thanks.” God, shouldn’t he feel at ease with his own little brother? Shouldn’t there have been memories or some kind of emotional pull to ground him? All Matt knew was that Rick flew planes and generally holed himself up in a cabin just off Lacey’s wooded property.
There was nothing else Matt knew about his own flesh and blood.
Rick cocked an eyebrow in the star-palled light. Not for the first time, Matt noticed that his brother’s hair was the same deep chocolate shade, though Rick wore it a bit longer, scruffier.
The siblings watched the night together, and Matt was positive that they didn’t have a damned thing to say. Rick hadn’t uttered more than ten words tonight, hadn’t even shown much emotion when he welcomed his big brother home.
And then there was his stepsister, Lacey. After jumping into his arms and hugging him near to death, she’d come right out and told him not to worry, that she wasn’t as crazy as Kane’s Crossing made her out to be.
But who was worried?
Rick blew a plume of smoke in the air. The scent of brandy and shaded alley corners overcame Matt, making him think of laced grillwork, neon-lit bar signs shining over midnight streets. New Orleans, the place of his rebirth.
Rick said, “Dad would’ve questioned you up and down about this amnesia, thought you had some angle.”
Was he accusing him of something? Matt turned to him, his dander up. “Let me guess. We don’t have a very good relationship, do we?”
A grim smile flickered over his brother’s lips. “Not after the way you’ve treated your family the past couple of years. And I don’t give much credence to this tragic amnesia story, either.”
Before either of them could fire another verbal shot, the roar of a souped-up engine cut the air, followed by jubilant shouts and horn blasts. Both Matt and Rick turned to the commotion.
A cherry-red Camaro zoomed up their drive. A man dangled out of the passenger-door window, waving a ball cap.
“Mattie!”
Rick asked, “You still have questions about your past, Matt?”
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the approaching spectacle. “What the hell do you think?”
Rick chuckled and started sauntering away. He said, over his shoulder, “You’re about to get some answers.”
And without even a good-night, Rick left.
Matt started to wonder if he should’ve just stayed in Texas, training horses under his adopted “Matt Jones” name.
As the sports car squealed to a stop outside his home, three bodies tumbled out.
“Mattie!” they all cried in chorus.
He knew he’d regret this, but he approached the car anyway.
Two burly men, attired in tobacco-stained T-shirts, grimy jeans and tractor-logo ball caps flanked a person whom Matt first thought was a young boy. Upon closer inspection, he saw that the third party was actually a tiny woman dressed in tomboy clothing.
“Yee-haw!” cried the female, as she launched herself on Matt. Whiskey fumes washed over his senses as she wrapped her legs around him, smacking a kiss on his cheek.
The other males hefted some liquor bottles out of the car. One said, “We heard ya come back, Mattie! See, I told ya, Sonny, all them rumors are true.”
Without missing a beat, the bigger man—Sonny?—stumbled from the driver’s side of the car to Matt.
“Aw, lookie here, Junior. Mattie finally decided to throw away them hoity-toity business scrubs. Is your neck red, partner?” He slapped Matt on the back, almost knocking him over with the weight of the wild girl hanging all over him.
Matt tried to laugh off this ridiculous situation. Surely the old Matthew didn’t spend time with these people. “Listen, you all. I’m not sure—”
“Duh, Mattie,” said the girl who’d, by now, jumped off of him and grabbed the liquor bottle from Sonny. “It’s us. Remember?”
They must have seen the fill-in-the-blank of his gaze.
Laughter echoed through the night. Sonny knocked on Matt’s head. “Hello in there? Can you believe this, you all? He’s ignoring us!”
Matt’s hackles rose. This was a nightmare. Or a joke. Yeah, that’s it. Rachel had sicced these clowns on him in payment for over two years of her own personal hell.
“All right, you’re the Kane’s Crossing welcoming committee.” He stopped there, noting the trio’s miffed expressions.
The girl hung on his arm. “Come on, Mattie. Now that I’m back from Tennessee, we’re here to catch you up on all those drinking days you’ve lost. Farmer Fred’s got a bonfire going tonight. And there’s a keg there.”
“And college girls,” said Junior.
A swift kick from the girl clamped Junior’s mouth shut. Both Sonny and she muttered, “Damn, Junior.”
Matt was starting to get a really bad feeling about this. “Maybe I need to explain something to you all.”
Rachel’s voice interrupted him. “Junior, Sonny, Mitzi? I thought we’d come to an agreement about this before.”
Matt watched his wife emerge from the house. Watched the way her summer dress flowed around her slim body, clinging to the curves of her waist and breasts. As she patiently waited for Junior and Sonny to remove their caps and lower their heads, something primal and unexplainable shot to life in his soul. Something he’d been missing for years.
Mitzi wasn’t having any of this respect stuff. “Aw, come on. If Mattie stays home, you’ll make him boring. Just like you.”
Matt thought boring sounded like a great idea.
Rachel merely sighed, and Matt caught on to her game. A sheriff’s Bronco had stealthily pulled up their driveway, sirens and lights off. As a law enforcement officer stepped on to the pavement, the party crashers tried to hide their liquor.
The towering, football-shouldered sheriff came to stand behind Junior and Sonny. His gaze took in Matt before settling on Rachel. “Evening, Rachel.”
“Hi, Sam. Back from your honeymoon, I take it?”
Sam. Sam Reno.
Matt’s anger at himself burned. Why did he know this name, this insignificant detail?
Rachel still seemed calm, but she was bunching her dress with a fist. She added, “We seem to have a problem here.”
Sam glanced at Matt again, and he could feel himself bristling. Was he—the husband—the reason for Rachel’s agitation?
“No, wrong problem,” said Rachel. “Remember Matthew?”
Matt kept his gaze on her, feeling Sam’s stare, wondering how close Rachel had gotten to this man in Matthew’s absence. Jealousy filtered through him, making him stiff with anger.
Then he locked gazes with Sam, who nodded slowly in his direction. There was a total lack of respect written on his face. In a sense, Matt couldn’t blame him. If his life turned out to be half as awful as what he suspected, Rachel had every right to hate him.
The tension abated slightly when Sam addressed Sonny, Junior and Mitzi. “I saw the car weaving down the road. You’re all stinking drunk. I can smell you from the nearest dry county.”
Mitzi grinned. “We’re welcoming home our Mattie.”
A bottle crashed to the pavement, and whiskey pooled around Junior’s feet. “Why, look at that,” he said, worming a finger under his hat to scratch his head.
Sam narrowed his eyes as Sonny slapped Junior upside the head. “Junior Crabbe, Sonny Jenks and Mitzi Antle—”