“You missin’ your life back East?” Dallas asked him. This was about as personal as she had ever gotten with him.
“I do,” he admitted to her.
He hadn’t wanted to pressure her to go through her father’s stockpile of possessions on a timer—this was part of her grieving process and he was trying his best to be respectful. He saw his friends having a good time on social media, he thought of all the work waiting for him at his new gig at his father’s law firm and it made him miss life in Chicago. He missed fine dining and yachting and a comfortable bed. He missed his new Jaguar.
“Yeah.” Dallas had one arm resting on the open window, her left leg bent so her boot was resting on the driver’s seat. “I miss my life.”
He’d already known that about her, so this admission was just confirmation. She had this restlessness about her. There was always a distance in her eyes, as if only half of her was really with him in Montana. There wasn’t a boyfriend out there pulling her away—it was her life. It was the road. It was the competition.
“Do you have a place you call home?” Nick tightened his grip as they flew over a couple of bumps in the road. “Other than here, I mean.”
Dallas gunned the gas, steering the loud Bronco onto the paved highway. “Not really.”
Okay. Let me rephrase that question. “Do you have a place in mind to land once you stop barrel racing?”
Dallas laughed and glanced at him like he had asked a very odd question. “I ain’t never gonna quit barrel racing.”
The next question he asked came out of nowhere for him, and afterward he was left wondering what had possessed him to even bring the subject up. “Do you want to get married? Have kids?”
“I haven’t really spent too much time givin’ it much thought.”
The conversation stopped abruptly with that last question, and Nick discovered just how easy it was to step on a land mine with this woman. Most women weren’t offended by the question of marriage and children even if they planned on building their career instead of building a family. Not so with Dallas Dalton. His asking her about her future status as wife and mother had seemed to touch a raw nerve.
“That’s Clint’s truck right there.” Dallas nodded toward one of the trucks parked near the main house at Bent Tree.
Damn.
If Clint was at Bent Tree, there was a good chance his older sister, Taylor, was with him. He loved his sister—they’d always been close. But they were on opposing sides of the Lightning Rock issue and he didn’t want to get into yet another battle of words with Taylor. He had stopped by his sister’s house in Helena when he first arrived in Montana to meet his niece and catch up, but the minute the conversation had turned to Lightning Rock, they had gotten into an argument. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d argued with Taylor.
“And that’s Brock’s truck right there.” Dallas shifted into Park and shut off the engine. “It looks to me like you’re in for a bit of a family reunion.”
Nick nodded in response.
Both of his sisters, one older and one younger, had married Montana men and settled within one day’s driving distance to Bent Tree Ranch. He had opted to not stay at Bent Tree to avoid conflict with Hank and he had begged off staying with Taylor or his younger sister, Casey, for the same reason. He’d been in Montana for the first time in years, and he’d spent most of his time there avoiding his own family. Maybe it was time to stop avoiding and start facing them. Maybe it was long past time.
His sisters greeted him in the only way they ever had: with open arms. Yes, they disagreed about how to handle Lightning Rock, but that couldn’t stop them from greeting each other with love. They had grown up in a home that was almost the exact opposite of the warm, welcoming feel of the farmhouse at Bent Tree Ranch.
Their house in the wealthy area of Hyde Park was a mansion; his mother insisted on keeping a full staff around the clock. Aunt Barbara, who had grown up in Chicago and run in the same social circles as his mother, prided herself on her cooking. His mother prided herself on having the ability to hire a personal chef. Hank and his father, Angus, were the closest brothers in age, but they couldn’t be further apart in temperament. Angus was austere and withdrawn from the family; the more his marriage to Vivian fractured, the more time he spent at the office. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he saw his parents show real affection toward each other. There was always tension crackling in the air when they were together—Nick often wished that they would just get a divorce already. So, very early on in their lives, it had been Taylor, Nick and Casey against the world.
“Nick.” His sister Taylor used one arm to hug him while she held her daughter, Penelope, with her other arm. “I didn’t know you would be here today.”
“We’re just in for supplies.” Nick tweaked his little niece on the nose while his eyes shifted from one person to another until they landed on his uncle seated at the head of the long table in the center of the kitchen.
Taylor switched with their little sister, Casey, who stepped into his arms and hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time even though they had seen each other when he first arrived in Montana.
“How are you feeling?” Nick asked his redheaded sister.
“I’m okay.” Casey smiled up at him. There was something in that smile that he didn’t believe. Casey had been diagnosed with uterine cancer and had undergone a partial hysterectomy. His younger sister had never made it a secret that she wanted to bear her own children; the cancer had taken that away from her and the family was watching her closely to see how she would handle it long-term.
One by one he made contact with everyone in the room. He had his hand clasped with the hand of his cousin Luke, a retired marine, when he saw Dallas come in to the kitchen. She walked directly to Clint, her best friend and Taylor’s bull-riding husband; the cowgirl hugged Clint and her eyes were full of trust and happiness when she looked at the bull rider. Nick felt a twinge of jealousy at the closeness between Clint and Dallas—it made him wonder how Taylor, who was looking at Dallas a little warily, could handle her husband having a woman as a best friend.
Aunt Barbara interrupted his train of thought. “This couldn’t have worked out any better if I planned it myself. Why don’t the two of you go get yourselves washed up? We were just about to sit down to eat.”
It felt a little bit as if the universe had conspired against him, but he was happy to see his sisters and his aunt’s kitchen smelled amazing. There was no sense passing up the delicious-smelling pot roast in the oven. He couldn’t cook worth a damn and neither could Dallas.
“Go on.” Aunt Barb tried to herd him toward the foyer so he’d hook a sharp left and wash his hands in the downstairs bathroom.
“Let me just say hello to Uncle Hank first.”
A look of concern brushed over his aunt’s face, but she let him do things his way. His way was to talk to his uncle without ruining his aunt’s lovely dinner.
“Good to see you, Uncle Hank.” Nick held out his hand to him.
Hank Brand, a man who closely resembled his own father, half stood up, shook his hand firm and brief and then sat back down.
“Go wash up like your aunt wants,” his uncle said. “We’ll have time to hash over things later.”
Aunt Barb must’ve been working on her husband night and day—this was a huge change in his uncle’s position. The fact that his uncle was even willing to sit down and discuss the future of Lightning Rock was better than he’d been willing to do for over a decade.
“Thank you, Uncle Hank.” Nick gave him a nod. “I look forward to it.”
That