Her stomach finally settled down. As her body gave in to exhaustion, she drifted off to sleep on the tile floor.
Chapter 2
Dylan smelled coffee. He rolled over, lifted his head, and sniffed the air. He wasn’t dreaming; the scent of fresh brewed coffee was so close he could taste it.
“’Bout time you got up.”
He ignored the grumpy voice and shifted so he was sitting up, leaning against the headboard. Without opening his eyes, he reached out his hand.
“We Garahans are so alike sometimes, it’s scary.”
His little brother was still grumbling at him, but his brain couldn’t quite wrap around what Jesse was saying. If Dylan wanted that mug of hot coffee, he was going to have to open his eyes and find out what was going on. Not that he expected Jesse to be in a good mood every morning. Hell, Dylan spent half of the weekdays waking up in a bad mood himself.
That’s because you’re jealous of your older brother and what he’s found with Emily—that and you’re missing something sweet in your life.
It was an effort, but he ignored the voice and opened one eye and saw Jesse leaning against the doorjamb, looking like he’d been in a wreck out on I-635. “What the hell happened to you?”
Jesse shoved one of the mugs at him but didn’t say anything. Something was definitely wrong with his brother. The youngest of the three brothers talked like he’d been vaccinated with a phonograph needle at birth, or at least that’s what their grandfather always used to say. They’d always gotten a kick out of listening to old records on his grandfather’s record player, and heck, Jesse talked nonstop, just like those records played—nonstop until the record was over.
Dylan swallowed a mouthful of hot coffee and grimaced. “Damn, did Tyler make the coffee this morning?” When Jesse didn’t answer right away, he added, “You couldn’t have made it. I’d be able to drink it if you had.”
That got the reaction out of his brother that he was hoping for. Jesse snickered and bit out, “Some habits die hard, Bro. If Tyler’s up first, he makes the first pot.”
“But the first pot must be gone by now. Is something wrong with Lori?”
At the mention of their cook and childhood friend’s name, Jesse stiffened up and turned to leave. “Hey wait up, Jess.” Dylan set his mug down so he wouldn’t spill it and got out of bed. A quick glance down reminded him of their grandfather’s rule about women and breakfast. “Is Lori in the kitchen?”
Jesse shook his head and kept walking. Something wasn’t right. “Is Emily still here, or did she leave for work?”
“She left fifteen minutes ago.”
Good, he could ignore his grandfather’s rule about putting on his damned pants for breakfast, since there weren’t any females in the house. Grabbing his mug, he followed after his brother. “Hey, Jess,” he hollered. “Wait up!”
His brother had other ideas. Dylan heard the back door slam as he walked into the kitchen. “Perfect.”
Since Lori had been back at the ranch, she’d twisted the youngest Garahan brother into knots again… just like she had a few years back, before she’d run off with that shit-for-brains excuse for a man she’d married.
She wouldn’t have run off with the same man again and left Jesse twisting in the wind, would she? Dylan started to think about it, but knew it was useless; women operated on their own plane of existence sometimes, leaving men without a clue as to their thoughts.
“Not my worry, not my problem.” That was Dylan’s motto since his girlfriend had left him to make her mark on the archaeological community.
He poured water and measured scoops of coffee into the drip pot. Banging open cabinet doors, prowling over to the refrigerator, he opened up the meat drawer and found a ham steak, snagged three eggs and the margarine, and finally had everything he needed to fix his breakfast except bread.
“Maybe I could ask Emily if she knows how to make Irish soda bread,” he mused, hunting up and finding two clean frying pans. “There’s just something about it toasted, slathered with sweet cream butter.”
While the meat was heating in one frying pan, he cracked the eggs against the side of another one-handed. He’d inherited his big hands from his grandfather; all three brothers had. Good thing. They needed them to work the ranch and keep the place from falling down around their ears.
With his hands busy, his mind wandered, replaying events from the night before with a twist. The image of the blindfolded brunette got stuck in it. As he lassoed and reeled her in, the desire in her eyes beckoned to him. He knew without asking that she’d wait for him, ready to run her hands up and over his shoulders, sliding them down to grab him by his ass—
Grease from the pan spattered the bare skin below his navel. “Shit!” Grabbing the dishcloth, he ran it under cold water and tried to cool the heat of the burn. “Damn, it’s a good thing I’m not as tall as Jesse, or that’d have burned something important.” Still grumbling he added, “That woman’s trouble and she’s not even here!”
You should have put your pants on. You’re burning daylight, Son.
“Gee, thanks for the advice, but you always said we only had to dress if a woman was in the house.”
His grandfather had always reminded them that dungarees were made of tough material that would save their legs riding the range—and would have saved his skin from grease burns. They were always trying to beat the clock, getting their chores done before they ran out of daylight. The old man had taught them that putting their pants on before breakfast would save time if they didn’t have to go back upstairs to get dressed before going outside.
Irritated that he was seeing visions of the beauty from last night who’d turned him down and imagining that he was hearing voices in his head, he bit out, “Maybe I should saddle up wearing my damned boxers, like that time I was eight years old and hell-bent on riding out in my underwear.”
He shook his head, remembering the beating his legs had taken after riding a few short miles before he turned back to doctor the scratches on his legs and put on his jeans. His mind wandered back to last night and the dark-haired woman who’d captured his eye and then stomped on his heart when she refused to wait for him, ignoring the sensual pull they both felt when their lips met. Sizzling and the scent of meat about to burn brought him back to the present. “Damn. I’m gonna have to work hard to keep my mind focused today until I can get my hands on that female.” He grinned. “Just because she turned me down is no reason to back off.”
By the time he’d fried the ham and eggs and ate them, he’d used up half an hour’s time. “At this rate, I’ll never get to the repairs on the barn roof, which I can’t start until after I help round up those strays.” His never-ending list of chores dwindled by the end of each day, but seemed to grow by leaps and bounds overnight. Tyler was handy with plumbing, but Dylan’s expertise was carpentry.
He’d learned his skills the hard way, in exchange for staying out of jail when he was twelve. A chuckle escaped, surprising him. He hadn’t thought about that time in his life for a long while. His grandfather had stepped up to the plate and had gone to bat for him, going head-to-head with Sheriff Wallace. Dylan had been scared spitless by the mountain of a lawman, but his grandfather had just smiled and turned his Irish charm up to brilliant.
Pouring his second cup of coffee, which was a whole lot closer to the real thing than Tyler’s sludge, Dylan noticed something sticking out from behind the coffeemaker. Reaching in, he pulled out a tightly wrapped heel of soda bread someone—probably his pain-in-the-ass younger brother—had tucked behind the coffeemaker to hide it and save it for later.
“It’d serve him right if I ate the whole thing.” And he would have too, if he didn’t have to get dressed and head on out to the western border of their land to meet his brothers. Tyler’d end up hurting himself if Dylan wasn’t there to keep their older brother from ripping out his stitches or breaking a few more ribs.
Slathering butter on a slice of soda bread warm from the toaster,
he bit into it and sighed. He should have asked Lori to marry him. Man that woman could cook. Polishing off the second piece, he knew he’d have to get in line or fight Jesse to marry Lori. Jesse’d been stuck on Lori a few years back, and from what Dylan had noticed recently, still was.
“Women,” he grumbled, as the image of the black-haired, green-eyed female filled his head again. Luscious lips curved up in a smile, had his heart pounding and his libido standing at full attention.
He’d have to ask Tyler what happened with Lori; odds were that if he asked Jesse, he’d get sucker punched. Their little brother had a mean streak a mile wide. Dylan grinned; he really admired that trait. Now that he thought about it, Jesse was definitely the one who’d hid the soda bread. Mean and greedy.
Piling his dirty dishes in the sink, he didn’t even think about washing them. He was already behind schedule and would have to ride hard to catch up to his brothers. They’d be chasing down a couple of strays who had wandered through a break in the fence. He couldn’t keep his older brother from riding out; broken ribs and stitches hadn’t kept Tyler down for long. Dylan and Jesse had thought about tying their brother to a chair, but figured Emily’d just untie him. She was partial to their brother.
And now he’d have to deal with one brother in a good mood—because Tyler got to sleep beside the curvaceous redhead who had stolen his heart—and the other brother in a foul mood—because for some reason Lori had left.
Thinking of Tyler’s injury had him flinching. All that blood… He should have shot first—right between that damned bull Widowmaker’s eyes—and asked questions second. He owed that bull for head-butting Tyler into a barbed wire fence, slicing him up, and breaking a couple of Tyler’s ribs.
He walked to the stairs, then took them two at a time, hoping to cut down on the time he’d already spent making his own damned breakfast. “Lori better not have cut out on Jesse again,” he grumbled, grabbing the pair of jeans off the floor where he’d shucked them the night before. Pulling on clean socks and his boots, he nabbed a shirt from the pile of clean clothes he’d left on the top of his dresser. Why bother to put them away, when he’d only have to dig them back out to wear them? Besides he had a system: clean clothes on top of the dresser and dirty ones in the corner on the floor.
Dylan caught up to his brothers a little while later. The heat from the sun soaked in through his tired, overworked muscles all the way to the bone, warming him. His horse responded when Dylan tightened his quads and leaned to the right. “Atta boy,” he murmured, when the horse started after one of the stray steer, “let’s go get that ornery little sonofabitch.”
With his help, the three of them were able to round up all of the strays and coax them back in through the break in the fence. “Hell, we spend as much time mending fences and chasing down strays as we do tending stock.”
“Easier now than when they didn’t have as much of the land fenced in,” Jesse grumbled. “It was tough when the open range started to close down all those years ago.”
Tyler groaned then shifted his horse so he wasn’t twisted in the saddle. “It must have been hard to change their way of doing things. Hell, letting the cattle graze wherever they wanted and rounding them up when it was time to drive them to market must have been one amazing trip.”
“Not if Grandpa’s stories are to be believed,” Jesse said. “The trail was hard on the men and the cattle. Throw in the weather, acting like a pissed off female—all teeth and nails—and you’ve got yourself one bitch of a cattle drive.”
Dylan listened to his brothers rambling and wondered what it would have been like. He wouldn’t mind working harder than he did now, as long as he had a certain raven-haired beauty waiting on him when he dragged his sorry ass back to the ranch house at the end of the day.
He smiled imagining her waiting for him. He’d be heading in from the barn, using his Stetson to brush the dust of his day off of his jeans. He’d look up and their gazes would meet. She was such a welcome sight to a man who’d worked until his legs ached, his back screamed, and his hands were stiff from holding on to the reins.
He grinned and she leaped off the back porch and ran to his arms, not caring that he’d sweat through his shirt and smelled like the steer he’d been wrangling. Her lips were warm and welcoming as they molded to his. Diving in, he let his tongue tangle with hers as he slid his hand down to the sweet curve of her ass and…
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Jesse demanded punching Dylan in the shoulder.
“Hey, what? Ow!” Dylan rubbed the abused joint and mumbled to himself.
“Something on your mind, Bro?”
Dylan looked over at Tyler and noticed that his brother looked really tired, but knew neither he nor Jesse would be able to get their brother to stay behind unless they hog-tied him and left him there. Not that they hadn’t tried a time or two when they were teenagers.
“Work,” he finally answered.
“My ass,” Jesse added.
“What the hell is your problem anyway?” Dylan demanded, glaring at Jesse. “You lit out of the house without telling me what happened to Lori.”
Jesse’s jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. He turned his horse and headed north to where the worst of the break was.
Tyler nudged his horse to follow. “I’ll tell you later, Dylan. We’d better catch up and mend this section of fence. I’ve got other chores to see to.”
Dylan snorted. “You’ve got a date with a bottle of aspirin, big Bro.”
Tyler shook his head. “Already took it. Should hold me for another hour or so.”
Working together, the Garahan brothers repaired the fence without speaking—just the way Dylan preferred to work, quietly, so he could focus on the job and get it done. But today, a certain female had worked her way under his skin and messed with his mind more than once, and he didn’t like it.
“Damn,” he ground out.
“Something on your mind?” Tyler urged.
Dylan shook his head. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
His brother nodded and Jesse hollered, “I’m heading back to wait for the hay delivery.”
They nodded and waited until he rode out of sight. “OK,” Dylan said. “Tell me what happened. Where is she?”
“Gone,” Tyler answered him, knowing without asking that Dylan had meant Lori. His brother sighed. “I guess you were too busy working over at the Lucky Star to notice she hasn’t been around for a couple of days and before you ask, she’ll be back.”
Relief flowed through Dylan. “Well, that’s all right then.”
“After the wedding…”
Dylan’s gut clenched as dread swamped the relief. “Hers?”
Tyler nodded.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, so ease up on our little brother.”
“Just one more question,” Dylan said. “Did she go chasing after that shit-for-brains—”
Tyler cut him off, answering, “Yep. Emily’s worked hard to find someone to pick up the slack now that Lori’s gone.”
“Yeah, you told me.”
“You OK with bartering your carpentry skills?” Tyler began only to be interrupted by Dylan.
“Don’t care, as long as we can eat.”
Tyler looked as if he wanted to say more, but Dylan was done jawing and shook his head at his brother. Tyler shrugged and turned his horse toward home.
Riding back to the ranch house, Dylan wondered what would make a man like Jesse pine for a woman who didn’t want him. The truth hit him right between the eyes: sometimes it was simply something about the woman that made a man want to sit up and beg, no matter how many times the woman had turned him down. Luscious red lips that begged to be kissed and siren-green eyes that lulled a man into thinking he was something special right before he crashed against the rocks.
***
Ronnie opened one eye and sighed. The room was no longer spinning, a sure sign that the worst was over. Sitting up, she brushed the hai
r out of her eyes and groaned. Her stomach felt like she’d ingested broken glass. Rubbing it, she knew she’d have to get going. Emily had promised that one of the Garahan brothers would be stopping by later today to help with the repairs to her shop downstairs. If she planned to be coherent by then, she’d better get started. Too bad she didn’t remember which one of the Garahan brothers was the carpenter. Would it be the one from last night?
She shivered, stiff and chilly from spending the night on the bathroom floor. “Tea and toasted Italian bread, plain… no butter.” Her grandmother’s patented cure-all for an upset stomach.
With that in mind, she stumbled to the kitchen. “Why didn’t I stick with my usual, a nice cold longneck bottle of beer?” Since coming out to Texas, she’d discovered one of its treasures: Shiner beer. Her favorite hangout, the Lucky Star, had three kinds of Shiner on tap: Bock, a rich dark beer; Blonde, a golden lager; and Light, a tasty light beer. She’d tried them all but still preferred hers in a bottle. She’d had a bad experience at a bar back in Jersey that hadn’t cleaned out their taps properly, and she had been sick as a dog and emptied her stomach that time too. Too bad she hadn’t remembered that last night. She reached for the teapot.
Ah well, she was twenty-five now, and she knew better. Last night was an aberration; she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. She was older and therefore wiser. Turning the spigot on, she filled the glass teapot with water and carried it over to the stove. Her head felt just a bit too light. “Probably dehydrated myself.” Disgusted with her total lack of brains last night, she berated herself, mumbling, “Idiot, moron, stupid… stunad!”
“No, Bambina… sei giovane.” Her grandmother always told Ronnie that it was because she was young and not stupid, until the day she’d told Nonni that she planned to marry a nice Italian boy. Nonni had been in favor of Ronnie marrying one of the Murphy brothers. Even though she would have been in danger of fulfilling the DelVecchio Curse. Ronnie fought against it for all of the same reasons. Nonni wanted those grandbabies badly—just as badly as Ronnie wanted to prove that she was immune and not like the other DelVecchio women in her family rumored to have fallen like angels who’d just lost their wings.
Dylan Page 3