“My dad’s here. Your girls will be here. And I’ll help out, too.” Then more quietly, she added, “I’m gonna have some time on my hands.”
Chapter Two
The Saturday barbecue at the Texas Brand was in full swing, with country music playing, grills sizzling, plates heaping, and a whole slew of Brands talking and laughing at once, when a distant dust cloud announced a new arrival.
Lily gazed out past the rolling lawn, over the hard-packed dirt road that ran beneath the tall arch with the words “Texas Brand” carved out of the wood. Sure enough, a vaguely pickup truck-shaped dust cloud moved closer.
Garrett, clan patriarch, was standing near the grill with a two-pronged fork in one hand. He gazed at the approaching vehicle and said, “Don’t know who it could be. We’re all here.”
“Not all,” his pretty wife Chelsea said, pointing at the dust cloud. “Whatever’s charging this way is big, and I do believe it’s also red.”
“Bubba!” Maria yelled, jumping up from her plate of food and slamming her hands on the picnic table so hard her glass of sweet tea jumped.
Her new husband, who was also Lily’s brother, said something near her ear. Then she shouted, “Ethan!” her cousin’s preferred name.
It was, Lily knew, his middle name. Ethan’s birth mother had named him after Garrett Brand before leaving him on that wide, welcoming front porch as a baby. The Brands had given her shelter when she’d been in trouble. She’d never forgotten the ways of this family, the closeness, the sheer goodness, of the Brands. So when she’d been desperate to hide her child someplace safe, this was the place she’d come. She’d left a note pleading with them to raise her son and to protect him from his criminal father in case she couldn’t get back to him herself.
And she never had.
The red truck moved closer, its dusty plume like a comet’s tail.
Lily’s stomach clenched into a knot so tight she couldn’t swallow the potato salad in her mouth. She reached for her water to wash it down. Ethan. Now, of all times? She was already in the midst of an existential crisis; she didn’t need him coming around and making it worse.
It didn’t matter. She had her first date with Fred, a phlebotomist from El Paso, tonight. Fred was a nice guy. He was smart, informed, could carry on an intelligent conversation. He was well-mannered, treated others kindly, and they liked some of the same TV shows.
Lily had described him just that way to Maria, and her sister-in-law had said, “Sounds downright scintillatin’,” ladling more sarcasm onto the words than gravy onto a biscuit.
Trying to look casual, Lily picked up her plate and carried it toward the house, all too aware of Maria and her cousin Willow tipping their heads together as she passed, while Drew, the youngest of the cousins, watched from nearby.
From behind the sleek curtain of her jet-black hair, Willow whispered, “Give her a minute.”
The truck’s tires crunched over the driveway just as Lily crossed the front porch, and shivers went up and down her spine. She hurried inside. The screen door banged closed behind her, and she stood just inside the cool, dim house.
Ethan had been left as a baby on the very threshold she’d just crossed, she thought. His mother must’ve known there was no better place on earth for a kid to grow up. Why would anyone ever want to leave?
Why couldn’t Ethan bring himself to stay?
She crossed through the big, comfortable home to the kitchen to rinse her plate, and mulled on the Ethan Brand she’d known first, long before she’d ever met him in person. The country music singer. His first hit song had made her long for the “Country Kind of Love” it described. She felt the same longing for it that she heard in his voice, especially when it broke on the chorus. And the ballad “Home” (side 1, track 3) had made her long to be in Quinn, Texas, before she’d even known its name.
Desert dark and badlands mean,
alongside fields o’ blue and green
Where horses graze and cattle roam
and people care, that there’s my home
She belonged in that place he described. She’d felt it since she’d first set foot in Quinn. Just like she’d felt Ethan all the way to her soul the first time she’d set eyes on him, a tall, dark cowboy. He had the jawline of a god, the smile of an angel, and the devil’s own dimples. And she’d kind of thought she might belong with him, too.
She didn’t think she belonged in nurse’s scrubs though. She was having a full-blown identity crisis. And Ethan was a big, handsome complication.
She could hear the rumble of his deep voice greeting his family outside. His love for them was genuine and deep. She wondered yet again why he stayed away so long between visits.
Her plate was clean and in the rack. The dishwasher was still running, so she couldn’t begin to load it with the second batch, but the dishes were rinsed and stacked, awaiting their turn. The cooking was done outside on Saturdays, all the sides having been made the day before, so the kitchen was relatively clean. She had no excuse to stay in there, and if she did so anyway, it would look as if she was hiding from Ethan, and she had no reason to do that either, as far as anyone knew.
So, unless she wanted them to start guessing her feelings for the black sheep of the family, she needed to buck up and get out there.
She dried her hands on a dish towel and went back through the house into the big front room just as the screen door squeaked open and Ethan Brand filled the space, guitar case in one hand, suitcase in the other.
