby, the squabble started. And you haven’t been able to stand each other ever since.”
Britt nearly gaped at her mother. Her parents had always told her she hated Cody at first sight, but she’d never realized they’d meant it literally.
“We met as babies in the hospital?”
Her mother’s brow furrowed. “Of course. You know that. We’ve talked about it often enough, how Maggie and I both left the hospital at the same time.”
“But you never told me it started right there in the lobby, before we even came home.”
Her mother studied her for a silent moment, long enough to make Britt a little nervous. Then she said quietly, “I have. At least twice I specifically remember, when you were a child. But you have a habit of ignoring anything having to do with Cody. Obviously that started early, too.”
Britt thought, searched her memory, and came up empty. “Apparently I didn’t just ignore it, I erased it,” she said with a grimace directed at herself. She didn’t like the idea that her mother had told her this story of her birth more than once and she couldn’t find a trace of it in her brain. It had been bad enough when her father had told her they purposely never mentioned him. This was worse.
And as her mother left her to ponder that—reminding her that mug had best be clean when it came back—Britt couldn’t help wondering what else she’d scrubbed out of her memory.
Chapter Eleven
Considering he’d had two nights of very little sleep, it went fairly well.
Which today only means I didn’t crash.
Cody yawned, widely, then shook his head. Or rather, snapped it side to side to try and shake off the lingering tiredness. It worked for a few minutes.
“Up to you, Trey,” he muttered to the horse. “Get us home.”
The big bay snorted and shook his head almost as sharply as Cody had. But he clearly knew what the word home meant, because he turned that way. Cody concentrated on hanging on to the expensive device he was holding. The drone was only about seven pounds on its own, but the camera, gimbal, and other gear made the case it was now back in fairly heavy, and too big to fit into a saddlebag.
It would have been easier to do this if he could have driven, but the last half of the trek was impassable by vehicle unless he wanted to mow down exactly what he’d be trying to capture on video when those bluebonnets finally showed up.
He could have chosen an easier route for the drone, but he had it set in his mind what he wanted, especially the ending. He wanted it to make that last turn around the stone outcropping, where it would go from a long trail of the vivid blooms to a vast, impossible explosion of them in every direction, as far as the eye—and camera—could see. The trick would be timing, to catch the sunrise at the exact moment when the blue of the flowers was almost exactly the same color as the gradually lightening sky. He’d come out and time that a day ahead. Then he would keep recording until the sun cleared the horizon or he ran out of flowers—like that would happen in the Hill Country in bluebonnet season—or battery.
He grimaced at the thought as Trey picked his way down the slope, occasionally sending a pebble rolling. That had been the holy grail for him for so long, to come up with a longer flight time, allowing longer distances on battery. Silent running, as it were. Some called it his obsession. Maybe it had been. But he’d turned a corner after that con in Dallas, when Gwen had wisely said to him that he needed to give up on the possibility it would happen tomorrow. That it should be a life goal, not a next week goal.
Or if he wouldn’t listen to her, she’d added with an impish grin, he should listen to Bruce Lee—they had just seen a tribute to the martial arts star at the con—who’d once said a goal wasn’t always meant to be reached, that it often served simply as something to aim at.
