in dirt, and his left cheek was bleeding.
“I found him trying to sneak in through the side loggia. Look at him! God only knows what he’s been up to.” Evelyn tried to grab Sean’s shirt, but he ducked away. “Explain yourself, Sean!”
Nora winced at the tone, which was guaranteed to make Sean—or anyone—mulish. “Honey,” she said more gently. “What happened?”
He took one step toward his mother, as though his instinct was to run to her arms. But then he checked himself. His eyebrows drew together, and his jaw jutted out. “I didn’t do it. That guy is a liar.”
Harry had no scruples about racing over and burrowing his face into his mother’s stomach. “Sean’s bleeding, Mom. His face is bleeding.”
“I see that. But it doesn’t look too bad, really.” Nora kept her hand on Harry’s carroty curls, but she focused her gaze on her older son. She fought to keep her voice calm. “What guy, Sean?”
“Over at Two Wings. That son of a—”
Evelyn, whose weather-beaten face was every bit as grim as her nephew’s, raised her palm. “Sean Archer. We don’t use words like that.”
Nora felt a twinge of frustration. Bad language obviously wasn’t the real problem here. Two Wings, a newly constructed private bird sanctuary, was the property next door to Bull’s Eye Ranch. But in Texas terms, next door meant maybe a mile away. Could Sean possibly have been at Two Wings while she thought he was safely pouting in his room?
Without meeting Evelyn’s reproachful eyes, she bent down and spoke steadily to her son. “What guy at Two Wings? Do you mean Mr. Cathcart?”
“No.” He wiped at his cheek, his fist coming away streaked with dark red mud. Nora saw gratefully that the skin beneath was no longer bleeding—a fairly superficial scrape. “I mean Mr. Cathcart’s manager. He’s probably the one who was calling just now.”
Nora glanced down at the phone in her hand. It had given up its demands and gone silent, cycling over to voice mail.
Sean sniffed. “He thinks I killed a bird. But I didn’t.”
“Killed?” Evelyn’s voice roared. “For God’s sake, Sean, what did you—”
“I told you I didn’t,” Sean began hotly.
“Evelyn, please—”
“Mom,” Harry broke in, his voice rising as he absorbed the agitation around him. “Mom, is Sean okay? Does he have to go to the hospital?” The little boy’s voice trembled, and his arms tightened around her waist. “We don’t like the hospital.”
Her heart squeezed hard at the childish understatement, and all the pain that lay behind it. Little boys shouldn’t have the kinds of memories her sons had. They should barely know what hospitals were for.
“Of course not,” she said with authority. “It’s just a tiny scrape.”
Harry lifted his face, brightening, but Sean’s expression grew darker. His hazel eyes flashed, and his red eyebrows dug down toward the bridge of his nose. “I still want to go to the game.”
“You must be joking,” Evelyn snapped. “Do you think this kind of behavior will be rewarded by—”
“It’s not a reward!” Sean interrupted his aunt without thinking, but Nora cringed inside, well aware that the older woman had already been offended, and would now be doubly so. Every social faux pas the boys committed was proof, in Evelyn’s eyes, that Nora hadn’t taught them manners…or respect for their aunt.
“I hate baseball.” Sean turned to Nora. “But you said it was a commitment, remember? You said when people made commitments they had to follow through, and—”
“This is different.”
Nora knew what she’d said, but she also knew the rules about being consistent with your parenting message. Whoever invented those rules must never have been a parent.
“We need to get that cheek looked at. And then you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Most importantly, if you’ve been in some kind of trouble over at Two Wings, we need to talk to Mr. Cathcart.”
“We certainly do,” Evelyn agreed.
“No!” Sean wheeled on her, his hands fisted. “Not you! Why would you go?”
Oh, God, could this get any worse? Nora tossed her sister-in-law a smile, asking her to understand that Sean was afraid, and undoubtedly ashamed. He loved his aunt. He probably just didn’t want any extra witnesses to his disgrace.
But Evelyn didn’t understand. Nora could see by the narrowing of her eyes. She looked as if she’d been struck. Evelyn Archer Gellner was a tough Texas widow, pure steel from the inside out. But the boys, her only blood relations left in this world, were her Achilles’ heel. They could break her heart by simply twitching away from her kiss.
If only she could lose some of that barking bossiness, perhaps they could enjoy her more. But right now Evelyn’s wounded pride was not the focus.
“I want you to go upstairs with Milly,” Nora said quietly. “I want you to wash up and change into clean clothes. I’m going to call Mr. Cathcart.”
“He’s going to be mad. Because his manager is a liar, and—”
“Sean. Enough.”
Sean recognized his mother’s tone, and he took in a huge breath, preparing to throw a fit. But Milly, who had worked at the ranch since Nora’s late husband had been a little boy—and, thus, for the duration of their marriage—recognized the tone, too. This discussion was over. She swooped in and took Sean by the arm before he could get out the first furious syllable.
“Come on,” Milly said. Sean balked, digging in his heels, but Milly, who could see three hundred from her spot on the scales, just grinned. “You don’t want me to have to sling you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, now, do you? With your little brother looking on?”
At that threat, Harry mustered the courage to leave his spot in Nora’s embrace. He walked over to his big brother and took his hand.
“I know you didn’t kill anything, Sean,” he said. “Really. And Mom knows, too.”
Born to be a peacemaker, Nora thought with a rush of tenderness. And thank God they had one in the family these days. Evelyn looked like a thundercloud, and Sean’s scowl was almost as fierce.
But then Sean glanced toward Nora, and for a minute she thought she saw something else hiding behind the hostility. Something like…hope.
Hope that she believed in him.
In spite of the other sins, the tempers, the sneaking out, the running away and whatever had caused all that mud and blood, he wanted her to trust that he hadn’t done anything as terrible as destroy a living creature.
“Harry’s right,” she said, praying it was true. “I know you didn’t kill anything.” She ignored the intake of breath from Evelyn, who clearly thought she was, once again, being too soft.
Refusing to meet her sister-in-law’s outraged gaze, Nora watched as Milly and the boys climbed the winding staircase, Sean dragging his dirty hand along the iron railing. When they rounded the first curve, she called up the voice mail.
“Nora,” an elegant baritone said smoothly, “this is Logan Cathcart. My manager just said your son was at the sanctuary. He was— He’d been—” A short silence. “It’s nothing serious, but…I think we should talk.”
She shook her head, frustrated, and clicked the button. “He didn’t leave any details,” she said, for Evelyn’s benefit.
She began scrolling through the handset’s electronic address book. “I’d better call him and see what really happened. His message said it wasn’t serious, but of course he might be trying