The Chisholm Brothers:Friends, Lovers... Husbands?

by Janis Reams Hudson

  Her watch still said 11:30 p.m.

  His watch, which a few minutes ago had read the same as the clock on the dresser, now read 1:42 a.m. The second hand was not moving. It had stopped, apparently, the moment she put it on.

  Blaire swallowed. Hard. A fine trembling started in her shoulders and raced down her arms to leave her hands unsteady. She unbuckled the leather band and placed his watch back on the bedside table. She stared at it, and as if by her will alone, the second hand resumed ticking its way around the face.

  Cold sweat broke out along Blaine’s spine.

  Don’t panic. Stay calm. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a family myth. A silly coincidence. There’s no way—

  “Blaire?”

  She jumped as if shot. “What?”

  “Babe, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “What? Oh. Sorry. I…I must be coming down with something.” She pulled her foot from his grasp and bunched the sheet around herself as she scooted off the bed and started grabbing her clothes from the floor. “I’ve got to get home.”

  What good she thought getting herself home was going to do was beyond her. If the family myth about watches not working turned out to be true, she was screwed. In more ways than one.

  Justin watched her as she scrambled into her clothes as if her life depended on it. By the time she’d finished dressing, so had he. He grabbed his watch from the bedside table and strapped it on, frowning to note that it seemed to be slow when compared to the two dollar, digital alarm clock bolted to the dresser. He could have sworn they’d been in sync a couple of hours ago.

  As he followed Blaire to the door he glanced around the cheap motel room and cringed. Maybe what Blaire was suffering from was a bad case of second thoughts. The room was clean, with fairly new although cheap furnishings, but there was no disguising it from the motel room it was.

  She deserved better than this dinky room. They both did. But she hadn’t invited him to her place, and he didn’t have a “place.” Hell, he didn’t even have a back seat; he drove a pickup.

  With her overcoat on to shield her from the chilly December wind, she reached for the doorknob, but he put his hand over hers and paused. “You going to be able to make it home? Do you need a doctor or something?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.” She gave him a small smile. “I’ll be fine once I get home. Please.” She removed her hand from the doorknob and placed it on his arm. “Please don’t worry. I had a wonderful night, and now it’s time for me to go home. That’s all.”

  He studied her closely. Her color seemed more normal now than it had a few minutes ago. “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Come on, then.” He opened the door and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get you home.”

  Chapter One

  It was a chilly February night on the Cherokee Rose ranch in Central Oklahoma. Cherokee Rose Chisholm took a well-earned rest in her recliner before the big screen TV in the living room.

  She could take the time to relax because she’d been in the saddle most of the day, and at the desk working on the ranch records and books half the evening.

  Thank God, she thought, for Maria, who’d stepped into the position of housekeeper when Earline retired last month, and for Emily, who loved to oversee the house and meals and added a much-needed feminine touch to the house. Between those two women, they took a load of responsibility off Rose’s shoulders. And their daughters—six-year-old Libby and eight-year-old Janie, Rose’s new granddaughters, plus Rosa, Maria’s new baby, who was named for the ranch on which she was born. Rose had feared having a newborn in the house would wear them all out. At seventy-eight, Rose was quite certain that she was not up to sharing her home with a newborn.

  But Maria was so good with the baby, and Emily helped her a great deal, that all Rose had to do was hold the baby and coo over her when she was sleepy and sweet-smelling.

  With her two oldest grandsons married now, that left only Justin, and Rose was getting concerned about him. She’d thought he’d found someone special a couple of months ago, but lately he’d been moping around a lot, and moping was simply not in Justin’s nature.

  If he didn’t snap out of it soon, she would just have to stick her nose in. She couldn’t bear to see one of her boys unhappy.

  “Hi, this is Blaire. I can’t come to the phone right now. If you want me to call you back, leave a message.”

  Justin resisted the urge to pound his head against the wall. He hung up without leaving a message. If he left any more messages he’d end up getting arrested as a stalker.

  Two months. Two damn months he’d been trying to get close to Blaire again. Two damn months of excuses, of lost messages, of unreturned phone calls.

  He had called her the day after they spent the night together to make sure she was all right, since she’d thought she might be coming down with something. She’d said she was fine, nothing a good night’s sleep hadn’t been able to take care of. She’d sounded fine, as far as that went. Until he’d asked to see her again.

  The excuses had started with that first morning-after phone call. Her cousin in Ponca City was sick and Blaire was going up there for the weekend to help her out.

  She couldn’t go out the next week because she and her mother were spending the weekend in Oklahoma City doing last-minute Christmas shopping.

  She couldn’t go out the next week because she was going to spend the whole week with her grandmother down in Ardmore so the woman wouldn’t be alone over the holidays.

  After that, her father had a bad case of the flu, so she had to help take up the slack at the feed store, and help her mother take care of her father.

  When her father got well, her mother came down with it.

  When her mother got well, Blaire came down with it.

  Justin had to admit that as excuses went, she had some good ones. But they’d spent the night together in early December. It was now the first week of February. He was starting to get the message. It was finally coming in loud and clear. The woman wanted nothing more to do with him.

  He wondered what it said about him that it took him two months for it to finally sink in, but he wasn’t used to rejection. It hadn’t happened often enough for him to easily recognize it.

  And dammit, it stung, being rejected. He couldn’t say he cared for it.

  “Whasa matter, Uncle Justin?” Six-year-old Libby, his brother Sloan’s new stepdaughter, leaned against the jamb of his open door. “You look all sad.”

  “Who, me?” He clipped his cell phone back to his belt and stood up. “Naw, not me.”

  Libby bounced into the room and straightened the bedspread he’d just been sitting on.

  “Thanks, sweets.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What are you doing up here? I thought you guys were watching TV.”

  “We are.” When she smiled, her whole face beamed. “Daddy’s making popcorn. Mama said to let you know so you could have some, too, if you wanted.”

  “If I wanted? Of course I want. Let’s go.”

  It still gave him a hell of a kick to hear Libby or Janie call his oldest brother Daddy. It probably tickled him almost as much as it tickled Sloan to have the new title.

  Everybody around him was getting married, he thought as he followed Libby downstairs to the living room. First Sloan and Emily last summer, then his middle brother Caleb and Melanie, their nearest neighbor and lifelong friend.

  Caleb and Melanie lived at her family ranch, Pruitt Ranch, over on the next section. Caleb had been there since their wedding back in December. It was the first time that all three Chisholm brothers had not lived under the same roof since the day they were born. It seemed odd.

  But that in no way meant the house was quieter due to Caleb’s absence, Justin thought with a silent chuckle as he rounded the corner into the mayhem of the kitchen. Emily and her two daughters—all three with blond hair and blue eyes, amid a hou
seful of black-haired, dark-eyed Indians—more than made up for Caleb’s absence.

  Especially since Emily liked to cook, and Caleb hadn’t.

  And Emily would box his ears if he ever said such a thing out loud. That is, if Grandmother didn’t get to him first.

  “There you two are.” Emily wiped her hands on the dish towel wrapped around her waist. “We were wondering what was keeping you. Is that popcorn almost ready?” she added to Sloan, who manned the microwave.

  “Just relax,” Sloan said over the popping of the corn inside the microwave. “Some things can’t be rushed.”

  “Oh, aren’t you funny.” Behind his back, Emily made a comical face at him.

  Janie and Libby burst into giggles.

  Emily darted them a look and placed a finger over her lips, asking for their silence.

  “Counting down,” Sloan said.

  The two little girls snuggled up on each side of him and counted down with the numbers on the microwave panel.

  “Six, five, four, three, two, one. Ding!”

  “Okay, that’s one. Here’s bag number two.” Emily tossed a second package of unpopped corn to Sloan.

  Snack time—assembly style—on the Cherokee Rose.

  Watching Sloan with his new family brought an ache to Justin’s belly that stunned him, dismayed him. Was there a part of him that wanted to get married and start a family of his own?

  The idea wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, and it wasn’t as if the word marriage hadn’t popped into his head a number of times in the past several months, but always in regard to his brothers, never to himself. He was only twenty-eight, for cripes sake. He didn’t need to get in any hurry about it.

  But whenever he saw what his brothers had, he got this funny emptiness, as if some part of him wasn’t yet finished.

  A couple of months ago he’d thought maybe that had something to do with Blaire Harding.

  Since she now wanted nothing to do with him, he figured if she did have anything to do with that empty spot inside him, it was going to stay empty for a long damn time.

  “What’s with you these days, kid?”

  Justin glanced around the room and realized he and Sloan were alone in the kitchen. He must have spaced out for quite a while, lost in his own thoughts, not to have noticed that Emily and the kids had gone back to the living room. Sloan leaned against the counter, his arms folded across his chest, one stockinged foot crossed over the other one. His gaze was like a laser, zeroing in on Justin with deep intensity.

  “You’ve been moping around the place for days, maybe weeks, and that’s not like you. Wanna talk about it?”

  Justin stuffed his fingers into his hip pockets. “Nope.”

  One of Sloan’s eyebrows hitched up his forehead. “Nope?”

  “That’s right. Nope.”

  “Fine by me.” Sloan shrugged. “Just be aware that if you don’t talk to me about whatever it is that’s bugging you, Grandmother or Emily or both of them are going to be after you. They’re worried about you.”

  Justin frowned. “What are they worried about? I’m here, I’m eating and sleeping just fine, I’m doing my work, pulling my weight. What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal,” Sloan said, pulling away from the counter to stand on both feet, “is that while you’re doing all of those normal, everyday things, you’re moping.”

  “Moping?”

  “And you’re starting to sound like a parrot.”

  “Parrot?”

  Sloan’s lips twitched. “Come on, give me something to tell them, or I’ll make something up.”

  “Oh, yeah?” This should be good. “Go ahead, big guy, make something up.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell them you’re pining away for a woman.”

  Justin ran his tongue over his teeth. “A woman.”

  “Sure. Why else would a fun-loving guy like you start looking all hangdog, like you just lost your best friend?”

  “Is that the best you can do?”

  “I suppose I could tell them you’ve got hemorrhoids.”

  Justin whooped with laughter. God, he loved this brother of his.

  “What’s all the noise in there?” their grandmother called. “You two are missing the movie.”

  Justin slung an arm over his big brother’s shoulder. “We’re coming, Grandmother, oh love of my life.”

  Rose Chisholm made a snorting noise. “If I’m the love of your life, no wonder you’ve been moping around the place for weeks.”

  “Oh, but Grandmother!” Justin leaned over her recliner, bracing himself on the arms of the chair, and planted a wet, sloppy kiss on her cheek. “You are my sunshine. The light of my life. My reason for being. You’re the jam in my jelly roll.”

  Libby and Janie giggled, while Rose tried to shoo him away like he was a pesky fly.

  “Get on with you,” she said, her lips twitching.

  “But Grandmother, I love you. Let me count the ways.”

  “I’ll count your ways, young man. Sit down and hush up. Cruella’s about to get her hands on the puppies.”

  Justin had casually claimed to Sloan that he was sleeping fine. At one o’clock that morning he kicked back the covers, realizing that, for this night at least, he’d lied.

  Grandmother swore by warm milk. He didn’t think he could choke down warm milk, but a glass of cold might help. He stepped into his jeans and pulled on a flannel shirt against the nighttime chill of the house, and against the off chance of running into a female.

  The place was crawling with females these days. His grandmother had always been there, of course. She had raised him and his brothers since their parents died when Justin was a baby. But no other femalehad lived under their roof until Sloan brought Emily home with him.

  Then there was Emily, and her two little girls.

  A couple of months ago, they’d added Maria and baby Rosa to the mix. They and Maria’s husband, Pedro, were living in the spare room downstairs, where Justin had moved when he gave his room upstairs over to the girls. Then Caleb had left, so Justin moved back upstairs and Maria, Pedro and Rosa moved in.

  Musical bedrooms. But lots of females, and Justin liked it that way, even if it did mean he had to make sure he was dressed before he dared step out of his room or even open his door. A small price to pay, he knew, for the company of so many lovely women.

  Who needed one specific, special woman, he told himself as he crept down the stairs in the dark, when he was surrounded at home by so many very special ladies?

  One of whom he scared the fire out of when he rounded the corner into the kitchen and spoke.

  “Emily?”

  “Oh! God! Justin. You took ten years off my life.”

  “I’m sorry. What are you doing sneaking around down here in the dark in the middle of the night?”

  “Shh,” she said putting a finger to her lips. She turned on the small light over the stove. “You’ll wake Rosa and her parents.” Their room was down a short hall off the back of the kitchen. “And I could ask you the same question.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d give a glass of milk a try. But I would have turned on the light once I got here. You didn’t. That’s why I didn’t know you were here, which is why I was so quiet, so I wouldn’t wake anybody up, when you were already awake and sneaking around—”

  “Justin.”

  “Huh?”

  “I’ve never heard you ramble before.”

  Justin took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not sure I’ve ever done it before. I don’t know why I did this time.”

  “Maybe so I wouldn’t ask you the inevitable question,” she said gently. She turned away and took the milk out of the fridge and poured them each a glass.

  “Thanks.” He took a glass from her, then pulled a chair away from the table for her.

  She took her seat, then he took his.

  “You’re not going to ask me what question I’m talking about?” she asked.

  Justin sipped hi
s milk, then used his forefinger to wipe his upper lip. “A lot of questions are inevitable. I’m sure you’ll come up with one.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m prying.”

  “Oh, no.” He reached across the table and took her hand. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. Emily, I love it that you care enough about me to worry. I just don’t like to see you worry, because there’s nothing to worry about.”

  She gave his hand a return squeeze. “Justin, how long have I lived in this house with you and your family?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Seven or eight months.”

  “That’s right. Now, don’t you think during that time I’ve come to know you pretty well?”

  “Okay, I can see where this is going. Yes, you know me pretty well.”

  “Which means I can tell when you’re not quite yourself. And Justin? You haven’t been yourself for several weeks. I just want you to know that one of the perks of having a sister-in-law, especially one who lives in the same house with you, is that you can dump your troubles on her, and she’ll listen. She might even be able to give you the female take on things.”

  “The female take on things?”

  “Yes. You know what I mean. Let’s say a man and a woman are driving down the road and up ahead they see a nice restaurant. The woman says, ‘Oh, look. Do you want to stop there for dinner?’ The man thinks about it a minute, then says, ‘No.’ The woman gets her feelings hurt and sulks all night, then the man gets mad at her sulking, and before the night’s over, they have a whopping big fight, and neither of them has a clue what went wrong.”

  Justin took another swallow of milk, thinking he was going to enjoy this late night interlude. Emily was so earnest in her effort to help him. He couldn’t wait to see what she came up with.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What went wrong? Seems to me she was too sensitive, getting her feelings hurt over a restaurant.”

  “Well, yes and no. You see, when a woman asks if you want to eat somewhere in particular, or go to a specific place, or see a certain movie, she’s not simply asking your opinion. What she’s really saying is, ‘I’d like to eat at that restaurant. How about it?’ Or ‘I’d like to see this movie. Will you take me?’”