Her Very Own Family

by Gina Wilkins

  Tony frowned and glanced at Molly, who was leading her younger cousins in a rowdy game of Mother May I. “You aren’t worried that he might be a problem for Molly?”

  “We let all the boys know from the beginning that we will tolerate no misbehavior, especially where Molly’s concerned,” Jared said, his expression one that would probably make any teenage boy quake. “And we’ve taught her exactly what to do if any boy ever does anything that makes her the least uncomfortable. She doesn’t hesitate to talk to us about anything.”

  Cassie nodded. “We’ve never had any real problems with the few boys we’ve taken in. Jared’s favorite foster home was a ranch, and he follows the example his foster father there set for him.”

  Brynn thought again that it was nice to be around people who’d had enough experience with the foster care system that they weren’t uncomfortable with her background.

  Cassie glanced at her watch. “We’d better start cooking. I’m getting hungry, and those burgers and dogs aren’t going to jump on the grills themselves.”

  Apparently, they’d done this enough to have a routine down. Everyone seemed to have a chore to do to get the meal prepared. Everyone except Brynn. She asked Layla what she could do to help.

  A twinkle in her eyes, Layla motioned Shane over. “We really have plenty of help. Why don’t you show Brynn around the ranch until the meal is ready, Shane.”

  “I’d be delighted,” Shane replied with a flash of dimples. He crooked an arm in Brynn’s direction. “Shall we?”

  Smiling, she slid her hand into the bend of his elbow. “You’re sure there’s nothing I can do to help?” she asked Layla again.

  “Shh,” Shane warned loudly. “She’s liable to think of something. You make a great excuse to get me out of grilling hot dogs.”

  “Not exactly gentlemanly, Shane,” Layla chided fondly.

  “True. But honest,” he commented with a laugh.

  His obviously adoring aunt shook her head. “Go entertain your guest.”

  Brynn noted that several of Shane’s aunts and uncles looked at them in approval as they headed toward a large barn. She bit her lip.

  “Hmm. Seems some of my relatives have decided to try their hand at matchmaking.” Shane didn’t sound particularly perturbed by the prospect.

  “I, er, hope none of them are getting the wrong idea. That you and I are anything more than friends, I mean,” she added a bit awkwardly.

  He shrugged. “You and I know the truth. I like you very much, Brynn.”

  “I like you, too,” she replied, relieved that his words appeared to have no hidden meaning. He’d already made it clear that he wasn’t ready to settle down, and she’d said the same to him.

  Now they could concentrate on cementing their budding friendship without worrying about either of them getting the wrong idea.

  Joe arrived at the Walker ranch just as the food was being arranged on the tables that had been set out for the occasion.

  Tony spotted him first. “Hey, fratello. Good timing, as always. You’re here just in time to eat.”

  “Sorry I’m late. Something came up at the hospital.”

  Layla smiled. “We’re just glad you could join us today.”

  He kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Layla. By the way, you’re looking beautiful, as always.”

  She blushed in pleasure.

  The children noticed him then, and Joe was busy for the next few minutes dealing with greetings for “Dr. Joe.” He finally had a chance to greet the adults. But he was very aware that someone was missing.

  He glanced at Tony. “I, er, thought Brynn was joining you today.”

  “Brynn’s here. She’s off somewhere with Shane,” Layla said, looking rather smug about it.

  Michelle chuckled. “Layla has decided Shane and Brynn make a cute couple.”

  Layla smiled without embarrassment. “Well, they do. They’re the same age, and both of them are unattached. Why shouldn’t they be encouraged a little?”

  Joe could think of several reasons. None of which he intended to go into at the moment.

  He noticed that Tony was giving him an odd look. Joe made an effort to clear his expression. “So, where’s the food?” he asked.

  Michelle took his arm. “Right this way.”

  Brynn had been laughing at something nonsensical Shane said when she spotted Joe watching her from among the group gathered around the picnic tables. Her smile faded.

  She hadn’t known he was going to be here.

  Katie was sitting on Joe’s lap, a finger in her mouth, her head nestled in his shoulder. She was obviously tired from the ripping and romping she’d been doing with her cousins. Brynn knew it would take only a few minutes of rest before Katie was ready to go full steam again.

  Joe looked so utterly natural with a small child in his lap, his hand stroking her back with an absent, but so genuine, affection. He was a man who loved his family, who treasured each one of them, who would make a wonderful father, just as his own father had been.

  Maybe if Brynn had had a father like Vinnie—any father, at all—she wouldn’t have to turn away when a wonderful man like Joe D’Alessandro looked her way, she thought with an old, sad wistfulness.

  Shane put a hand on Brynn’s shoulder. “We timed this just right, didn’t we? They’re just setting out the food. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”

  She forced a smile as she looked up at him. “Something tells me you say that a lot.”

  “Hey, I’m a growing boy,” he protested. “I need my vitamins.”

  Since this “boy” was a well-developed man of nearly six feet, Brynn snorted inelegantly. “Yeah, right.”

  Brynn wasn’t sure how she ended up sitting between Joe and Shane during the meal. Dawne, Keith and Brittany Samples sat across from them. The younger children sat on quilts spread on the grass, while the five married couples took the other two tables that had been set up.

  It didn’t seem to bother Joe to be the only one at their table over thirty. He talked easily with the teenagers, discussing current music and movies with Brittany, sports and computer games with Keith and the future of medical research with Dawne, who was studying microbiology at UT-Dallas. Shane kept the conversation moving even faster with his teasing and joking, making the girls giggle and Keith snicker.

  Brynn didn’t contribute much to the conversation, responding only when she was drawn in by the others. She was so acutely aware of Joe sitting at her side, his thigh occasionally brushing hers—by accident?—that she could hardly swallow her food. The fact that Shane sat just as closely at her other side and didn’t have at all the same effect on her didn’t escape her attention.

  She was pathetic, she told herself grimly. No matter how often she told herself this infatuation with Joe D’Alessandro was a foolish and ultimately dangerous fantasy, she couldn’t seem to get past it.

  After eating, the children, refreshed and re-energized, wanted to ride on horseback. Jared and Shane obligingly saddled three gentle mares and conducted a riding session, taking the smallest tots in the saddle with them, letting the older ones ride alone but with close supervision. Molly, who’d been on horseback since before she could walk and had a wallful of barrel-racing ribbons and trophies to prove her love for it, eagerly gave riding tips to her cousins who weren’t quite as experienced at the sport.

  “Do you ride, Brynn?” Joe asked, leaning against the corral fence beside her as they watched the children’s antics along with the other adults.

  “No,” she admitted. “I haven’t been on a horse since I was a small child and sat on a pony for a photograph.”

  Overhearing, Ryan Walker clutched his chest in surprise. “Raised in Texas and you don’t ride? That’s almost sacrilegious, isn’t it?”

  Riding around the corral with Katie on the saddle in front of him, Shane called out, “I’ll take you riding when I’m finished here, Brynn.”

  “No. I’ll take her.” Joe looked at Cassie. “Okay if we take Storm
and Sunshine?”

  Looking a bit speculatively from Brynn to Joe, Cassie nodded. “Of course. They’re in their stalls, saddled up. We thought some of the adults might want to ride. Help yourself.”

  “Oh, but I—”

  Ignoring Brynn’s protest, Joe took her arm and all but towed her toward the barn. “Trust me,” he said. “You’ll have fun.”

  Ten minutes later, Brynn reluctantly allowed herself to be lifted into the saddle on a pretty little golden mare that Joe had told her was Cassie’s favorite. Speaking as impersonally as if he were a professional riding instructor and she a paying student, he placed the reins in her hands and gave her a list of basic instructions, assuring her that Sunshine was a well-behaved lady who would be very patient with Brynn’s mistakes. He fretted a bit that Brynn had worn loafers with her jeans and mintgreen T-shirt—loafers, he muttered, had a nasty way of sliding out of the stirrup—but she assured him that she would be careful.

  Once he was confident that she was securely mounted, he turned to the larger, black horse he’d called Storm. Brynn watched as Joe placed one booted foot into the left stirrup and swung his right leg easily over the horse’s back. In his denim shirt, jeans and boots, his usually neat hair ruffled by the spring breeze, Joe looked more like a cowboy than a physician, and Brynn couldn’t resist telling him so.

  He grinned. “Jared and Shane would probably laugh if they heard that. I grew up a Dallas city-kid, remember? I was hardly ever on a horse until ten years ago, when I got to know them. Jared taught me to ride while I was still a medical student and would come home for breaks whenever I got a spare weekend.”

  “You seem to be a natural at it,” she commented, watching as he wheeled Storm toward a path that led them away from the activities going on at the other side of the barn. She clutched her own reins when Sunshine followed at an easy walk.

  “Yeah, well, you haven’t seen Jared and Shane in action with their horses. I’ve accused them of communicating telepathically with the animals. Jared works magic with even the highest-strung horse, and Shane has them following him around like adoring puppies. I’ve seen him rodeo a few times. He and Runaway—his gelding—are a team, both of them seeming to understand the other perfectly.”

  Balancing carefully, and a bit awkwardly, on the hard saddle, Brynn tried to pay attention to her riding and the conversation at the same time. “Shane rodeos? I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s not a full-time thing for him. He’s a rancher at heart, but he likes to compete occasionally.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous?”

  Joe’s mouth kicked into a half smile. “Are you asking me to speak as a native Texan or an orthopedic surgeon? I’ve seen entirely too many broken bones resulting from the sport, but there’s a longtime fascination with it I can’t quite deny. Grip with your knees a little more, Brynn. And don’t hold the reins so tight—Sunshine isn’t going to run off with you.”

  Brynn tried to relax her grip. The path they followed turned and dipped into a shallow hollow that cut through a stand of trees. She could still hear the faint drift of voices and laughter from behind her, but the trees blocked her view of the houses and barns. Ahead of her, the path continued down to what appeared to be a small stream. Farther in the distance, through breaks in the trees, she could see more rolling pastures, dotted with the cattle Jared and Shane raised.

  Though she knew ranch life was hard work and occasionally high stress, Brynn could see the appeal in the life as she soaked in the late-afternoon sunshine, and breathed in the fresh country air. A cow mooed in the distance, echoed by the higher-pitched bawl of a calf.

  She clutched the saddle horn as Sunshine lurched over a rough patch of ground. Joe rode so easily and comfortably on Storm that Brynn was embarrassed by her own awkwardness. “You know where we’re going, I assume?”

  “Just down to the stream and back. I think that’s far enough for your first ride.”

  She looked at the shadows lengthening around them. “What time is it?” she asked, having forgotten to put on her watch that morning.

  Joe glanced at his left wrist. “Just after six.”

  She tried to keep the conversation going to distract Joe from her decidedly amateur riding. “It’s been a lovely day. The Walkers seem to thoroughly enjoy being together.”

  “They do. They know how lucky they are to have found each other. They don’t take the time they spend together for granted.”

  Brynn thought of how much fun Jason, Carly and Katie seemed to be having. “It’s especially nice for the children to have so many cousins to play with.”

  “Yeah. I always had dozens of cousins as playmates when I was growing up. I’m still close to several of them. I’m glad Tony’s kids have cousins on both sides of the family for friends.”

  Brynn was aware that her involuntary sigh was a wistful one. She hoped Joe hadn’t noticed.

  She should have known better.

  “You’re thinking of your own childhood?” he asked, reining Storm close to Sunshine’s side.

  She nodded. “I used to pretend I had a big family,” she admitted a bit sheepishly. “My imaginary friends included grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I knew all their names and even wrote out elaborate descriptions of them in my ‘secret’ notebooks.”

  “That sounds so sad.”

  She avoided his sympathetic eyes. “It was a way of entertaining myself when I was lonely. That was before I knew Kelly, of course.”

  “You said your parents had no families to take you in?”

  “No. I think I mentioned that my parents met in a home for orphaned teenagers. They’d both been in foster care for years. Mama told me my father was her first boyfriend. He died in a car accident when she was three months pregnant. She...never got over that tragedy.”

  “You said you were thirteen when she died?”

  She nodded, choosing not to go into the details of her mother’s death. “Even before she died, I spent most of my childhood in foster care. Mama was only seventeen when I was born, and she really wasn’t equipped to raise a child on her own.”

  “But you still saw her often?”

  Brynn shrugged. “On and off.”

  “Did you love her?”

  Startled by the question, Brynn bit her lip. No one had ever asked her that before. She didn’t know how to answer. Had what she felt for her troubled young mother been love? Or had she only wanted to love her? Had the anger she still sometimes felt when she thought about her childhood destroyed any warmer feelings she might have had for the woman who’d been so sadly ill-equipped to be the kind of parent Brynn had longed for?

  “Sorry,” Joe murmured when Brynn continued to hesitate. “That’s a personal question. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  She risked a glance at him. “It’s okay. I just don’t know how to answer.”

  “Then don’t.” He smiled suddenly and kneed Storm into a somewhat faster pace. “Follow me.”

  As if she had a choice. Sunshine fell into step just behind Storm, and Brynn wouldn’t have known how to guide the horse differently if she’d wanted to. All she could do was cling to the saddle and try to stay balanced as Joe rode Storm directly into the shallow stream and Sunshine followed.

  Cool water splashed upward from the horses’ hooves. Sunshine sidestepped a few large rocks, making Brynn shift in the saddle. She clutched the saddle horn even more tightly.

  “If I fall off this horse...” she warned Joe, her voice higher pitched than usual.

  He flashed her a grin. “Yes?”

  “I’ll expect you to put the broken bones back together.”

  “It would be my pleasure.”

  “Now, why doesn’t that make me feel better?” She gulped and adjusted her weight quickly when Sunshine stumbled slightly on the uneven stream bottom. “Joe!”

  He was laughing now, the insensitive male. “You’re doing fine. I think we’ll go back to the barn at a full gallop. I know, let’s race. Once Storm starts running, Suns
hine will, too.”

  Though he was teasing—or, at least, she sincerely hoped he was—Brynn gave Joe a glare. “Don’t even think about it.”

  He chuckled again, then wheeled Storm. “Lead her into a left turn. That’s right, just a gentle pressure on the reins. You really are riding well for your first time, Brynn.”

  His casual praise pleased her more than it probably should have. To hide her reaction, she concentrated even more intently on her riding.

  Back at the barn, Joe instructed Brynn to wait while he dismounted, so he could assist her. He closed Storm into his stall, and the big, black horse was already noisily munching feed when Joe turned to help Brynn.

  Standing at Sunshine’s left, Joe nodded to Brynn. “Okay. Put your weight on your left foot and swing your right leg over. Hold on to the saddle horn for balance, but don’t drop the reins yet.”

  She carefully followed his instructions. She lowered herself to the ground, then immediately staggered when her knees trembled. Joe’s hands closed instantly around her waist. She automatically clutched his forearms for balance.

  His voice held a note of sympathetic amusement. “It takes a minute or two to steady your legs after your first couple of rides.”

  Embarrassed again, she frowned. “We didn’t ride that long. I wasn’t expecting to be so wobbly.”

  “You held your muscles tensed the entire time. It gets easier when you learn to relax in the saddle. The more you ride, the better you get at it.”

  “I don’t know that I’ll ever ride enough to qualify as a horsewoman, but thank you for the lesson.”

  “I enjoyed it.”

  She was suddenly aware that he was still standing very close to her, his hands on her sides, his breath warm on her face. Her own hands were still resting on his forearms, and she could feel the firm bulge of muscle beneath her fingertips.