Suzy laughed. “I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go get you settled.”
The window shot back up. “Now, listen,” Dane said, “did my father tell you about the nice strong lock on the bedroom door before or after you told him I was here?”
She shrugged. “Before. He said he’d feel better knowing the girls and I were tightly locked up since we’re so far out in the country. Why?”
He thought about that, seeming satisfied after a moment. “Just checking.” The window shut again. Suzy looked at Cricket, who shrugged.
“Think you’ll last a year?” Cricket asked. “I’m not sure I could swim in all these undercurrents.”
“I’ll last,” Suzy said. “Swimming’s my only choice.”
“WHAT EXACTLY DOES A DEACON DO?” Dane asked Pete as they did chores in the barn.
“Depends,” Pete said, “marry you, bury you, discuss spiritual stuff with you and so forth. Why? Got a thing for Deacon Cricket?”
“No!” Dane slid a glance at his brother. “Do you?”
Pete sighed. “I would, if I was able. But since I’m not, I don’t torture myself. I’m looking for a peachy blonde.”
Since Suzy probably qualified as a “peachy blonde,” Dane didn’t want more information than that. “So, are you really hanging around here for a while?”
“Sure. What’s better than family?” Pete grinned. “As long as Pop’s not around, that is.”
“Jack planning on showing up?”
“Wouldn’t bet the farm on that ever happening.”
Dane moved some tack to the other end of the barn while he digested his thoughts. “Since you’re the only one who really knows how to find Jack, why don’t you tell him the old man isn’t here and he might as well pay a call on the rest of us slobs? We’ll get Gabriel and Laura out here, let everybody have a grand old time getting to know each other again. Not that I’m suggesting we go overboard to please Pop but, hell, I’m ready to see the king of the rodeo.”
“Nah,” Pete said, “don’t think it would work.”
“Why? Tell Jack to start the New Year off right with a little family, a little—”
“Dane, dude. It’s not going to happen.” Pete shook his head.
“I guess there’s a reason,” Dane said, and his brother nodded.
“Yeah. Jack’s sworn to never set foot on the Morgan ranch again.”
Dane whistled. “No million dollars for him.”
“Jack wouldn’t give a da—”
“Hey, fellows!” Suzy poked her head into the barn. Both men straightened, surprised. “Cricket and I and the girls are going to walk around town.”
“Sounds like a party,” Dane said, realizing he sounded smart-alecky but not meaning it that way. Why did everything he said around Suzy seem to come out stupid?
“It is a party. Toddlers, a deacon and a single mom. Wild girls.”
“Yeah, well,” Dane said, “Pete and I were never much for wild women.”
Everyone in the barn stood still, the fib seeming to take a shape of its own. “I suppose you have underwater land you’d like to sell me, too,” Suzy said, “but what I was really wondering was if you want to accompany us.”
“Sure,” Pete said, dropping what he’d been doing, which was pretty much nothing, in Dane’s opinion. He glanced at Dane. “Nothing pressing around here, right, brother?”
He wanted to go, but at what price to his conscience? Dane knew what his father was up to. Wasn’t it best if he and Suzy stayed well away from each other? She was an innocent party—she really seemed to have no idea what Pop had intended. She claimed Pop was totally innocent.
Dane knew better. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m not a going-out kind of guy.”
Pete thumped him on the back. “That’s cool. You stay in, and I’ll make sure the girls and dolls stay warm and cozy and safe. I haven’t seen Union Junction in a long time,” he told Suzy as he walked out of the barn with her. “I’m sure there’s tons of changes I need to catch up on while we give Cricket the grand tour.”
Alone in the barn, Dane grimaced. Pete was unusually friendly, and he couldn’t tell what was up with that. Was his brother flirting with the single mother or the deacon—and did he care? “I don’t care,” he muttered.
“Dane?” Suzy said, glancing in the barn again. “We’re going to get hot chocolate in town. Sure you don’t want to come along?”
What the hell. He did, and he was tired of acting like he didn’t. Hot chocolate was harmless, right? “As long as Pete’s paying,” he said, and went to join the party.
TWO HOURS LATER, DANE was pretty sure hot chocolate was going to be his undoing. Pete flirted outrageously with both women—he apparently saw no reason to acknowledge his brother—and Suzy and Cricket seemed to eat up the attention. Nor could Dane make any strides with the toddlers, Nicole and Sandra, because there was Pete, making suck-up points by helping them cool their hot cocoa, or carrying the girls on his shoulders so that they could better see into shop windows as the group walked down the main street of Union Junction.
Dane didn’t even know why he was out of sorts. Something suspiciously like jealousy ate at his insides, which felt uncomfortably like worms crawling around inside him, fat and cold and slithery.
He wanted to be mad at Pete, but he knew he was really mad at himself. Having gotten off on the wrong foot with Suzy in the very beginning, he didn’t appreciate further distance being made between them, and particularly by his older brother.
Competition had never been his downfall before. But he had to admit that his relationships with men were lacking in the trust area. He didn’t trust Pop, and he’d made the mistake of trusting his former partner, Kenny, and lost his shirt for that. Worst of all, Jack was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he needed a good example of how a man should act around a woman with two children, but to Dane’s mind, the chivalrous thing to do was to keep distance between them. They had no future because he was retiring young to Mexico where it was warm all year round, not like Union Junction. He was certain a bad example to follow was Pete’s, acting as if he was some kind of woman magnet, irresistible to the opposite sex.
What really dug at him was how much all four girls seemed to enjoy the attention. I’m sulking, he realized. An old habit of being the third son. No wonder I hate Texas. I really hate being third in a family of dysfunctional freaks.
Okay, that was harsh. The Morgans weren’t freaks; they just had more than their share of cautionary tales. So what? A man bucked up and took it.
He could take it. Couldn’t he?
And besides, it was all none of his business. Pete could do what he liked, and so could Suzy. He sighed to himself, deciding he was as much fun as a holey sock. Pete, with his older, hard-won maturity, would seem more impressive to a woman who craved some sort of adventure in her life.
Of course, if Suzy wanted adventure, then he was Mr. Adventure in the amazing flesh. “Before I went into law enforcement,” he said, “I thought I’d probably have to stay in the military forever to stay out of trouble.”
Suzy and Cricket paused in their walking to look at him. Pete frowned, not liking the limelight being off him all of a sudden.
“We were an indulgent group of boys,” Dane said. “I wanted to be just like Jack when I grew up. I couldn’t, so I did crazy stuff like canoeing through Mexico