Trav,” she said to her brother as she entered the room. “What has you home early?”
Travis was the one who was known for partying late, dating a new girl every week and living a little wilder than the rest of the Daltons. She adored her brother, but hoped he’d settle down one of these days. He was a good guy, and in Lindsay’s opinion, there were far too few of those in the world.
“My date canceled. She got the flu. Didn’t feel like heading to the Ace, and so here I am.” He crossed to the fridge and pulled open the door. “Plus I heard Mom made meat loaf for dinner.”
Lindsay laughed. “I knew it had to be something bigger than a date canceling.”
“Hey, I don’t get my favorite dinner often enough.” He gave her the lopsided grin that had charmed dozens of women over the years. “Want a meat loaf sandwich?”
“Nah, I’m good. I was just going to grab a glass of wine and head out to the back deck. It’s a nice night.” Hundreds of thoughts and worries jockeyed for space in her mind. She needed some fresh air, some open space. The soft nicker of the horses in the stable, the whisper of a breeze across her face. Not the confines of the kitchen.
Travis handed her the open bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator door. “Wine on a weeknight? Must have been a hell of a bad day.”
“It’s Friday night, so technically it’s the weekend.” She didn’t mention that she’d already had a couple of glasses at the Ace in the Hole. Nor did she admit Travis might be right.
“Yeah, right. You, little sister, are about as wild as a house cat lying in the sun.” He grinned, then started assembling his sandwich. A thick slice of meat loaf on top of some homemade white bread, then ketchup and a second slice. “Except when you were dating Jeremy back in college and thinking about running off to the big city.”
The two of them walked out to the back deck and sat in the Adirondack chairs that faced the wide expanse of the ranch. In the dark, it seemed like the Dalton land stretched forever. The sight was calming, reassuring. “I never thought about running off to the big city,” Lindsay said. “That was Jeremy’s idea.”
Her former fiancé had been smart and witty and driven. She’d met him in law school and liked him from the start. Then, as they neared graduation, he’d told her he had no intentions of living in Montana. He wanted to move to New York and practice law in a place that made him feel alive. For Lindsay, life was here, in the rich soil, the graceful mountains, the clean air. She never wanted to live anywhere else.
“You know, I still keep in touch with old Jer,” Travis said. He’d met her fiancé on a visit to see Lindsay, and they’d become fast friends. “He did move to New York. Doing pretty well up there and working in corporate law.”
Lindsay sat back against the chair and looked up at the stars dotting the night sky. “I’m glad for him. I really am.”
“And over him?”
She cast a curious glance in Travis’s direction. “Yeah. But why are you asking? You have that tone.”
“What tone?” He gave her an I’m innocent look, the one he’d perfected when he was a kid and always in trouble for breaking a vase or missing curfew. Their mother usually just laughed and let Travis off with an easy punishment.
“The one that says you want to convince me to do something crazy.” When she’d been younger, she’d gone along with Travis’s ideas—camping overnight by a stream, climbing a tree, catching frogs. But their paths had diverged as she grew up and went to college and Travis...
Well, he went on being Travis. Lovable but irresponsible.
“Last I heard, you almost did do something crazy,” her brother said. “A little bird—or in my case, a little blonde college coed I used to date—texted and told me you were dancing with a stranger at the Ace tonight. She was a tiny bit jealous, because, in her exact words, ‘I had that man first.’”
Lindsay blew her bangs out of her face. “These are the moments when I do wish I lived in a big city. Geesh, does everyone in Rust Creek Falls know how I spent my Friday night? And for your information, I wasn’t dancing with him. He asked, and I said no.”
Well, sort of said no. There’d been a moment there when she’d been swaying to the music. She’d been tempted, too tempted, to slip into Walker Jones’s arms and swing around that dance floor.
“You should have said yes.” Travis got to his feet and gathered up his empty plate. He paused at the door and turned back to face her. “You’re a great lawyer, sis. Smarter than half the people I know. But you don’t take enough risks, don’t get your hands dirty often enough. Life is about jumping in with both feet, not standing on the edge and dipping in a toe from time to time.”
Jumping in with both feet was foolhardy and risky, two things Lindsay normally shied away from. But for a moment on that dance floor tonight, she’d been both.
She sipped at the wine and watched the stars, so bright and steady in the sky, and told herself there was nothing wrong with being a calm house cat sitting in the sun. Because in the end, that house cat didn’t make foolish choices that brought her far too close to enemy lines.
Walker watched his brother polish off two plates of eggs and a pile of crispy bacon before he launched into a teetering pile of pancakes. Walker had stuck to a couple pieces of toast and some coffee, his usual breakfast choice. He’d never been much of a morning eater, but his brother Hudson—he could eat all day and still be hungry at bedtime.
The food and accommodations at Maverick Manor, where Walker had decided to stay last night, were outstanding. When he’d spent a night here a few months ago, he’d been surprised. He’d expected something more...primitive, given the size of Rust Creek Falls, but the two-story log cabin–style resort rivaled any five-star hotel Walker had stayed at before. Owned by a local, Nate Crawford, the resort showed the love Nate had for the place at every turn. It had wraparound porches, big windows in every room and expansive views of the beautiful Montana landscape. He’d almost felt like he was staying in a tree house when he woke up this morning—if a tree house was big enough to hold one of the comfiest king-size beds Walker had ever slept in. The rooms were filled with overstuffed, comfortable furniture, all decorated in natural hues of beige and brown, the perfect complement to the log walls.
There’d been a copy of The Rust Creek Falls Gazette, the local paper, outside his door, filled with the usual small-town stuff—birth announcements, cows for sale, missing pickup trucks. It was all hokey stuff, making him wonder if these people were either a town full of Pollyannas or simply immune to the real world, where the front-page story wasn’t about a prize mare giving birth to twin foals.
Either way, Walker wanted to leave Rust Creek Falls as quickly as possible. The whole place grated on his nerves. The sooner he got back to Tulsa and the day-to-day operations of his business, the better, which meant not delaying the reason for this meeting, even for pancakes.
“Let’s talk about the day care,” Walker said. He waved off the waitress’s offer of more coffee.
Hudson pushed his empty plate to the side, then wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Things are going great.”
“As in, you’re there every day and are verifying that with your own eyes?”
Hudson shrugged, avoided Walker’s gaze. “Well, yeah, more or less.”
Walker’s shoulders tensed. He’d trusted his brother—and had thought it was a mistake from the start. But his father had said it would be a good idea to give Hudson a piece of the family business. Get him more involved, more invested, before their father stepped down entirely. This past year, his father had put Walker in the CEO position, while his dad took on the role of Chairman of the Board. The elder Jones continued to leave