by D. L. Roan
“I thought working on the ranch was what you wanted!” Grey argued.
“It is! But I’m not a little girl anymore, Daddy. I’m a grown woman. You can’t keep treating me like I’m eight.”
“I don’t treat you like you’re eight. If I did you’d be—”
Dani pounded her fist on the table and pointed at her twin. “I am exactly two minutes older than Jonah and he’s married! Did you run a background check on Pryce and Chloe before he married them?”
“Leave me out of this,” Jonah protested, then looked up at Grey. “Wait, did you?”
“Of course not,” Grey insisted with a snort. “We’ve known Pryce since he was a kid, and Chloe is harmless.”
“And so is Ash,” Dani insisted through gritted teeth.
The room fell silent. Anger still fresh in her veins, Dani glanced over to see Matt and Mason exchanging worried glances. Her mom’s expression was unreadable behind her hand covering her mouth. Red-faced, Papa Daniel stared down at Uncle Cade who refused to make eye contact with anyone. The sheriff shrunk down in his seat, clearing his throat in the uncomfortable silence. Shit, she hadn’t meant to lose it in front of him. She hadn’t meant to lose it at all, but enough was enough.
“You kissed Brian Elderman?” Grey finally asked, his brows pinched into a scrutinizing scowl.
The air left Dani’s lungs in a whoosh. “That’s what you…out of everything I just said, that’s what you’re worried about?” She closed her eyes, sucking in a hopeless breath and releasing it with a frustrated growl instead of a string of curse words she knew would only make things worse.
“You were barely fifteen,” Grey continued.
“You’re impossible!”
She shoved past Grey and marched from the room. She couldn’t do this. Not today.
“Where are you going?” Grey called after her.
“Away from you!”
Chapter Three
“Dani, wait!” Jonah ran after her.
Grey moved to follow him, but Matt and Mason blocked his path.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?” Matt asked.
“That’s a dumbass question.” Grey tried to push past his younger brother, but Matt refused to budge. Grey held up his hands in surrender. “Look, I get it. I’ve apparently screwed up.”
“Apparently?” Mason asked from behind him.
Grey narrowed his eyes at Matt’s twin, then looked back to Matt. “Just get out of my way and let me go fix it.”
“Oh, you’re going to fix this, all right,” Gabby said, motioning to the bench seat at the kitchen table. “But we need to have a little chat first.”
“And that’s my cue to get back on the road.” The sheriff stood and gave Gabby’s hand a gentle shake. “Thanks for the coffee. I don’t get the good stuff very often.”
“I can pour some in a thermos to take with you if you’d like,” Gabby offered.
“Na, I’m good.” The sheriff gave Grey’s brothers, Matt and Mason, a parting nod, casting a weary glance at Grey. “Shift is almost over. Thanks for offering, though.”
“We’ll walk you out,” Cade offered.
“Good idea.” Papa Daniel clapped Cade on the shoulder. “We need to have a little chat of our own.”
When Cade, Daniel, and the sheriff were gone, Grey glanced between his two brothers and Gabby, and then sank down at the kitchen table, a dreadful feeling knotting in the pit of his stomach. “Christ, it was just a simple background check.”
Mason paced to the sink and propped his hip on the counter, his censuring gaze boring a hole in whatever argument Grey dared to contemplate.
Gabby straddled the bench beside him and propped her chin in her hand. Grey swallowed nervously. The fire in her loving, brown eyes was at odds with her amused grin. She was angry. How much so, he couldn’t tell, and that scared him more than Matt hovering behind her.
Grey forced himself to hold her gaze, but the longer he looked at her, the wider her grin grew, and he finally looked away. He grabbed his coffee cup and nervously swallowed the last sip. All the while, she sat there staring up at him, more beautiful and completely unreadable than he’d ever seen her in their twenty-some years of marriage.
“Say something,” Grey finally said in the wake of her convicting silence.
Gabby reached up and fingered the button on his shirt. “I’m sort of speechless.”
“Well, if you won’t say somethin’, I sure as hell will.” Matt braced his palms on the end of the long table, his jaw ticking as he stared at Grey. “Do you remember the first night Gabby came to dinner here at the house?”
Grey glanced at Gabby, then back at Matt as the memories of that night came rushing back like it was only yesterday. He couldn’t help the grin they inspired despite it being one of the worst and best moments of his life.
“Do you remember what I told you?” Matt continued. “Before I planted my fist in that big mouth of yours?”
“That’s not the same and you know it!”
“Wait a minute.” Confusion creased Gabby’s forehead and she turned to look at Matt. “I don’t remember you fighting the first night I came to dinner.”
Matt’s hard glare softened when he spoke to her. “You were in the barn making puppy love with Mason.”
“Oh.” Gabby smiled, her cheeks turning a beautiful red as she peered up at Mason. “I do remember that.”
“I waited until you’d gone home to kick his ass,” Matt said.
“You didn’t kick my ass,” Grey argued. Matt had thrown a mean right hook, and they’d all brawled until the fight had drained out of them, but he’d held his own against his younger brothers. Still could, and Matt knew it.
Gabby turned back to Grey. “You guys fought after I left that night? About what?”
Grey closed his eyes and took a defeated breath. “You remember how screwed up I was when we first met, about losing Con and Car’s mother?”
“Of course I do,” Gabby said.
“Well…” Grey massaged the knot in his chest as he tried to find the right words. Over the years, she’d heard the highlights of his struggle to accept their first wife’s death and allow himself to love again, but he’d never wanted her to know the details of his less than admirable behavior with his family. “I lost my temper and said some hurtful and regrettable things to Con and Car I shouldn’t have.”
“And I told you then,” Matt gritted out, “that if you ever hurt one of our children that way again, I’d kill you myself.” Matt held up his hand, his thumb and forefinger mere millimeters apart. “You are this close,” he warned Grey.
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Matt, you’re not helping.”
“I’m also not joking,” he said, staring down at Grey.
“You own a piece of this, too,” Mason said to Matt, taking a seat across from Gabby and Grey. “She clearly feels as though the three of us have been unfair, and I can see her point.”
Gabby nodded and reached across the table to take Mason’s hand. “We all own this. I should have spoken up sooner.”
“You weren’t the one who hired Uncle Cade to spy on Dani’s boyfriend,” Matt argued.
“Ash is not her boyfriend,” Grey insisted with a growl.
“So, you believe her, then?” Gabby asked. “That she and Ash are just friends? Because she’s been trying to tell you that for months.”
“I…” Christ. Grey cupped the back of his neck. “Stepped right into that one,” he mumbled.
“Can you see where she might think you don’t trust her?” Gabby asked him.
“Yes, dammit, but I do trust her. It’s the seven point eight million guys between the ages of twenty and twenty-five out there who have exactly one goal in life, who I don’t trust. And when she brings one of them home, unannounced, I want to know who the hell he is.”
“Wow.” Gabby’s eyes widened with surprise.
“What?
“Seven point eight million, huh?”
Grey shrugged. “The
census data is a few years old so… I’m guessing it’s a few thousand more by now, but yeah. Basically.”
“Good Lord!” Mason scrubbed his hands over his face with a frustrated sigh.
“Seven million? Seriously?” Matt asked, the anger in his eyes giving way to genuine concern.
“Almost eight,” Grey pointed out, glad at least one of his brothers was finally getting the point.
Gabby’s grin pressed into a hard line as she studied him.
“I’m not kidding, baby. The odds are seriously stacked against us. You of all people know what kind of psychos are out there.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt you’re serious,” she said with a sarcastic laugh, massaging her temples. “That’s the problem. And don’t you dare bring my father into this. It’s neither fair nor relevant.”
Not relevant? Grey ground his teeth together to keep from cursing. How was a human trafficker who abducted Daniel’s daughter not relevant? “Fine,” Grey reluctantly conceded, “but don’t you want to know if the guy she’s seeing has a criminal record? Or was married twice with a kid she doesn’t know about? Or has some secret internet porn gig he’s trying to trick her into?”
“Please,” Matt scoffed. “Dani would never be interested in a guy like that.”
“But how does she know? How do we know?” Grey asked. “We need to know more—”.”
“Then ask her,” Gabby said in a tone that clearly conveyed her lack of understanding about the male psyche. “Better yet, ask him. Instead of glaring and brooding and growling, the next time Dani brings a guy home, talk to him. Find out why someone as smart and amazing as our daughter is interested in him.”
“For the record.” Mason raised his hand. “I liked Ash. And Dani is right. We all did our fair share of hovering when she was growing up.”
“Some more than others,” Matt said, still glaring at Grey.
“We need to face the fact that she’s a woman now,” Mason continued.
The sharp pain in the center of Grey’s chest induced a groan he had no hope of containing.
Gabby took his hand in hers and made him look at her. “She’s a good, confident adult, Grey.”
“I know, but—”
“And every time you do something like this, you’re taking that away from her and pushing her farther away.”
“I know, but—”
“She’s never paid much attention to boys, Grey, but you can’t expect that to last forever. And when she does find someone who sparks her interest, it won’t be some random criminal. She’s smarter than that.”
“But other than moving a couple of hours away for school—something I think I’ve dealt with very well, by the way—she’s rarely left the ranch. She doesn’t know what’s out there.”
“Think about that for a second, Grey.” Mason pinned him with a pointed stare. “Con and Car had traveled the country in a tour bus a half-dozen times by the time they were her age.”
“Not to mention Jonah running off to fake-join the military two years ago,” Matt said with a sardonic snort.
“Which nearly killed me,” Gabby reminded him, “but I let him go, because I knew he had to find his own way.”
The more they talked, the heavier the pressure inside Grey’s chest became and the harder it was to breathe. Maybe Mason could just horse tranq him until Dani turned thirty. “Is it hot in here?” he asked, pulling at his shirt collar.
“The air conditioner is working just fine.” Gabby took his hand in hers again. “The only thing she’s ever wanted was to make her fathers proud.”
“She has,” Grey insisted, “She’s made us very proud, but—”
“And the more you deny her the right to be her own person, make her own choices, choose her own path—all things she has earned a thousand times over—the more she’s going to think she’s failed.”
“Gabby’s right,” Matt said.
Grey glared up at Matt. Traitorous fucker. He’d thought for a second he had at least one of his brothers on his side.
“I mean…” Matt cleared his throat. “I know all the things Gabby’s sayin’ are true, but…”
But she’s still my baby girl.
“She’ll always be your baby girl, Grey—and yes you said that out loud,” Gabby added with a chuckle. “All of you.” She reached out with her free hand and took hold of Matt’s and Mason’s. “You each own a piece of her heart that will always be yours, but you’re going to have to let her go. Every choice she’s ever had to make, she’s chosen right. That’s your doing.”
“Yours too,” Mason said, and Grey had to agree, a thousand percent. Gabby had always been so much better at this parenting thing than he and his brothers ever were.
“You’ve all been the best fathers any girl could’ve ever wished for, but now you have to trust her. She needs to know you believe in her. The same way you believed in Con and Car when they wanted to try out for that talent show when they were sixteen. And the way you believed in Jonah when he said he wanted to get married and start his own business. He’s the same age as Dani, Grey.”
“I know.”
“And in case you haven’t realized…” Gabby shifted her gaze between each of them. “Dani’s almost the same age I was when we met.”
“Oh fuck, no.” Grey doubled over and pressed his forehead to the table. “Don’t tell me that.”
“Um, yeah.” Matt coughed. “Darlin’, let’s not talk about that.”
“She’s a thousand percent more ready for whatever life she chooses than I ever was.” Gabby pulled Grey up from the table and made him look at her. “You know I’m right.”
Grey closed his eyes, squeezing them shut tight, as if doing so could somehow stop and reverse time like one of the superheroes in the comic books Uncle Cade collected.
“I know,” he finally said, the words leaving a bitter, regretful taste in his mouth and a big gaping hole in his chest.
Gabby drew in a long breath and blew it out with a huff. “But?”
Between this and the doctor’s appointment with Uncle Cade that morning, Grey felt like he’d been run over by one of their combines. His hands were clammy. His face was numb. His shirt was sticking to his back from the sweat coating his skin. His head hurt, chest ached, his stomach was in knots, and he might just be having a stroke.
Every muscle in his body rebelled against the four words he knew were true and completely inescapable. He grabbed ahold of Gabby’s hand and held on for dear life, unable to look her in the eyes as he said those four damming words.
“No buts,” he choked out. “You’re right.”
Gabby launched into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I knew the man I love was in there somewhere.”
Grey could barely feel her lips against his as she gave him kiss after excited kiss, then one long, seductive one that would have normally had him halfway up the stairs on the way to their bedroom by now.
“Baby.” He carefully peeled her arms from around his neck instead and held her away. “Any other time I’d be all over this celebratory make-up sex thing you’re doing, but I think I’m going to be sick.”
“And you wonder where Car gets his flair for drama.” Mason stood and walked around the table. He helped Gabby from Grey’s lap and pulled her in for a kiss of his own. “Thank you,” Mason said, forehead-to-forehead with their wife.
Gabby leaned into Mason, and Grey watched with a mixture of regret and appreciation. He regretted not being able to enjoy his fleeting moment with her, and was grateful his brother could give her what he couldn’t, the words she deserved.
“All part of my day job,” she said with a flirty grin.
“Well, you saved us a lot of work.” Mason kissed her forehead and pulled her into his arms, staring over her head at Grey. “We would have just killed him and buried him out by the feed barn next to old Trouble.”
Gabby chuckled and smiled over her shoulder at Grey. “A lot less messy this way,” she said with a wink.
“I
think I’ll still get a head start on diggin’ that hole,” Matt said with a smirk as he pushed from the table and made his way over to Gabby and Mason.
Gabby reached for Grey’s hand and pulled him up to join them, too. They’d had their fair share of disagreements and discord over the years, but that was to be expected in any marriage. Triple that in one where three brothers shared a wife and five kids, but Grey loved their life together. Every single second of it. And if there was one thing Grey’d learned from his mom and three dads, it was to never let a day go by without letting them know.
“I love you,” he said to Gabby and bent down to kiss her forehead before Matt did the same. “I know what I did was…”
“Asinine,” Matt grumbled beside him.
Grey elbowed his brother in the ribs before he snuggled up behind Gabby, making room for Matt on her other side for their group hug. “I was going to say unintentionally invasive but whatever. I’ll do better. I promise, baby.” He rested his chin atop her head.
“We all will, sweetheart,” Mason added.
“You need to tell that to Dani,” Gabby insisted.
“I will.” Grey nodded. God help him. What was he supposed to say? “As soon as I have my head on straight.”
Grey placed his lips against Gabby’s neck and breathed her in, her scent calming and grounding. She tilted her head, melting beneath his kiss the way she had from their first. The comfortable, familiar feel of her in his arms soothed a bit of the ache in his chest. At least this hadn’t changed.
“For the record,” he hummed against her soft skin, “I do not growl.”
“Ha!” Gabby laughed and turned to look at Grey over her shoulder. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m gonna go round up that shovel.” Matt slapped Mason’s shoulder.
“Grab one for me, too,” Mason replied. “I have a feeling we’re going to need that hole dug sooner rather than later.”
Minutes later, Grey sat slumped behind his desk, staring out his office window at the horse barns in the distance. The view had changed over the years. The barns had been expanded as he’d increased their cattle stock and Mason bought and bred more cattle horses.