The great-aunt stepped closer and extended her hand. “I’m Tabby Winston, Viv’s sister.”
As Axel shook her hand and smiled, he noticed Viv send her a scowl. He could feel the tension between the two women all around them. He wondered what that was about.
“I live here now,” Axel explained. “Home was a cabin at the base of the Badger Mountain where I used to work, as you know, but I decided to move home—here—a few months ago. My brother, the foreman, and my sister, the guest relations manager, like having a search and rescue specialist on the property twenty-four/seven, and turns out I miss the cowboy life, so here I am.”
That wasn’t quite the whole story of why Axel had returned to the ranch he’d vowed to steer far clear of for the rest of his days. But then his brother Noah had become a dad—of twins—and his sister had a baby, too, and family tended to bring family around, didn’t it? That wasn’t the reason he was here either, but he liked the less messy versions of the truth. Poking around in his gut had never appealed to Axel. On mountains, in dangerous situations, when clocks were ticking, there wasn’t much time for that kind of thing. Ranch life was a lot safer, and unfortunately, Axel had had a little too much time to think about a lot of things. Including his inability to stop thinking about Danny Winston’s mother, Sadie. He glanced around the throngs of her relatives gathered around the barns, pointing at the alpacas and hoisting children to laugh at the goats’ antics. He didn’t see her.
“Zul!” Danny said, leaning toward his great-aunt and reaching out his hand.
“Here you go, sweets,” the woman said, handing him the lion.
“Are we both named Zul?” Axel asked, unable to contain a grin.
“He turned his lion into Axel the Super Lion. Takes it everywhere,” Viv said.
Danny flew the lion high and low. “Soup Zul!”
Axel felt a soft one-two punch land in his stomach, the effect that pure sweetness sometimes had on him when he didn’t quite know how to digest it. “Well,” he said, awkwardly leaning Danny toward his grandmother so he could transfer him to her.
Viv took him. “He’s been saying your name ever since we told him we’d be going to the ranch where the hero who rescued him lives.”
Hero. Axel hardly thought of himself as that. For a bunch of reasons.
A beautiful woman with long, light blond hair and pale brown eyes he’d never forgotten suddenly burst through a group of preteens. Sadie Winston.
“There you are, Danny!” Sadie said, taking a deep breath. “My little sprinter likes to take off and make his mother a nervous wreck. He’ll keep you on your toes this week,” she added to Axel, those eyes finally landing on him.
“Nice to see you again,” he said. Quite the understatement. Seeing her again wasn’t exactly nice. The sight of her engendered all kinds of insane feelings he wasn’t particularly interested in delving into. Her pretty hair caught the sun and held his attention for a second. She wore a white T-shirt, olive-colored pants and gray sneakers.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her mother, Danny in her arms, moving over to where a bunch of chickens were pecking the ground. The great-aunt went to join another group by the alpacas’ pen.
Just the two of them now. He had a sudden flash of putting his hands on Sadie’s shaking shoulders, telling her he’d find her son. The look on her beautiful face, the absolute fear in her eyes. He wasn’t returning to base a second time without the boy, and he hadn’t.
He cleared his throat. “It was nice of your family to book the reunion here. Unnecessary, but nice.”
“You’re all my family has talked about the past three months. So trust me, it was necessary.” Her smile lit up her face. “I hope saving Danny didn’t put your job at risk,” she added.
“It wasn’t saving Danny that put my job at risk—it was me and ‘my stubborn inability to follow protocol,’ according to my boss. But it was for the best. It brought me home after a long absence and—” He stopped talking, realizing he was going off on tangents he had no interest talking about. So why did you bring it up? he wondered.
He’d broken some rules to find Danny, mostly concerning Axel’s own safety because the sun had just set. His punishment was two weeks enforced R&R, which had been fine with him. He’d surprised himself by returning to the family guest ranch that he and his siblings had inherited when their father died almost a year ago. And he’d never left. He liked his job here, patrolling the vast property on horseback to make sure all was as it should be, guest-wise, ranch-wise. And boy, were there always a lot of kids at the ranch. His niece and nephews—three babies, two his brother Noah’s and one his sister Daisy’s, and then countless kids of all ages as guests. At first, Axel had been overwhelmed by all the kids, but then he’d settled into the sight of them, charged with their safety on hikes in the forest and the minimountain just a mile behind the ranch. He’d thought being responsible for them would do him in, but instead, it filled him up, gave him back a tiny piece of himself every time he stopped a kid from careening off a cliff.
“Oh, my!” a voice yelped above the fray.
Axel turned; a very elderly woman in a wheelchair was on the path in the main petting zoo, a white chicken on her lap. Fluffernutter. She liked human laps and loved being picked up and snuggled by kids. Most of the chickens accepted their hugs for the extra grain they knew would be coming their way. Any chickens that nipped a two-year-old’s hand for daring to come too close were kept in a separate coop with a kid-free run.
“Declan,” a younger woman shouted, “take the chicken off your great-great-auntie’s lap this instant!”
“Sorry, Great-Great-Auntie,” a boy with light brown hair said, scooping up the chicken and setting it down.
“Don’t be sorry, Decky!” the elderly woman told him. “I asked him to put the chicken on my lap,” she called out. “I miss having my own chickens.”
The younger woman nodded at the boy, who put the chicken back on his great-great-aunt’s lap. The smile on the elderly woman’s face managed to warm Axel’s heart.
“That’s my great-grandmother, Izzy,” Sadie said, her gaze on her relative. She turned to Axel. “She’s ninety-nine years old. It was Izzy who started the tradition of annual family reunions. She used to hold them at her small ranch, but she lives with one of her daughters in town now, and no one has a property big enough to hold us all and keep the kids entertained.”
“She looks happy to be here,” Axel observed, the joy in Izzy’s eyes clear from where he stood.
Sadie’s mother returned with Danny, the boy still flying his superhero lion. “Axel, we’d like to invite you for a toast tonight at a bonfire by the river. Around eight o’clock? The young ones will need to get to bed soon after, so it’ll be quick. Please say you’ll come.”
He glanced at Sadie, whose eyes had widened as though she’d had no idea such a thing would be happening. The knowledge he’d see her tonight was both very welcome and a problem he didn’t want to think about too deeply. Something about her had gotten inside him in a way nothing had for three years. He’d recognized it right away—pure attraction, an inexplicable chemistry out of nowhere, an emotional pull. He’d tried to chalk it up to the situation on the mountain, the frayed nerves, the promise he’d made and would have died to keep. Anyway, Axel Dawson wasn’t going back to that time three years ago when a single mother had torn his heart in two.
“Zul and Zul!” Danny gleefully shouted as he flew his lion around and then pointed to Axel.
Oh, man.
“Please come,” Great-Aunt Tabby said, approaching them. Her sister, Sadie’s mom, lifted her chin and turned away, the tension between the two women so thick Axel could bite it. “We owe you everything.”
He was about to say he was just doing his job, but finding lost people wasn’t a “job.” It never had been and never would be. Search and rescue was who he was, the call in h
is blood and veins. That simple and uncomplicated.
He looked at Sadie, who seemed to be biting her lip, her cheeks slightly pink. “Of course I’ll come,” he said, and the women beamed.
Well, except for Sadie. Something was up there, but again, he wasn’t about to think about it.
The way he saw it, after one simple toast tonight, the hero stuff would be over. He’d stay fifteen minutes, shake some hands, smile at some kids and then he’d be free. The name of the game.
Chapter Two
“How ridiculous is this?” Sadie’s sister, Evie, younger by three years, complained as she flopped on the twin-size bed in their cabin’s bedroom. “Mom and Aunt Tabby haven’t spoken, except to yell at each other, in three months!”
“Very,” Sadie agreed, glancing at Danny, who was fast asleep in his porta-crib at the end of her own twin bed. She should be unpacking her and Danny’s clothes and toiletries, but she just wanted to sit her butt down and think. And not think at the same time. That was how things had been lately.
For example, she both wanted to think and not think about Axel Dawson. Everyone had been saying for three months that he was her hero, and damn right he was. But she had to keep her thoughts from running wayward, such as fantasizing about things that would never happen. One of her great-gram’s favorite expressions was You never know. But Sadie did know because she’d overheard those rangers. She’d be completely delusional to hope that Axel would magically fall for her. Her family hadn’t gotten the memo, though, despite her resending it countless times.
On the way from the petting zoo to the cabin, Sadie pushed her great-gram’s wheelchair and looked for escape routes while her mom and grandmother pressed for details on what Sadie and Axel had been talking about in front of the barn. Had he asked for her number? Had he asked her out? Would they be riding horses into the sunset this afternoon? Three sets of Winston eyes had been full of hope.
Save me, she’d sent heavenward, but her nosy relatives kept at it.
“My, is he handsome,” Great-Gram had said.
“That’s some physique!” her grandmother had put in. “You know, he reminds me of—who’s that handsome actor, Irish, I think? With the dark hair and blue eyes?”
Pierce Brosnan. And yes, Sadie totally saw it. Pierce back in the 007 days. Gorgeous. Like Axel.
“Look,” Sadie had said. “I know you all want me married off, but Axel is not the guy for me. He’s not interested in commitment. Do you want me falling for a guy who’ll never propose?”
“Like your poor sister,” Sadie’s mother had whispered, turning and looking to make sure Evie wasn’t in the vicinity. She was a few minutes behind them, walking with cousins, it had turned out. Sadie had wished her sister had walked to the cabin with them—she desperately needed her to change the conversation, and that would be easily accomplished, unfortunately, because of Evie’s broken heart. Her relatives were all over that—the big breakup two nights ago on Evie’s twenty-ninth birthday with the man she’d expected to propose. Sometimes the family was too much, like with Sadie, and sometimes they were heaven-sent, like when you were hurting so bad you couldn’t stand up straight. The Winstons had rallied around Evie, keeping constant vigil, bringing her pints of Ben & Jerry’s and boxes of Puffs tissues with aloe vera. The reunion would be good for Evie—a week of family support and long walks in the fields and petting alpacas.
Sadie hoped the week would have a similar good effect on her mother and aunt—who were not on speaking terms. They refused to talk about why, so no one could help the situation—and now the two were in separate cabins. Every year prior, Sadie, her sister, mom, aunt, gram and great-gram all shared living quarters for the annual family reunion. Sadie’s dad and grandfather were in cabin number three with Sadie’s uncles and male cousins. Everyone was seriously relishing being among their “own species,” as they called it, for an entire week.
One of the worst parts of the cold war between her mom and Aunt Tabby? That Sadie felt like it was her fault. The feud had started on the mountain when Danny had gone missing. Ugh. If only Sadie had been watching Danny more closely, she would have noticed he’d run off, and if he hadn’t gotten lost, her mom and her aunt wouldn’t be blaming themselves and each other—or at least, that was what she figured was at the heart of the fight. Things had been hunky-dory between them until that night.
“It feels so wrong that Aunt Tabby isn’t staying with us,” Evie said, pulling her shoulder-length blond hair into a low ponytail with a tiny velvet scrunchie from her toiletry bag.
It really did. There were two bedrooms in the roomy cabin, which could sleep six, enough for them all. Three in the larger bedroom, two—well, plus a porta-crib—in the smaller one and, if necessary, one person on the couch in the living room. Sadie’s mom, gram and great-gram were sharing one room, Sadie, Danny and her sister in the other. This cabin was only one story, so both bedrooms were on the first floor, key for a ninety-nine-year-old great-gram, and for a mom needing to lug a stroller.
“I know,” Sadie said. “I would gladly sleep on the couch and give my bed to Aunt Tabby, but she was adamant about sharing a cabin with her cousins and their families this year.”
“Yeah, because she doesn’t want to share a room with her sister,” Evie said, popping up to unpack her suitcase into the closet and dresser. “What do you think happened between her and Mom? They got into an argument on the mountain when Danny was lost, right? I wish I’d been there so I’d know more. But nothing else makes sense. That’s when it started.”
Ugh. The elder Winston sisters had always been so close, thick as ole thieves, and now: narrowed eyes, scowls and sarcastic comments under the breath. “I think so, but neither will talk about it. And you know how getting either of them to change their minds about anything is.” Both women were equally stubborn and always thought they were right. Sadie loved both women fiercely, but come on—get over it, already! This was the annual family reunion, and they should be celebrating being Winstons—not carrying on some grudge.
“Well, every time Mom asks me if I’m okay about the breakup,” Evie said, practically strangling the gray yoga pants in her hands, “I’m going to ask her about her breakup with her sister. Maybe she’ll stop asking!” Evie mashed the yoga pants into a ball and dunked them into the dresser drawer, then sighed and folded them nicely.
Sadie eyed her sister as Evie reached into her suitcase for her favorite hoodie, long, pale pink and fleece lined. Evie’s face looked like it might crumple into crying any second, and Sadie’s heart constricted.
Evie had given her boyfriend of three years an ultimatum two nights ago on, yes, her twenty-ninth birthday, and instead of getting down on one knee in the fancy restaurant he’d taken her to, which was what Sadie had expected all during dinner, he’d tearfully said he just wasn’t ready. Evie had left the lovely peridot birthstone earrings he’d given her in their velvet box on the table, gulped the rest of her wine and left, sobbing all the way home. Sadie knew this because Evie had called her two minutes into her walk home, and Sadie had rushed over in her car to pick her up and bring her to her house, where her sister had cried in her arms for hours.
Evie had done similarly for Sadie almost three years ago when her then-husband had told a newly pregnant Sadie he wasn’t cut out for fatherhood, sorry, and that he was leaving with the rodeo. They’d been married two months at that point, and according to her ex, marriage made him feel like he was stuck in quicksand. Ouch didn’t begin to cover how bad that had hurt. She’d loved her husband, even if she knew they’d had some big problems that hadn’t quite reared their ugly heads during the three months they’d dated prior to the backyard wedding at her grandparents’ house. The divorce, taking all her dreams of a family with it, had devastated Sadie, and Danny’s father had never come back, even to meet his son. These days, she was trying, at least, accepting fix-ups and blind dates and saying yes to coffee or dinner with the
okay-seeming men she met while at work or around town. So far, she’d give her dating experience a D minus. Maybe even an F.
The Winston sisters both needed a heart boost—not their beloved mother and aunt in a big fight during what should be a soothing, if not fun week away with the whole family.
“Marshall hasn’t texted!” Evie muttered, glancing at her silent phone on the dresser top. “Two days and nothing. Doesn’t he even miss me? Three years and nothing?” She burst into tears and dropped on the bed, letting herself fall backward.
“Aw, I’m sure he misses you like crazy,” Sadie said, going over to lie beside her sister. She took Evie’s hand, both their gazes on the ceiling, which was a lovely post and beam, something she hadn’t paid attention to when they’d arrived. The cabin was really nice—rustic yet spa-like at the same time. Sadie and Evie were both appreciators of spa-like.
“I want to marry him, Sadie. I want to have four children with him. I want to adopt an adorable shaggy dog from the Prairie City animal shelter. I want to start my future with the man I love more than anything on earth, except you guys. Instead, it’s all over.” Evie broke down in fresh sobs. “Why did I give him an ultimatum?” she croaked through her tears. “Why couldn’t I just be okay with how things were? And things were fine. Even if we weren’t planning our future.”
“You asked for what you wanted and needed,” Sadie pointed out gently. “That’s the most important thing you can do. You were honest with yourself and him.”
Evie swiped under her eyes and squeezed Sadie’s hand. “Fat lot of good that did me. Honest and miserable. Thanks so much, universe.”
A Family for a Week Page 2