by Nicole Helm
Cora looked up at him again, something sad and a little wistful in her expression. “That’s really sweet,” she said, looking something close to teary.
“They don’t seem to think so.”
Some of her sadness melted into humor. “Imagine that.”
He wouldn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny. He took protecting his family very seriously, and yet something about the way she both thought it was sweet and sarcastically agreed with his family’s not wanting to be protected made him want to smile back at her, to say more things to her.
This woman who’d dragged him into Benson to witness his mother square dancing of all damn things. Who smiled at him and teased him, gently. This woman he didn’t know a thing about except that she was beautiful and apparently had a twelve-year-old kid. Hellion kid at that.
“You really have a twelve-year-old?”
“Really, truly. What? Does that wig you out? Or did you have a question to ask me? Maybe to make sure you’re not Ben Donahue-ing things yourself.”
“For starters you’re not older than me.”
“But you could be ten years older than me, or does it only matter when the woman is the one who’s older?”
He wasn’t about to touch that. “Secondly, I haven’t asked you to marry me.”
She pretended to ponder that, and his eyes should be following that rat bastard Donahue instead of the subtle curve of Cora’s mouth, yet he couldn’t quite look away from her. Flirting with him when he tended to be stuffy and gruff at best.
When was the last time a woman had flirted with him without him making the first move? Applying some charm—the kind he kept hidden way down deep.
The kind he should absolutely not bring out here and now when more important than smiling at or flirting with this pretty woman was his mother’s safety and future happiness.
“But you seem like such the type to believe in love at first sight and whirlwind romances that end in quick elopements.” She looked innocently at him from behind her eyelashes. “I thought for sure a proposal was coming.”
“Well, if you want to plan our wedding instead of my mother’s, I’d consider it.”
She laughed, pretty and bright, and way too intoxicating. When was the last time he’d made anyone laugh? He was usually earning groans and reproaches from his siblings, or good-natured go-to-hells when he got a little too bossy.
“I’m going to plan the best wedding I possibly can for your mother, because I think she deserves it. And, because I trust her judgment on the man she wants to marry.” Cora’s gaze followed the whirl and twirl of Mom and Ben, and she chewed thoughtfully on her lip.
Shane forced his gaze away from the sight of it.
Cora took a deep breath and let it out. “But if you ever show me any evidence he’s hurting her, really, truly dangerous, or a threat, I’ll quit.” She nodded firmly. “I know she’s not my mother, and I don’t have a vested interest, but I won’t be party to a man’s hurting a woman out of viciousness.”
She said it emphatically, a little too emphatically, like she’d had personal experience with men hurting women out of viciousness. He wanted to personally eviscerate whatever man might have hurt her.
But Cora wasn’t his responsibility. So, he had to focus on what was. “All right. I guess I’ll have to prove it to you both then.”
She smiled sadly. “I don’t think I’ve ever hoped for someone’s failure more.”
For the first time since his mother had announced her engagement, he hoped it a little himself.
Chapter Five
It was only noon, and Cora already felt like she’d run a marathon. She had thirty minutes to eat lunch, then she was meeting Deb at the bakery to discuss cakes, then she had to pick Micah up from basketball camp—which he’d promised not to bail on again.
Tori had agreed to give Micah a quick rock-climbing lesson after camp, and although the thought scared Cora down to her soul, she had a handful of vendors she needed to call today, and rock climbing would keep Micah occupied until dinnertime.
Then she promised herself she’d shut off wedding planning mind and focus on Micah. Maybe they could cook together. Micah liked that.
But thoughts of cooking turned to thoughts of vendors who would be able to offer a reception-worthy spread of food at the Tyler ranch.
It turned out planning a wedding was hard, continual work even when it wasn’t your own. But she liked it, which was a surprise to her. She’d wanted to do it because it sounded doable with her limited work skills. She hadn’t expected to get into it.
But she was into it. For the first time in her life she felt vested in something outside of herself or her son, and it felt . . . amazing.
She worked on putting together a quick sandwich in the kitchenette of the Mile High Adventures offices. As an arm of this company, she was sharing space, but Lilly already had grand plans for a future office just for the wedding side of things.
“Great minds,” Lilly said, stepping into the kitchen.
Cora smiled at her sister, who was carrying a squirming little boy. Cora loved having a baby niece and nephew. It was like getting to relive Micah’s baby years without any of the crushing responsibility.
“You want one?” Cora asked, pointing to the sandwich she was making.
“If you’re offering.” Lilly leaned back against the far wall, gently untangling Aiden’s pudgy fingers from her hair. “How’s the wedding?”
Cora set out to make a sandwich Lilly would like, debating with herself how much she wanted to tell Lilly about how the wedding planning was going. The thing was, this whole new leaf was a bit of a balancing act. For most of their lives, Lilly had been in charge, telling Cora what to do, stepping in and doing what needed to be done.
Cora needed boundaries, so she could be the one stepping up for once. “Deb wants to move up the date to September,” Cora offered, as that was relevant to all business things.
“That’ll be tight,” Lilly said thoughtfully.
Cora put a few slices of ham on a piece of bread. “Yes, but I thought it’d be good. The earlier we have our first wedding, the more buzz we’ll get to book the next.”
“True. I like the way you think,” Lilly said with a grin. “But Will and Tori are eloping over my dead body, and Sam can’t hold out much more on Hayley. We’ll be drowning in weddings.”
“Weddings we won’t make any money off of because they’re family and Mile High employees.”
Lilly chuckled. “I really like the way you think. Who knew becoming a wedding planner would make you so mercenary?”
“I’m not a wedding planner yet. I have to plan a wedding first. And it has to be a success and . . .” Cora stopped herself from saying actually happen. But Shane’s steadfast insistence that his mother was making a mistake continued to poke at her.
What if he was right? Was Cora aiding and abetting something awful that Deb would only regret? Cora could barely stomach the thought of it. She glanced over at her older sister, who had practically raised her. Mom had always been working. Dad had rarely deigned to take the time away from his real family to do anything with her or Lilly. Lilly had stepped up and been everything Cora had needed. She’d still be living with Stephen in that awful situation if it hadn’t been for Lilly.
Lilly, who’d protected her as best she could, who’d stepped in and told her when she was wrong. Just like Shane was trying to do with Deb.
“I have a question for you.” She handed Lilly the sandwich around the waving baby arms that tried to grab it. “Were you ever . . . When you were protecting me, did it ever turn out you were wrong about something. Or someone?”
Lilly’s pale eyebrows drew together as Aiden seemed to try to leverage himself up and over her shoulder. “In what way?”
“Just that, you made mistakes right? You weren’t infallible. Being an outside observer doesn’t mean you automatically know what’s best for someone. For me.”
Lilly blew out a breath. “I often wished I could be i
nfallible, but I suppose I wasn’t. Not to mention no matter how hard I tried to protect you, you were often determined to go your own way. It frustrated me at the time, but I’ve also learned a little something about letting go and letting people . . . Sometimes you have to give people the space to make their own choices.”
“Even if they’re wrong?”
“If I could have stopped Stephen from hurting you and Micah, I would have, but aside from that? I was always a little heavy-handed, and I think letting you make some of your own choices or mistakes might have been good for you.” Lilly smiled a little sadly, but seemed to shake herself out of the sad. “But I’m so proud of where you are, and what you’ve done. I don’t think looking back is necessary.”
Cora opened her mouth to explain that she wasn’t looking back. She was trying to understand the now. But her cell phone trilled instead. She frowned, putting her sandwich down on a paper towel and pulling the phone out of her pocket.
Her heart sank when her display read Benson Athletic Association. She fumbled to swipe to accept. “Hello?”
“Ms. Preston. This is Mr. Cummings from the Benson Basketball Youth Association.”
“Hello. Oh, God, is everything—”
“Your son is fine, Ms. Preston.” There was a dramatic pause. “Though I’m afraid you’re going to have to come pick him up, and he will no longer be welcome at any classes within the Benson Athletics Center. His behavior today has proved unacceptable. I am sorry.”
Cora didn’t even begin to know what to say to that. Except the man didn’t sound very sorry. “I . . . don’t . . .”
“Can someone come pick him up as soon as possible, Ms. Preston? We can discuss the particulars in person.”
“Yes. Yes. I’ll be right there.” She hit End, trying to breathe through a little bit of panic and a whole lot of emotion.
“What is it?”
“Micah, he . . . got kicked out.”
Lilly’s expression crumbled with concern and the same kind of desperation Cora felt. “I wish I knew what was going on with him.”
“Me too,” Cora said, her throat tight. “I have to go pick him up.”
“What can I do? Do you want me to take the appointment with Deb? I’ve got a meeting for Mile High, but—”
“No, I’ve got it under control.” When Lilly opened her mouth clearly to argue, Cora shook her head. “I have to do this. All of it.”
Lilly closed her mouth and nodded. “Good luck. Call if you need anything.”
Sandwich forgotten, Cora grabbed her purse and headed out, because no matter how much she wanted to give to this job, she needed to give more to her son. Clearly, so very much more.
She didn’t allow herself to cry as she drove down the mountain. It’d take at least twenty minutes to pick up Micah. Which didn’t give her enough time to figure out who could watch Micah. Lilly had a meeting, and everyone else was out on excursions. Summer was high season, and Cora didn’t have time for Micah to have been kicked out of camp. Not when she had a wedding to plan in record time—her first wedding.
She inhaled sharply. Panic was building, but that wouldn’t do. Her motto this year was What Would Lilly Do. Lilly would handle it. She’d find a way to juggle it all.
So, that’s just what Cora would do, too.
* * *
Shane rarely pounded posts these days. It was a job left to ranch hands or summer help, or sometimes even Lindsay if she was being particularly bratty.
But a little physical labor could clear a man’s mind. Shane would’ve preferred a long horse ride out to the far edge of the property to handle the small cattle drive, but it was Gavin’s turn, and his brother probably needed the air a little more than he needed to pound things. While physical labor evened out any aggression Shane felt, it tended to only stoke Gavin’s close-to-the-surface temper higher.
“Got a hand if you could use it.”
Shane took a minute to school his scowl into something more stoic before he turned at Ben Donahue’s voice. “Aren’t you on stable duty?”
Ben had his hands shoved in his pockets and that laid-back, nothing-matters demeanor that grated against every last nerve Shane possessed. Ben smirked, tempting Shane’s ruthlessly controlled temper even more.
“I know you boys think you can scare me off with the shit jobs, but let’s be clear. I got nearly a decade on you, boy. I don’t appreciate the bullshit orders.”
Shane put down the post driver, because he was a little too tempted to use it as a weapon. He wiped his brow with the back of his forearm and took a deep breath. Ben might be older than him, but Shane knew who came out on top when it came to controlling temper. “Far as I know, you still work for me, Donahue.”
“I work for the head of this ranch, who happens to be your mother.”
“I’m the foreman. I’m in charge of the ranch hands. Which is the paycheck you collect.”
“Yeah, a paycheck your mother signs. Not you.”
God, how he’d love to punch that smirk off this man’s face. But, he didn’t have time for a pissing match. “I have a ranch to run, Donahue. If you’re not going to do the jobs assigned to you, why don’t you go discuss that refusal with my mother.” Shane didn’t have much hope it’d get the stables shoveled, but he didn’t want to deal with Ben directly. It could only end badly.
Ben took a deep breath and squinted out at the mountains beyond the ranch. “What exactly have I done that’s got you so bent out of shape over me?”
“You want a list?” Shane retorted sharply, one of those rare impulses he couldn’t control.
Ben’s sharp blue gaze met Shane’s. “Yeah. Maybe I do.”
“You’re lazy. Routinely late for work. You disappear, and no one knows where you are. You don’t take orders, and it makes it impossible for me to run this ranch the way it needs to be run. If you were anyone else, my mother would have fired you by now.” Or let me do it. “But she has stepped in and asked for lenience. Well, I’ve been lenient, but if you’re going to come at me, I’ll be straight with you.”
“That’s about me as a ranch hand, not about me as a man.”
“In this family, in this ranch, who you are and what you do go hand in hand. Talk is cheap. If you can’t show a little work ethic, I don’t need to worry about getting to know you as a man. You’re not the kind of man worthy to lick my mother’s boots.”
“I know damn well your mother’s a good woman, better than me. She deserves—”
“I know what she deserves,” Shane snapped.
There was something like a light of triumph in Ben’s expression. That flash of temper evening out. Ben smiled, that kind of “screw you” smile that had Shane itching to throw a punch.
“She wants us to get along,” Ben said in a tone of voice Shane supposed his mother fell for, but Shane didn’t. Not for a second. There was nothing conciliatory in this man. Nothing kind. The measure of a man was how he respected family—which Ben clearly didn’t. The measure of a man was in his dedication to right over wrong, but, most of all, that he would work his ass off till the job was done. That was what a man did. That’s what Shane’s father had taught him every second of every day.
Shane had learned that lesson in a loss so severe and irrevocable, he couldn’t stand anyone who hadn’t had to learn that lesson.
Shane grabbed the post driver. “Ben, I didn’t get along with you before you started sniffing around my mother as if that’d get you out of a hard day’s work. I don’t know why I’d start now.”
“Because your mother wants it.”
“My mother also wanted to paint the living room pink. I disagreed on that. I’ll disagree on this.”
“I don’t have kids, let alone grown ones. I don’t know how this is supposed to work, but I do love your mother.”
Shane shook his head, giving the post driver a satisfying jerk against the post. “I don’t believe that.”
“What would it take to get you to?”
He brought the post driv
er down with another jerk. “There’s nothing you could do that would prove it to me.”
“Then maybe I’m not the problem.”
That hit a little hard, but Shane shook it away. Ben was after a fight. An argument he could use against Shane in the future. Shane would be honest, but he wasn’t going to get drawn into a knock-down-drag-out.
“If that’s what you want to think.” Another satisfying thwack on the post kept him from saying anything more. An argument with Ben wouldn’t solve anything, because Shane was sure he was right, and Ben wasn’t going to come out and admit he was in this for all the wrong reasons.
Loved his mother? It didn’t make any sense. His mother was good, hard working, and kind. Shane had never seen Ben be any of those things.
“I told your mother I’d talk to you. Try to smooth things over.”
“I’d rather you told my mother you were a lazy, no-account who forged his references to get this job.” Shane glanced over his shoulder, satisfied that Ben looked a little taken aback by that. “You think I haven’t figured out at least half the shit you spout is lies? You think I’m just some bent-out-of-shape kid pissed because Mommy’s getting married? You don’t know a thing about me, or this family.”
“I know your mother loves me. She’s not going to give up on marrying me just because you kids don’t get along with me.”
Shane heaved a sigh. “Noted.” He wasn’t trying to change his mother’s mind. He was trying to show her the truth. He had no doubt once Mom had all the facts, whatever facts Ben was keeping hidden, she’d realize she was making a mistake.
“I’ve told your mother everything. Whatever lies you think you’ve got on me, she already knows.”
As if Shane hadn’t already told Mom every lie he’d uncovered. “Well, then I guess you have nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe I should go have this conversation with Gavin.”
Shane narrowly resisted the urge to whirl around, to connect fist to jaw. But as he wasn’t his impulsive younger brother, he took a deep breath instead. He laid down the post driver slowly and carefully. He turned to face Ben, straightening to his full height and looking the man directly in the eye.