by Debra Holt
Turning into the ranch yard, she noted an unfamiliar sports car parked next to Chance’s truck. The sleek, silver car was expensive looking. Josie glanced down at her serviceable blue jeans and boots, her usual blue parka over a navy turtleneck sweater. Whoever the guest was, her appearance would simply have to do. She had taken three steps toward the house when a voice came from the barn doorway behind her.
“Hi, doll. Long time no see.”
Josie whirled around, and her eyes flew wide. Without thought, she headed straight toward the pair of outstretched male arms. She felt herself lifted off the ground and swung around in a bear hug. “Dev! What are you doing here?”
“I missed you, angel. I had to come see my best girl. You’re still my girl, right?” He grinned at her, and that megawatt intensity was still evident. He finally allowed her feet to touch the ground but did not let her out of his arms. At that moment, Josie became aware of Chance and Tom, standing across the corral watching them.
Chance’s face was half masked by the brim of his Stetson, but the part she could see was set in a stone mask, a frown on his mouth as he tightened the cinch of his horse’s saddle. Josie was aware their conversation had to be heard by the two men, or at least parts of it, yet they made no indication they had heard anything. Neither did they make any move to be in a hurry to leave the corral.
“Oh my,” Dev’s voice fell to a theatrical whisper. “Big brother is watching. Just like old times.”
For some inexplicable reason, Josie felt embarrassed and stepped back as much as she could while he still held her. She latched onto the first thing that came to mind.
“Your wife might have something to say about your having a best girl, don’t you think?”
“My wife…to be.” Dev’s face lost its smile as he hastened to clarify. “Yes, well, let’s just say it wasn’t meant to be for her and me.”
“I see.” Josie did see, with quick clarity. The trustees had evidently done their work, just as Chance had mentioned they had threatened. “Surely, if you really loved her, you could find a way to make it work, to get her back.”
“Dear little Josie,” he said, the smile returning. “You really are a Pollyanna at times. You’re too sweet to be real. That’s why I adore you. There’s not a predatory bone in your body.”
She hadn’t noticed before how easily the charm could come and go with him. A red flag surfaced for the first time. Or maybe she just noticed it for the first time. She looked for the sincerity level in the signature Braxton blue eyes. And realized it didn’t quite seem so genuine. She stepped back further and, this time, his arms didn’t hold on to her.
“Was it your trustees? Surely, if you love her, you’ll want to be with her no matter what.”
“The trustees are a group of old grouches who act as if the money is really theirs. I deserve the money, Josie. It’s my right. Wives come and go. Anyway, enough of that subject. Let’s talk about you and me.”
Josie knew the smile on her face was forced. Had Dev always been so callous and cold sounding? Where was the boy she knew? The one she thought walked on water? Would he ever appear again? A strange sadness filtered into her thoughts. Changes were happening throughout her life and to all the people around her. Or, another sobering thought took hold…was she finally catching up with changes in herself while the others were just being their usual selves?
“Are you moving back to the ranch?” she ventured, trying to find her footing.
“Oh, good heavens! No way! Punching cattle all day long is Chance’s thing, not mine. There are so many wonderful places to be other than here. I could show you the world, Josie. You’d love the beaches in California. Vegas is unbelievable. It’s a city that truly never sleeps.”
“So I hear. However, I guess I’m just a stay-at-home kind of girl.”
“You and Chance are too much alike. What you two see in all this barren land and emptiness,” he said, as his eyes moved over the space around him, before falling back on her, “is just beyond me.”
“It’s in our blood.”
“Well, I must have had a blood transfusion when I was born, because, thankfully, it isn’t in mine.” Dev seemed quite adamant about that statement.
“How long are you going to be here this time?”
“As long as it takes me to talk Chance into agreeing to help modify the terms of the trust. It seems he was given the power to do that, only no one bothered to tell me, until a very nice young lady in the trust department shared that item with me.”
“Nice, as in you sweet-talked her into telling you.” Josie’s words may have sounded like a joke, but she wasn’t joking at all. Dev didn’t seem to notice.
“You’re wising up some, little one. That might have its advantages. Come play with me.”
“I can’t,” she responded, taking another step away from him as he sought to catch her up in his arms again. “Please don’t call me ‘little one’ either.”
He gave a bit of a frown. “Why can’t I call you that? You never minded whenever Chance called you that, as I recall.”
Josie didn’t care for the way he seemed to be studying her a bit too closely. “That was when I was in school. Which was more than a few years ago. I’ve grown up and out of that name,” Josie replied. “I have to check on the stock tanks.”
“Well, I think I need to go along and keep you company. We can catch up on everything.”
Was he serious? What about Chance? A quick look and she could see that there was a neutral expression on his face, and he didn’t seem the least bit concerned. It was her decision. That’s how she wanted it right? She would do what she pleased on her land.
“You still know how to ride a horse?” That remark came from Chance, who was looking at his brother.
“I think I can manage. It’s like riding a bike, isn’t it?”
“Take one of these horses, then. Tom and I have an errand in town. That will save Josie time from having to get a mount ready for you.” He didn’t wait for a reply nor say anything to Josie. A fact that irritated her for whatever reason. But she kept a smile on her face, and she and Dev were soon on their way.
*
Dev had been a good sport and talkative companion up until they finished the first inspection. Or, rather, he had sat and talked while she inspected. Halfway to the second tank, he had grown a bit quieter, moving to fidget in the saddle.
“Saddle getting a bit uncomfortable?” Josie ventured as they rode side by side across the flat prairie. In the distance, a tall windmill marked the site of the next tank. The afternoon was partly sunny, but the steady breeze made the chill linger through the day. Josie noted her companion’s shiny leather boots, not western, but made for strolling down big city sidewalks and not across grasslands.
Dev’s jeans were definitely the high-priced variety and the brown suede and leather jacket he wore was better suited to a leisurely shopping trip in New York. The scarf around his neck wasn’t woolen but material which looked a lot like silk. He could be a model for GQ, not Horseman’s Digest. Yet, he had offered to come along on the ride with her. She could give him credit for that. Of course, he might have done it just to irritate his brother? That thought rattled around in her mind.
“There should be ranch hands out here doing this sort of work. You shouldn’t have to be out in this ridiculous cold doing menial labor like this. I’m going to have to talk to Chance about that, also. I heard about his being executor of your mom’s estate and all, and he’s sticking his nose into your place a lot more lately I hear. That doesn’t give him any right to be a slave driver.”
“Where did you hear all that?” And what about the engagement part? He hadn’t mentioned that, but, then again, neither had she.
“I stopped in at the Tanner Mercantile before coming out here. You can hear all the latest news in that place in the first five minutes. Some things never change about small towns.”
“Well, Chance doesn’t supervise me,” she replied quickly. “He isn’t a slave
driver either. Chance does his thing, and I do mine. So far, we’ve managed to coexist without killing each other.”
“I’m surprised. If I had to be around my big brother for very long, I think I’d go crazy. He has no idea how to have fun, always so serious, with his nose to the grindstone, especially when we were growing up.”
“Maybe he had to be that way. Your father put a lot of responsibility on him.” Josie didn’t say her next thoughts out loud. Maybe because he couldn’t depend on you. It sobered her even more how quickly those words popped into her brain. It wasn’t all that long ago she would have fought anyone who raised a disparaging thought about Dev in her presence. The blinders really had come off…since when?
Josie road on for a few long moments in silence. Her brain was on its own course at the moment. Comparisons of the two brothers stepped to the forefront. At one time, Dev’s movie-star looks had been a real plus where she was concerned. They outshone any other male in Braxton. All along, Chance had been the steadfast, working cowboy…dirt on his boots, sweat-stained hat crown, a real tan baked by hours upon hours of being outside working from dawn to after dusk.
The brilliant blue eyes of the Braxton clan was the one common trait the brothers seemed to have. Dev’s seemed to stay in a perpetual sky blue mode, sparked by some joke or witty sarcasm. Chance’s were different. They could have moments of the sky blue color but more often than not, they darkened to a brilliant sapphire color that a person might drown in the depths like the inviting cool depths of a lake in summer. Why had she not noticed such differences in the two brothers until that moment? Dev’s response brought her back to the present moment.
“True. Chance never could do any wrong in our father’s eyes. He certainly never had a trust placed over his money,” Dev muttered. “Hey, forget what I said. I forgot how much you idolize my big brother.”
Josie drew her horse up short. “Excuse me? I idolize him? Where do you get that idea?”
Dev halted his animal at the same time. He cocked his head and threw her a knowing look. “Ever since we were kids, you were his shadow. You hung on his every word. I have to admit, I was jealous of you two. Always talking so no one else could hear you and sharing those private secrets. You watched him with those huge doe eyes that never saw him do any wrong.”
Josie didn’t know how to respond. Was that how it had seemed to others? Of course she followed him, and they spoke in whispers. She often sought Chance out to talk about his brother or cry on his shoulder when her feeble attempts to gain Dev’s attention fell short and off he went with one of his ever-present, ever-perfect girlfriends.
“It wasn’t like that at all. Most of the time, we talked about you.” Why had she said that? Oh well, what did it matter anyway? Those times were gone and things had changed.
Dev certainly perked up at that bit of news. “Me? You talked about me? Don’t stop now. You’ve got to tell me about that.”
Josie decided the best way to handle things was to use the truth. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know I had the world’s biggest crush on you when we were kids. However, you didn’t know I existed. Chance took pity on me.”
“Well, I might have heard tell a time or two that you had a little bit of crush. I was an idiot not to have paid more attention, given how you’ve grown up.” The words came along with a look that slid over her and made the warmth grow in her cheeks. “Besides, I doubt pity had anything to do with why Chance let you hang around him. He always had a soft spot where you were concerned. He took you to your first dance, as I recall.”
Josie flashed back on that memory. Funny, it wasn’t as painful as it used to be when she remembered that time. “He took me to the first dance because I waited for you to ask me and turned down every other boy who did. He said he couldn’t see me sit home while everyone else went, so he volunteered. My friends thought it was cool that an ‘older’ man took me to the dance,” she finished on a laugh. “Older man, indeed. I was fifteen and he was twenty-one. I thought of him as an older brother I never had.” Flashes of the way he had recently kissed her made that statement into a falsehood. Best to keep those memories under control and to herself.
“Is that why, three years later, big brother Chance took you to the Fall Festival? And then to prom?”
“He didn’t take me to the festival,” she corrected. “I went with Dale Grayson, who proceeded to show up drunk at the party at Melanie Stewart’s house before we ever left for the dance. I was walking home when Chance happened to see me. I was a silly mess, all tears and upset over missing the biggest dance of the fall. He went home, put on a suit, and took me. Funny…I had forgotten about that time,” Josie said, almost to herself.
Chance had been a big part in her life for a long time; those memories were coming back in living color with quite a frequency of late. Seemed he had always been there to pick her up and dust her off and push her back into life again. Yet he had never expected anything in return. Had she even thanked him any of those times?
“I’m not proud of it, but I also remember a certain prom he stepped in and took you because I was under the weather.” Dev had the decency to look apologetic and contrite.
“We all know you weren’t sick. YOU Devlin Braxton…stood me up. And he did that for the both of us.”
“Guess things tend to look different when you think back over them. Hindsight being 20/20 and all. Makes regrets even more fresh. Sometimes it’s harder to see that people can often hide behind masks, and those masks can become permanent if we aren’t careful. And we choose paths that might not always be the best ones for us. Then you find you can’t retrace your steps…as much as you might wish you could.” He seemed to say those words more to himself than her. Dev’s personality changed like a click of a button to its usual demeanor. “It’s getting colder. How much longer will this take?” Dev’s question brought her back to the present and away from the walk down memory lane.
Josie had meant to check on three different stock tanks while they were out, but she ended up skipping the last one, making note to check it first thing the next morning.
“I’ll make a quick check of this tank,” she replied, sliding out of the saddle, “and then we’ll get back to the ranch.” Dev was a tenderfoot after all.
*
Once back at the barn, Dev moved a lot slower off his mount and didn’t protest when Josie began unsaddling his horse for him. He leaned against the stall door and kept her company. “Of course,” he said, with a flash of his bright smile in her direction, “you realize you’re going to owe me a dinner after this.”
“Dinner?”
“That’s the plan. You and I will drive into Abilene tonight and find the best restaurant they have. Then I’ll use my considerable charms to change your mind about seeing some of those amazing places with me that I spoke of earlier.”
Josie should have been over the moon with the fact Dev Braxton had finally done what she dreamed of for so long…ask her out on a real, grown-up date. How many times had she daydreamed about such an event? Now, here it was, and she was shocked by the fact she didn’t experience the thrill she thought would come along with it. Dev noted her hesitation.
“Don’t tell me that you have another date?” He smiled for a moment, then the smile disappeared as a sudden thought came to him. “You aren’t seeing someone are you? Tell me his name if you are, so I know who I have to fight for your hand.”
“That would be me…in case it’s slipped anyone’s mind in the last couple of hours.”
Both pairs of startled eyes swung to encounter Chase’s watchful ones as he stood leaning against the barn door, observing the pair. The words weren’t uttered as part of a jest or with the slightest bit of humor. Josie recognized the set of the squared chin and firm jawline. She had seen it a time or two, whenever Chase had to deal with a particularly distasteful situation…usually with a ranch hand that was about to be terminated or some such. Well, she wasn’t a ranch hand, and neither was Dev. She raised her own chin in a
s much an act of defiance as fortification for her own nerves under the steady glare.
“No one has forgotten about you. You were mentioned a good deal in our conversation today.” She didn’t elaborate but went back to pouring the last of the grain into the buckets for their mounts’ supper. Let him think what he would about that.
“Am I missing something around here?” Dev looked from his brother to Josie and back to the man again.
“There’s been some changes around here recently. The most notable being that Josie is engaged to be married.”
Dev swung his attention totally on Josie. “To who?”
The words formed and were on the tip of her tongue as she looked at the Braxton brother she idolized for so long. They just seemed to get stuck for some reason.
“To me.” Chance made the reply for her.
Chapter Ten
“It really was most cosmopolitan of my big brother to give his blessing to our going out to dinner together. I certainly wouldn’t be so generous if you were my fiancée.”
Dev’s remark joined her own thoughts. She had been totally shocked when, instead of Chance being unbending and his stubborn self, he had actually smiled. He had said there was no reason they shouldn’t have dinner together when Dev had voiced the invitation he had issued to Josie earlier. He was busy, but he was certain they wouldn’t miss him. Chance had practically pushed her at his brother! What was he thinking? She wasn’t certain, but she had a feeling there was more to it than just him being nice. Josie looked up into the dark night sky above her head as the sports car flew down the highway.