Читать книгу Thankful For You - Joanna Sims - Страница 11

Chapter Four

His sisters greeted him in the only way they ever had: with open arms. Yes, they disagreed about how to handle Lightning Rock, but that couldn’t stop them from greeting each other with love. They had grown up in a home that was almost the exact opposite of the warm, welcoming feel of the farmhouse at Bent Tree Ranch.

Their house in the wealthy area of Hyde Park was a mansion; his mother insisted on keeping a full staff around the clock. Aunt Barbara, who had grown up in Chicago and run in the same social circles as his mother, prided herself on her cooking. His mother prided herself on having the ability to hire a personal chef. Hank and his father, Angus, were the closest brothers in age, but they couldn’t be further apart in temperament. Angus was austere and withdrawn from the family; the more his marriage to Vivian fractured, the more time he spent at the office. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he saw his parents show real affection toward each other. There was always tension crackling in the air when they were together—Nick often wished that they would just get a divorce already. So, very early on in their lives, it had been Taylor, Nick and Casey against the world.

“Nick.” His sister Taylor used one arm to hug him while she held her daughter, Penelope, with her other arm. “I didn’t know you would be here today.”

“We’re just in for supplies.” Nick tweaked his little niece on the nose while his eyes shifted from one person to another until they landed on his uncle seated at the head of the long table in the center of the kitchen.

Taylor switched with their little sister, Casey, who stepped into his arms and hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time even though they had seen each other when he first arrived in Montana.

“How are you feeling?” Nick asked his redheaded sister.

“I’m okay.” Casey smiled up at him. There was something in that smile that he didn’t believe. Casey had been diagnosed with uterine cancer and had undergone a partial hysterectomy. His younger sister had never made it a secret that she wanted to bear her own children; the cancer had taken that away from her and the family was watching her closely to see how she would handle it long-term.

One by one he made contact with everyone in the room. He had his hand clasped with the hand of his cousin Luke, a retired marine, when he saw Dallas come in to the kitchen. She walked directly to Clint, her best friend and Taylor’s bull-riding husband; the cowgirl hugged Clint and her eyes were full of trust and happiness when she looked at the bull rider. Nick felt a twinge of jealousy at the closeness between Clint and Dallas—it made him wonder how Taylor, who was looking at Dallas a little warily, could handle her husband having a woman as a best friend.

Aunt Barbara interrupted his train of thought. “This couldn’t have worked out any better if I planned it myself. Why don’t the two of you go get yourselves washed up? We were just about to sit down to eat.”

It felt a little bit as if the universe had conspired against him, but he was happy to see his sisters and his aunt’s kitchen smelled amazing. There was no sense passing up the delicious-smelling pot roast in the oven. He couldn’t cook worth a damn and neither could Dallas.

“Go on.” Aunt Barb tried to herd him toward the foyer so he’d hook a sharp left and wash his hands in the downstairs bathroom.

“Let me just say hello to Uncle Hank first.”

A look of concern brushed over his aunt’s face, but she let him do things his way. His way was to talk to his uncle without ruining his aunt’s lovely dinner.

“Good to see you, Uncle Hank.” Nick held out his hand to him.

Hank Brand, a man who closely resembled his own father, half stood up, shook his hand firm and brief and then sat back down.

“Go wash up like your aunt wants,” his uncle said. “We’ll have time to hash over things later.”

Aunt Barb must’ve been working on her husband night and day—this was a huge change in his uncle’s position. The fact that his uncle was even willing to sit down and discuss the future of Lightning Rock was better than he’d been willing to do for over a decade.

“Thank you, Uncle Hank.” Nick gave him a nod. “I look forward to it.”

That wasn’t necessarily true. He wasn’t looking forward to “hashing” things out with his uncle; he had resented his father for shirking his own responsibility and putting it on his shoulders. Yes, his father’s caseload as a circuit court judge was jammed. But for once, Nick wished his father would “unjam” that caseload and put his family first.

Aunt Barbara orchestrated the seating and he took his seat between Clint and Luke.

“Dallas!” he heard his aunt holler above the din of the family talking among themselves, all voices mingling together in a loud cacophony. “Where are you going?”

Nick followed his aunt’s sight line to where Dallas was just about to disappear into the foyer. “I’ve got work to do.”

“You’ve got eating to do.” His aunt shook her hand and gestured for Dallas to sit down.

Nick thoroughly enjoyed watching Dallas actually get outbossed by his aunt. Dallas ruled her own roost, but Bent Tree was ruled by Barbara Brand. Period. End of story.

* * *

Dallas hadn’t planned on joining the Brand family for dinner, but she couldn’t deny that she was glad Barbara had invited her to stay. Ever since she had been a little girl, eating at the Brands’ had been a treat. This was the table where she learned what it was like to be a real family—with a mom and a dad who loved each other. And perhaps she would always felt a little bit like the girl with her nose pressed against the glass, even when the Brand family did everything they could to make her feel like she was an honorary family member. Either way, sitting down for a meal in the farmhouse was the closest thing to a typical American family she had ever experienced. Barbara’s kitchen was buzzing with activity—loud talking, occasional arguing and so much laughter. Dallas sat quietly, watching, enjoying and soaking every second in.

The food started to get passed around the table, and Dallas’s stomach started to churn with hunger and anticipation. Nick smiled at her happily as he filled his plate with heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and smothered it with his aunt’s gravy made from the pan drippings, pot roast with homegrown carrots and onions. For the first part of the meal, she noticed that Nick didn’t talk—he just ate. Every now and again, Nick would make happy noises in between chewing and washing down the food with glass after glass of his aunt’s homemade root beer.

“This beats our dinner prospects out at Lightning Rock, hands down,” Nick said to her while he loaded some more food onto his plate.

It was Dallas’s pleasure to watch Nick interact with his family. She could see how close he was to his sisters, how much they adored him, and it spoke well of the kind of man he was. A decent man. A good man. A man to admire.

A man to love?

By the end of the meal, Dallas had landed on one certainty – having dinner with Nick and the rest of the Brand clan would be one of her favorite memories.

* * *

After his second full plate of food, Nick felt satisfied enough to slow down and actually enjoy the third plateful of food and the atmosphere of his first family meal at Bent Tree Ranch since he was a teenager. It had always felt homey and welcoming here at the ranch; his aunt had a big hand in that.

He’d found himself comparing his mother with his aunt, and wondering how two women from the same place, the same neighborhood, could turn out so radically different. But they did. Aunt Barb always had something good cooking in the kitchen. She was a homemaker, wife and mother, and proud of it. This was what he remembered: good food and good conversation. Laughter. Family. He’d missed this feeling and all those childhood memories he had pushed aside when the family fractured after the reading of his grandfather’s will bubbled to the surface. It had hurt to be separated from his aunt and his uncle. It had hurt not to be able to return to Bent Tree Ranch.

“Save room for dessert.” His aunt, who had leaned over him from behind to take his empty plate, stopped first to give him a little hug.

Nick groaned. He knew he would have double helpings of whatever his aunt would be offering for dessert. No doubt it would be homemade, chock-full of sugar and butter, super delicious, and fattening. He didn’t eat a lot of sweets even though he had a substantial sweet tooth. Law school required him to spend a lot of time sitting and studying—he didn’t want to develop a “dad bod” this early in his life. But with all the physical exertion he was putting out just to keep up with Dallas out at Lightning Rock, he could stand to eat a slice or two of whatever awesome dessert his aunt had baked.

His aunt stopped next by her husband’s side. She put her free hand on her husband’s shoulder—Nick remembered how affectionate his aunt and uncle were with each other and it was nice to see that, like many things at Bent Tree, that hadn’t changed either.

“Why don’t you and Nick go have a chat while I get things ready for dessert?” he heard his aunt suggest quietly.

The expression on Uncle Hank’s long face, a face that resembled Nick’s father’s in so many ways, shifted from satisfied to annoyed.

“I already had it in the works, woman. You don’t have ta keep remindin’ me like I’m Little Johnny who can’t tie his own shoes without help. You manage your business and I’ll handle mine.”

Aunt Barb didn’t appear the least bit bothered by her husband’s sharp comment. She just smiled, gave Hank a quick peck on the cheek and then took his plate over to the sink.

Nick could feel his uncle’s eyes on him; he had been trying to get Uncle Hank alone to discuss Lightning Rock, but Hank wasn’t interested in opening up a dialogue. He was reminded of the phrase “be careful what you wish for” because the idea of sitting down with his uncle was making him anxious in a way that he didn’t normally feel. But this was Uncle Hank—a man he’d idolized all his life—and he was talking about the one thing that his uncle loved only second to his family—Bent Tree Ranch.

His uncle balled up his napkin, dropped it on his plate, pushed back roughly from the table and stood up. Uncle Hank was a tall, slender man; the deep crevices around his eyes, on his forehead and around his mouth bespoke of a life lived in the sun. Even though he was eventually going to turn the operations of Bent Tree over to his middle son, Tyler, one day, Hank Brand appeared to be far from retirement.

Nick met his uncle Hank’s eyes; his uncle, without a word, gestured with his hand for Nick to get up and follow him. Nick wiped his mouth with his napkin before he stood up.

“Hey,” Taylor, always the mother of the siblings, said, “he’s dad’s brother – be respectful.”

Instead of addressing Taylor’s worry that he didn’t have full control of the temper he’d had since he was a teenager even as a full-grown man, Nick merely said to those still sitting at the table, “Save my spot.”

Nick followed his uncle into a small office off the kitchen. This was, as Nick remembered, Hank’s sanctuary. It was the one spot in the house that Aunt Barbara didn’t touch—no matter how disorganized or cluttered it became.