His Wicked Mouth

by Jessica Mills

  We had gone by the butcher to stock up on chicken and lean beef, then by the general store for some basic groceries. Our next stop was the bakery. Like usual, the display cases were overflowing with tempting offerings. Everything from simple dinner rolls to fresh fruit tarts.

  “While you’re browsing around here, I’m going to go grab some coffee,” Bridget said.

  “Okay, I’ll be here,” I said.

  I was leaned over slightly, looking through the case at the bread when the bakery assistant walked out.

  “Can I help you pick something out, Annabelle?” she asked.

  “Hey, Erin,” I said. “I’m just looking to grab a few things. Can you wrap me up some of your multigrain bread? And some flatbreads?”

  “Anything else?” Erin asked, reaching into the case with a pair of tongs to grab out the rich, dark bread.

  “A couple of Italian loaves,” I said.

  “Feeding a crowd today?” she asked.

  “No, I’m actually freezing my Italian loaves so I can make stuffing out of them for Thanksgiving. It’ll save me some time and you some hassle. I know you get busy around that time.”

  “Busier than a spider in roller skates,” she said.

  I gathered up all the bread from her and handed her cash, then turned away from the counter. I’d only taken one step when I nearly bumped into the woman behind me.

  I looked up from my bag and saw Addie Hayes. She glared at me, her emerald green eyes flashing with annoyance. That wasn’t unusual for her. I didn’t know if Addie Hayes had any other expressions other than fury and annoyance. Maybe indifference.

  I drew in a breath and forced a smile onto my face.

  “How are you doing this afternoon, Addie?” I asked.

  “Annabelle,” she said by way of greeting. Her eyes slid up and down me like she was evaluating every inch, then fell on the bags I was juggling. “You’re looking busy. I guess this means you’re still holding down the fort over at your place?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant by that, but it was said in a slimy way that felt almost leading.

  “I’m at home at the farm taking care of my father, yes,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I heard life sort of caught up with him. It certainly is a shame when things like that happen. Speaking of which, how about Sawyer Montgomery?”

  I gritted my teeth to stop myself from lashing out at her. “What about Sawyer?”

  “Well,” she said in a mock innocent tone and giving a slight shrug. “It’s just that I haven’t seen you pal around with him recently. Nothing happened between the two of you to ruin that lovely friendship of yours, did it?”

  “Sawyer and I are just fine,” I said.

  “That’s certainly good to hear. Wouldn’t want to think there had been a falling out or anything. He really has lost so much, don’t you think? But he is a Montgomery. I don’t know if I would blame you for trying to distance yourself. I hear he’s up to some sort of new business venture.”

  This was her way. Cold and antagonizing. She liked to talk in circles and change subjects fast and sharp. Confusing other people amused her and made it more likely she would get juicy bits of information she could then share with whomever she saw fit. I knew her too well to get caught up in it, though. And I knew far better than to share any information with her—about my father or Sawyer.

  There was nothing she needed to know about them, and giving her even the smallest of details could give them no benefit. So, I held that information close to my chest and stepped out of her path.

  “I’ve taken up enough of your time,” I said. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to put in your order. And I need to be getting back to the farm.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You do that. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to your father while you were gone. You don’t look like you could deal with any more stress.”

  Without answering, I pushed myself out of the bakery and back out onto the sidewalk. Bridget was just coming out of the coffee shop and saw me stop and draw in a deep breath.

  “Annabelle?” she asked, rushing over to me. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  “That damn Addie Hayes,” I said. “She came into the bakery when I was leaving. She sure knows how to get under my skin.”

  “What did she say to you?” Bridget asked.

  She looked like she was ready to deal with the only Hayes girl. That would be a bad idea for many reasons. Not the least of which being one of her older brothers was deputy sheriff.

  “She was just being obnoxious,” I said. “Nothing to get too worked up about. I just don’t understand how one person can be that unpleasant.”

  “One person?” Bridget asked. “Have you forgotten about the rest of the Hayes clan? Every single one of them is a miserable example of a human being. You know, my granny taught me there was a little bit of good in everybody. Even when they seemed terrible through and through, there was a little nugget of good.”

  “See?” I said. “Exactly.”

  “No,” Bridget said. “There are simply some people in this world who don’t even have that nugget.”

  I laughed and linked arms with her. “Maybe not. Which is why we should get away from here before she comes out of the bakery. I’m really not feeling like having another encounter with her today.”

  We finished up our errands and parted ways at the end of Main Street. I headed back to the farm and immediately went into the kitchen to start making dinner. Running those errands had taken me a little longer than I had anticipated, and there were things I needed to do out on the farm before the sun went all the way down.

  I got the first part of dinner cooking and rushed out to milk the cows and check on the chickens one more time. Carrying a basket with the eggs hidden by the sneaky girls, I went back inside and checked on the roasting carrots. I was slicing up chicken breast to put on the grill pan when my father came inside.

  “There you are,” I said. “What were you doing still out there?”

  “I got into a deep conversation with a horse,” he said.

  “That’s nice. Did he have anything good to say back?”

  “No, I did most of the talking,” he said. “I was worried about him because when I saw him, he had such a long face.”

  I shook my head at the terrible joke but laughed anyway.

  He walked over to the coffeemaker and made himself a cup. I wanted to say something about it, but I bit my tongue. He brought it with him over to the table and sat down with that kind of deep sigh that came from finally relaxing at the end of a long day of hard work.

  “So,” he said. “Are you finally going to get around to telling me about that trip of yours?”

  I had purposely given him only the barest details about the trip to Vegas. All week, he had been mining for more, but I didn’t want to worry or upset him. He was still old fashioned in many of his ways and would not be amused by some of the antics we had gotten ourselves into while we were there.

  Especially some particular antics involving a certain member of the Montgomery family.

  “There really isn’t a whole lot to tell,” I said. “We went out there and had a good time. It was fun and definitely different, but I’m glad to be home. This is where I belong. A little bit of an escape from reality every now and then is fine, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here for much longer than that.”

  “Well, that’s good to hear. But I still think you should find the time to do things like that with your friends more often. It’ll be good for you to socialize more. You’re young, and before you know it, you’ll be my age looking back and regretting how much time you spent taking care of your old man.”

  The tears that sprang to my eyes when he said that surprised me, and I wiped them away quickly before he could notice them. I stopped cooking and turned to him so that he could see me and know I was being sincere.

  “Daddy, I will never regret a second I spend with you. Ever. I mean it.”

&
nbsp; Chapter 15

  Garrett

  The drive from the airport went by much faster than I’d expected it to. I thought I was going to have more time to wrap my head around what I was doing and get ready for the awkwardness of seeing my brothers again. I wanted to have something prepared to say, some way of reintroducing myself into the family.

  But before I had a chance, we were suddenly turning down the long road onto the sixty miles of beautiful land that made up my family’s ranch. My chest tightened as we went under the big sign that crossed over the first part of the road. I still remembered when my father made that sign.

  I wasn’t much more than a little boy then. Mama was still alive, and it seemed like nothing in the world could be all that bad. There were storms and dark, cold winters. There was the occasional snake bite and cattle got sick. There was the Hayes family.

  But at the end of the day, there were warm suppers and warmer hugs. There was Mama sitting in the living room with a lap ready to cradle whatever boy got to it the fastest and arms that would stretch out to hold the rest. There was Daddy whittling out on the front porch or sitting in his chair reading a newspaper.

  She would rock and hum, smelling sweet like vanilla and cinnamon and a little bit like our father’s aftershave from where he nuzzled her neck. Nothing was too bad.

  And that was exactly the way Daddy looked at it when one of those storms raged through and broke down the sign that had been over the road leading into the ranch since he was young. My grandfather put it up to replace the one his father put up before him. The first sign welcoming passersby to Montgomery Ranch.

  I could still remember seeing the broken pieces of that sign lying on the dirt road and feeling so sad. A couple of tears welled up in my eyes and I choked them back. My father patted me on the back. He never told me not to cry. That was one thing he never did. Never once did he tell one of his sons not to feel. What he did, though, was give me one of his big smiles that always worked to calm me down.

  “Don’t you worry about this sign, son,” he said. “This isn’t a bad thing. This is a fresh start. Sometimes, things like this happen as a way of saying it’s time to start new. It is time to see what’s ahead rather than always thinking behind. Because no matter what, your past will always be there. It’s what you do moving ahead that really matters. That old sign is the past. We’ll always remember it. But now it’s time for something new.”

  For the first time in a very long time, I let myself miss him. I tried not to think about either one of my parents. It hurt too much to be without them. It hurt even more than that to think about what they would think of me now. Not that I was ever an angel. I doubted either one of them ever believed I was going to be the clean-cut, straight path in life type.

  But I also didn’t think they could ever have seen me stray quite this far.

  The cab pulled up in front of the house and I stepped out. The driver opened the trunk and I took my bags out, putting them at my feet so I could pay him. I thanked him and stood there while he drove away. When he was gone, I took a deep breath and looked at the house again. I stood there trying to remember just how long it had actually been since I was there.

  A year and a half? At the very least. Possibly quite a bit more.

  Holy hell.

  I looked at the lights burning toward the back of the house and wondered what I was going to find when I walked inside. Cassidy would be home. He was the official head of the family and did very little other than take care of the ranch. But I didn’t know about the others.

  Thinking back to what Annabelle told me about my brothers, I tried to use that information to decide who might be there at the house. Colt was still out on the rodeo circuit, so it was unlikely he would be there. Clayton and Jesse were probably both spending the evening with their women doing that domestic thing.

  It was still hard to imagine either one of them like that. Last I heard of Jesse, he was still off in the military and unlikely to ever venture back to Montana. Shannon was a sweet girl and had always been good to him, but he’d screwed her over, and it wouldn’t have surprised anyone if she had never been willing to look at his face again. Still, they were good for each other and I was happy to know he had figured his shit out and managed to fix things with her.

  Clayton was even more of a surprise. He was never the relationship type. I didn’t think the eight of us would all remain bachelors for life, but if I had to do the ranking of when I thought we would settle down, the one on the list right above me was Clayton. And that was if I included myself on the list at all.

  But like Jesse, I was happy for Clayton if he was happy. Especially when I heard about the little girl who came along with the woman. According to Annabelle, she was a sweetheart and absolutely adored Clayton. I didn’t get all the nitty-gritty details of what happened, but I got enough to know the woman had come from something rough. The little girl didn’t have another father in her life.

  She would be lucky if she grew up only remembering Clayton. He was a good man and would be a good father.

  So that was three of them accounted for, but in all honesty, there was no real way to know. The whole parking area in front of the main house was full of pickup trucks, and I had no idea which vehicle belonged to which brother. If I went with the concept of one brother to a truck, that meant there had to be three of them home.

  Now four.

  I was having a hard time building up the nerve to actually go inside. This was one of those moments in life where a single decision was going to change everything, but there was no telling yet exactly how that change was going to happen or what the change would be.

  I really had no idea how my brothers were going to react to me coming back, especially without letting them know I was coming. That was strategic on my part, but I could see how it would be an inconvenience to them.

  This was technically still just as much my home as it was any of theirs. According to our father’s will, we all owned it equally. None of us could just make the decision to exclude any of the others on a whim. So legally, this was still my place.

  Whether I had a place in that place was still up for debate.

  But I wasn’t going to get anywhere just standing around in front of the house staring at it. At some point, the sun was going to come up and they were going to come outside and find me. It would be better if I just went in. I worked up the nerve, picked up my bags, and climbed the steps onto the front porch. They creaked just like I remembered them.

  The door wasn’t locked. That wasn’t too surprising. It was never locked. There was no reason to lock it. Way out there on the ranch, nobody was getting to our house without us noticing. And even if they did, there was so little crime in Green Valley, it seemed more of a hassle to go through the effort of locking the doors just to have to unlock them when we got back to go inside.

  Stepping into the house, I quietly closed the door behind me and paused in the foyer. I took a deep breath. It still smelled like home. There I was. No turning back now. And the warmth that came over me as I stood there told me this was where I was supposed to be.

  Setting my bags down, I cupped my hands around my mouth to amplify my voice.

  “Hey, boys,” I shouted. “I’m home.”

  Cassidy’s was the first face I saw. It popped up in the arched entryway to the living room, his eyes wide.

  “Holy shit, Garrett?” he said.

  “Hey, brother,” I said. “Aren’t you going to come welcome me home?”

  There was a curious, even slightly suspicious look on his face as he came down the hall. We shook each other’s hands firmly, then pulled each other in for a tight hug.

  “And I thought I was doing well with only one brother somewhere out in the world,” he said. “Now everybody’s coming out of the woodwork. Is something going on? Somebody dying and didn’t tell me?”

  He stepped back and I looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”

  Before Cassidy could even say anything, I got t
he answer myself. Colt stepped into the hallway. My mouth fell open and I let out a shocked laugh.

  “Garrett?” Cole asked. “Are you seriously here?”

  “I think I am,” I said. “Are you? Last I heard, you were out doing the rodeo thing and hadn’t been home in forever.”

  “Apparently, my forever isn’t as long as yours,” Colt said. “The guys were telling me they hadn’t even heard from you in who knows how long.”

  “What’s going on out here?” a voice asked.

  Sawyer came down the steps and into the foyer. He stopped, his eyes widening. I stepped forward and pulled him into a hug. As my youngest brother, I’d always had a soft spot in my heart for him. And now, I was feeling a bit conflicted because of Annabelle.

  I wanted to hug him because he was my brother and I’d missed him. I also wanted to hug him because he’d brought Annabelle into my life.

  That was jumping ahead of myself so much it scared me. I forced the thought down and focused on my brothers.

  “This is crazy,” Sawyer said. “I can’t believe you’re standing here right now.”

  “I can’t either,” I said. “Aren’t you going to let me get farther into the house?”

  The three guys noticed they had created a semi-circle around me, blocking me from getting any farther. They all stepped back, each grabbing a piece of luggage to haul over to the foot of the steps so I could bring it up to my room later. That made me feel good. They didn’t even question if I was staying. To them, I was just home.

  We got into the living room and I didn’t get another second’s reprieve.

  “What are you doing back here after all this time?” Cassidy asked.

  “Did something happen?” Sawyer asked.

  “Did you do something?” Colt asked.