Читать книгу Heart Of A Cowboy - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 14
ОглавлениеBRODY AND CONNER stood in the side yard of the main ranch house that blue-skied morning, keeping the length of a pitchfork handle between them, watching as two shiny RVs pulled out onto the county road, one after the other. Both horns tooted in cheery farewell and that was it. Melissa and Steven and the kids were on their way back to Stone Creek, Arizona, in the Bradmobile, while Davis and Kim were heading for Cheyenne, where they intended to pick up their just-weaned Yorkie pups.
And Conner was alone on the place with his brother, which was the only thing worse than being alone on the place period. Brody served as a reminder of better times, when they’d been twin-close, and instead of assuaging Conner’s loneliness, it only made him feel worse, missing what was gone.
Since country folks believe it’s bad luck to watch people out of sight when they leave a place, especially home, Conner turned away before the vehicles disappeared around the first bend in the road and made for the barn. He’d saddle up, ride out to check some fence lines and make sure the small range crew moving the cattle to the other side of the river, where there was more grass, was on the job.
The crossing was narrow, through fairly shallow water, and the task would be easily accomplished by a few experienced cowpunchers on horseback, but Conner liked to keep his eye on things, anyhow. Some of the beeves were bound to balk on the bank of that river, calves in particular, and stampedes were always a possibility.
Conner was surprised—and not surprised—when Brody fell into step beside him, adjusting his beat-up old rodeo hat as he walked.
“So now that the family is out of here,” Brody said mildly, “you’re just going to pretend I’m invisible?”
Conner stopped cold, turning in the big double doorway of the barn to meet Brody’s gaze. “This is a working cattle ranch,” he reminded his brother. “Maybe you’d like to sit around and swap lies, but I have things to do.”
Brody shook his head, and even though he gave a spare grin, his eyes were full of sadness and secrets. “Thought I’d saddle up and give you a hand,” he said, in that gruff drawl he’d always used when he wanted to sound down-home earnest. He came off as an affable saddle bum, folksy and badly educated, without two nickels to rub together, and that was all bullshit. No one knew that better than Conner did, but maybe Brody was so used to conning people into underestimating him, so he could take advantage of them when they least expected it, that he figured he could fool his identical twin brother, too.
Fat chance, since they had duplicate DNA, and at one time they’d been so in sync that they could not only finish each other’s sentences, they’d had whole conversations and realized a lot later that neither of them had spoken a single word out loud.
“Thanks,” Conner said, without conviction, when the silence became protracted and he knew Brody was going to wait him out, try to bluff his way through as he’d do with a bad poker hand, “but it’s nothing I can’t handle on my own.” Like I’ve been doing all these years, while you were off playing the outlaw.
Of course, Conner had had plenty of help from Davis along the way, but that wasn’t the point. The ranch was their birthright—his and Brody’s—and Brody had taken off, leaving him holding the proverbial bag, making the major decisions, doing the work. And that, Conner figured, was a big part of the reason why he didn’t have what he wanted most.
Brody sighed heavily, tilted his head to one side, as though trying to work a kink out of his neck, and looked at Conner with a mix of anger, amusement and pity in his eyes. Then he rubbed his stubbly chin with one hand. “This place,” he said again, and with feigned reluctance, “is half mine. So are the cattle and the horses. While I’m here, I mean to make myself useful, little brother, whether you like it or not.”
Conner unclamped his back molars. “Oh, I remember that the ranch is as much yours as it is mine,” he responded grimly, forcing the words past tightened lips. “Trust me. I’m reminded of that every time I send you a fat check for doing nothing but staying out of my way. That last part, I did truly appreciate.”
Brody chuckled at that, but his eyes weren’t laughing. “God damn, but you can hold a grudge like nobody else I ever knew,” he observed, folding his arms. “And considering my history with women, that’s saying something.” He paused, taking verbal aim. “You want Joleen back? Go for it. I’m not standing in your way.”
Conner spat, though his mouth was cotton-dry. “Hell,” he snapped. “I wouldn’t touch Joleen with your pecker.”
Brody lifted both eyebrows, looking skeptical. “You know what’s really the matter with you, little brother? You’re jealous. And it’s got nothing to do with Joleen or any other female on the face of this earth. It’s because I went out there and lived, did everything you wanted to do, while you stayed right here, like that guy in the Bible, proving you were the Good Son.”
Conner’s temper flared—Brody’s words struck so close to the bone that they nicked his marrow—but he wasn’t going to give his brother the satisfaction of losing it. Not this time. “You’re full of shit,” he said, turning away from Brody again and proceeding into the barn, where he chose a horse and led it out of its stall and into the wide breezeway. Brody followed, selected a cayuse of his own, and the two of them saddled up in prickly silence that made the horses nervous.
As usual, it was Brody who broke the impasse. He swung up into the saddle, pulled down his hat yet another time, which meant he was either rattled or annoyed or both, and ducked to ride through the doorway into the bright October sunshine.
“What would you say if I told you I’d been thinking about retiring from the rodeo and settling down for good?” he asked, when they were both outside.
“I guess it would depend on where you planned on settling down,” Conner said.
“Where else but right here?” Brody asked, with a gesture that took in the thousands of acres surrounding them. The Creed land stretched all the way to the side of the river directly opposite Tricia McCall’s campground. “I respect Steven’s decision to buy a place with no history to it, make his own mark in the world instead of sharing this spread with us, but I’m nowhere near as noble as our cousin from Boston, as you already know.”
Conner made a low, contemptuous sound in his throat and nudged his horse into motion, riding toward the open gate leading into the first pasture. The range lay beyond, beckoning, making him want to lean over that gelding’s neck and race the wind, but he didn’t indulge the notion.
He didn’t want Brody thinking he’d gotten his “little brother” on the run, literally or figuratively. “You’re right about this much, anyway,” he said, his voice stony-quiet. “You’re nothing like Steven.”
Brody eased his gelding into a gallop just then, but he didn’t speak again. He just smiled to himself, like he was privy to some joke Conner didn’t have the mental wherewithal to comprehend, and kept going.
The smug look on Brody’s face pissed Conner off like few other things could have, but he wouldn’t allow himself to be provoked. He just rode, tight-jawed, and so did Brody, both of them thinking their own thoughts.
About the only thing he and Brody agreed on, Conner reflected glumly, was that Steven, as much a Creed as either of them, should have had a third of the ranch and the considerable financial assets that came along with it. Steven had refused—hardheaded pride ran in the family, after all—and set up an outfit of his own outside Stone Creek.
He’d met and married Melissa O’Ballivan there, Steven had, and he seemed happy, so Conner figured things had worked out in the long run. Still, he could have used his cousin’s company and his help on the ranch, since Brody was about three degrees past any damn use at all.
It might have been different if Steven had ever wanted for money, but his mother’s people were well-fixed, high-priced Eastern lawyers, all of them. Steven, whom Brody invariably called “Boston,” had grown up in a Back Bay mansion, with servants and a trust fund and all the rest of it. Summers, though, Steven had come west, to stay on the ranch, as his parents had agreed. And he’d been cowboy enough to win everybody’s respect.
Even though he could have had an equal share of the Colorado holdings, which included the ranch itself, some ten thousand acres, a sizable herd of cattle, and a copper-mining fortune handed down through three generations, multiplying even during hard times, Steven had wanted two things: a family and to build an enterprise that was his alone.
And he was succeeding at both those objectives.
Conner, by comparison, was just walking in place, biding his time, watching life go right on past him without so much as a nod in his direction.
Brody had accused him of jealousy, back there at the barn, claiming that Conner had played the stay-at-home son to Brody’s prodigal, and was resentful of his return. The implications burned their way through Conner’s veins all over again, like a jolt of snake venom.
Conner had to give Brody this much: it was true enough that he’d gotten over Joleen with no trouble at all. What he hadn’t gotten over, what he couldn’t shake, no matter how he tried to reason with himself, was being betrayed by the person he’d been closest to, from conception on.
The idea that Brody, so much a part of him that they were like one person, the one he’d been so sure always had his back, would sell him out like that, with no particular concern about the consequences and no apology, either, well, that stuck in Conner’s gut like a wad of thorns and nettles and rusted barbed wire. It chewed at him, on an unconscious level most of the time, but on occasion woke him out of a sound sleep, or sneaked up from behind and tapped him on the shoulder.
Brody’s presence wasn’t just a frustration to Conner—it was a bruise to the soul.
Reaching the herd, the brothers kept to opposite sides, helping the four ranch hands Conner and Davis employed year-round—there had been three times that many at roundup—drive nearly three hundred bawling, balking, rolling-eyed cattle across the ford in the river.
The work itself was bone-jarringly hard, not to mention dusty and hot, even though summer had passed. It took all morning to get it done, because cattle, which, unlike dogs and horses, are not particularly intelligent, can scatter in all directions like the down from a dandelion gone to seed. They get stuck in the mud and sometimes trample each other, and many a seasoned cowboy has fallen beneath their hooves, thrown from the saddle. Once in a while, the man’s horse fared even worse, breaking a leg or being gored by a horn.
Brody proved to be as good a hand as ever, considering that he probably did most of his riding for show now that he was a big rodeo star, but what did that prove? Good horsemen weren’t hard to come by in that part of the country—lots of people were practically born in the saddle.
Good brothers, though? Now, there was a rare commodity.
Once all the cattle were finally across the river, enjoying fresh acres of untrampled grass, their bawls of complaint settling down to a dull roar, Conner spoke briefly with the foreman of the crew and then reined his horse toward home. He wanted a shower, clothes he hadn’t sweated through and a sandwich thick enough to cut with a chain saw. For all his lonesomeness, an emotion endemic to bachelor ranchers, he wanted some time alone, too, so he could sort through his thoughts at his own pace, make what sense he could of recent developments.
No such luck.
Brody caught up to him as he was crossing the river, their horses side by side, drops of water splashing up to soak the legs of their jeans.
It felt good to cool off, Conner thought. At least, on the outside. On the inside, he was still smoldering.
“That old house sure has seen a lot of livin’,” Brody remarked, once they’d ridden up the opposite bank onto dry land, standing in his stirrups for a moment to stretch his legs. The ranch house, though still a good quarter of a mile away, was clearly visible, a two-story structure, white with dark green shutters and a wraparound porch, looked out of place on that land, venerable as it was. A saltbox, more at home in some seaside town in New England than in the high country of Colorado, it was genteel instead of rustic, as it might have been expected to be.
In the beginning, it had been nothing but a cabin—that part of the house was a storage room now, with the original log walls still in place—but as the years passed, a succession of Creed brides had persuaded their husbands to add on a kitchen here and a parlor there and more and more bedrooms right along, to accommodate the ever-increasing broods of children. Now, the place amounted to some seven thousand square feet, could sleep at least twelve people comfortably and was filled with antique furniture.
Conner, spending a lot of time there by himself, would have sworn it was haunted, that he heard, if not actual voices, the echoed vibrations of human conversation, or of children’s laughter or, very rarely, the faint plucking of one of the strings on his great-great-grandmother Alice’s gold-gilt harp.
Spacious and sturdily built, the roof solid and the walls strong enough to keep out blizzard winds in the winter, the house didn’t feel right without a woman in it. Not that Conner would have said so out loud. Especially not to Brody.
“I guess the old place has seen some living, all right,” he allowed, after letting Brody’s comment hang unanswered for a good while.
“Don’t you get lonely in that big old house, now that Kim and Davis are living in the new one?”
Conner didn’t want to chat, so he gave an abrupt reply to let Brody know that. “No,” he lied, urging his tired horse to walk a little faster.
“You remember how we used to scare the hell out of each other with stories about the ghosts of dead Creeds?” Brody asked, a musing grin visible in spite of the shadow cast over his face by the brim of his hat.
“I remember,” Conner answered.
They were nearing the barn by then. It was considerably newer than the house, built by the grandfather they’d never known, after he came home from the Vietnam War, full of shrapnel and silence.
He’d died young, Davis and Blue’s father, and their mother hadn’t lasted long after his passing. Now and then, in an unguarded moment, Conner caught himself wondering if he’d stayed single because so many members of the family had gone on before their time.
“You ever smile anymore?” Brody asked casually, as they dismounted in front of the barn. “Or say more than one or two words at a time?”
“I was thinking, that’s all,” Conner said.
“All the way up to five words,” Brody grinned. “I’m impressed, little brother. At this rate, you’re apt to talk a leg right off somebody.”
Conner led his horse inside, into a stall. There, he removed the gear and proceeded to rub the animal down with one of many old towels kept on hand for that purpose. “I don’t run on just to hear my head rattle,” he said, knowing Brody was in the stall across the aisle, tending to his own horse. “Unlike some people I could name.”
Brody laughed at that, a scraped-raw sound that caused the horse he was tending to startle briefly and toss its head. “You need a woman,” he proclaimed, as if a man could just order one online and have her delivered by UPS. “You’re turning into one of those salty old loners who talk to themselves, paper the cabin walls with pages ripped from some catalog, grow out their beards for the mice to nest in and use the same calendar over and over, figuring it’s never more than seven or eight days off.”
A grin twitched at Conner’s mouth at the images that came to mind—there were a few such hermits around Lonesome Bend—but he quelled it on general principle. “That was colorful,” he said, putting aside the towel and picking up a brush.
When Conner looked away from the horse he was grooming, he was a little startled to find Brody standing just on the other side of the stall door, watching him like he had a million things to say and couldn’t figure out how to phrase one of them.
Sadness shifted against Conner’s heart, but he was quick to dispense with that emotion, just as he had the grin.
“Sooner or later,” Brody said, sounding not just solemn, but almost mournful, “we’ve got to talk about what happened.”
“I vote ‘later,’” Conner replied, looking away.
“I’m not going anywhere, little brother,” Brody pressed quietly. “Not for any length of time, anyway. And that means you’re going to have to deal with me.”
“Here’s an idea,” Conner retorted briskly. “You stay here and manage the ranch for a decade, as I did, and I’ll follow the rodeo circuit and bed down with a different woman every night.”
Brody laughed, but it was a hoarse sound, a little raspy around the edges. “I hate to tell you this, cowboy, but you’re too damn old for the rodeo. That stagecoach already pulled out, sorry to say.”
The brothers were only thirty-three, but there was some truth in what Brody said. With the possible exceptions of team and calf roping, rodeo was a young man’s game. A very young man’s game, best given up, as Davis often said, before the bones got too brittle to mend after a spill.
Again, Conner felt that faint and familiar twinge of sorrow. He was careful not to glance in Brody’s direction as he made a pretense of checking the automatic waterer in that stall. The devices often got clogged with bits of grass, hay or even manure, and making sure they were clear was second nature.
“What now, Brody?” he asked, when a few beats had passed.
“I told you,” Brody answered, evidently in no hurry to move his carcass from in front of the stall door so Conner could get past him and go on into the house for that shower, the triple-decker sandwich and some beer. “I’m fixing to settle down right here on the ranch. Maybe build a house and a barn somewhere along the river one of these days.”
“There’s a big difference,” Conner said, facing Brody at long last, over that stall door, “between what you say you’re going to do and what you follow through on—big brother. So if it’s all the same to you, I won’t hold my breath while I’m waiting.”
Brody finally stepped back so Conner could get by him, and they both fell into the old routine of doing the usual barn chores, feeding the horses, switching some of the animals to other stalls so the empty ones could be mucked out.
“I meant it, Conner,” Brody said gruffly, and after a long time. “This place is home, and it’s time for me to buckle down and make something of the rest of my life.”
Surprised by the sincerity in his brother’s voice, Conner, in the process of pushing a wheelbarrow full of horse manure out to the pile in back of the barn, a fact that would strike him as ironic in a few moments, stopped and looked at the other man with narrowed eyes.
Brody’s gaze was clear, and he wasn’t smirking.
Conner almost got suckered in.
But then he reminded himself that this was Brody he was dealing with, a man who’d rather climb a tall tree to tell a lie than stand flat-footed on the ground and tell the truth.
“Brody?” he said.
“What?” Brody asked, a wary note in his voice.
“Go to hell,” Conner answered, wheeling away with the load of manure.
* * *
“YES!” SASHA CRIED, glowing and fairly jamming Tricia’s cell phone under her nose as she searched the commercial real-estate listings on the internet in her kitchen, hoping to discover that places like River’s Bend and the derelict drive-in theater were finally starting to sell again. “Mom and Dad landed in Paris without a problem, and they think it would be wonderful if you and I went horseback riding on the Creed ranch next Sunday!”
Discouraged—there were no properties like hers for sale online, it seemed—Tricia smiled nonetheless. Above their heads, a light rain began to patter softly against the roof, and twilight, it seemed to Tricia, was falling a little ahead of schedule. Valentino and Winston were curled up together on Valentino’s dog bed over in the corner, like the best of friends, snoozing away.
“Yep,” Tricia said, accepting the phone and reading the text message for herself. “That’s what it says, all right.” She felt resignation—she’d been hoping Diana would refuse to grant Sasha permission to ride strange horses—but there was also a little thrill of illicit anticipation at the prospect of spending time with Conner Creed.
Of course, it would have helped if she’d known the first thing about horses, and if the very thought of perching high off the rocky ground in some hard saddle didn’t scare her half to death. Sasha, perceptive beyond her tender years, rested a hand on Tricia’s arm and looked at her with knowing compassion. “You can do this, Aunt Tricia,” she said earnestly. “And I’ll be right there to take care of you, the whole time.”
Tricia’s heart turned over. The child was only ten, but she meant what she said—she’d do her best to keep Tricia safe. And that was way too much responsibility for one little girl to carry.
“I’ll be just fine,” Tricia assured Sasha, giving her a quick, one-armed hug.
Sasha’s attention had shifted to the computer monitor. “How are things in the real-estate business?” she asked, again sounding much older than she was.
Tricia sighed. “Not terrific, I’m afraid,” she replied.
“Dad says the economy is coming back, no thanks to the politicians,” Sasha told her. “He says he’s nonpartisan, but Mom says he doesn’t trust any elected official.”
Tricia smiled and pushed back her chair, being careful not to bump Sasha. Ten years old, and the kid was using words liked nonpartisan. There was no question that homeschooling worked in her case, but was she growing up too fast? Childhood was fleeting and, sure, knowledge was power and all that, but Tricia couldn’t help considering the possible trade-offs.
None of your business, she reminded herself silently, and turned up the wattage on her smile a little as she touched Sasha’s nose. “Let’s walk Valentino once more and then start supper.”
Sasha glanced at the window and gave a little shiver. “But it’s starting to rain,” she protested, not quite whining, but close.
“You’re from Seattle,” Tricia pointed out. “You won’t melt in a little rain.”
“But Valentino is sleeping,” Sasha reasoned, widening her eyes. “Maybe we shouldn’t disturb him. And if we go out, Winston will be all alone in the apartment.”
Tricia crossed to the kitchen door, took her jacket off one of the pegs and held Sasha’s out to her. “Winston,” she said, “will find ways to amuse himself while we’re gone.” Valentino awakened, apparently sensing that there was a walk in the offing, and stretched luxuriously. He went to Tricia, waited patiently for her to fasten the leash to his collar.
Sasha resigned herself to the task ahead and pulled on her coat. Her mind was like quicksilver, and she immediately backtracked to the Seattle reference Tricia had made earlier. “You’re from Seattle, too,” she said. “Are you ever coming back?”
“Yes,” Tricia answered, though there were times when she wondered if she’d ever get out of Lonesome Bend. It wasn’t just the properties her dad had left her—she’d made a lot of friends in town and, besides, the thought of leaving Natty alone in that big house bothered her.
They stepped out onto the landing and found themselves in a misty drizzle and a crisp breeze. It wasn’t quite dark, but the streetlights had already come on, and a car splashed by, the driver tooting the horn in jaunty greeting.
Busy descending the outside stairs, Tricia and Sasha both took a moment to wave in response.
“Who was that?” Sasha inquired, taking Valentino’s leash from Tricia when they reached the bottom.
Tricia laughed. “I have no idea.”
“When, though?” Sasha asked.
Tricia blinked. The child did not do segues. “Huh?”
“When are you moving back to Seattle?” Sasha sounded mildly impatient now, as they crossed the lawn to step onto the sidewalk.
“When I sell the campground and the drive-in theater,” Tricia answered, putting herself between the little girl and the dog and the rain-washed street. “And, of course, I’ll have to make sure my great-grandmother will be looked after.”
“Oh,” Sasha said, her expression serious as she weighed Tricia’s reply. “Then are you going to marry Hunter?”
Tricia sighed. For all their “carrying on,” as Natty referred to it, she and Hunter had never actually talked about marriage. “Do you want me to?” she asked, stalling.
To her surprise, Sasha made a face. “No. I just want you to live close to us again, so we can do things together, the way we used to.”
Tricia didn’t pursue her goddaughter’s obvious distaste for Hunter, though she felt a slight sting of resentment toward Diana for passing her unfair antipathy toward him on to the child. “You’re going to be living in Paris for a few years, remember? So we won’t be seeing each other as often anyway.”
Sasha looked up at her with big, worried eyes. “I miss you when we’re not together, Aunt Tricia,” she said. “You are coming to visit us in Paris, aren’t you? We could go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and visit the Louvre—”
“I’ll do my best,” Tricia promised quietly, hoping Sasha would cheer up a little. “France is a long way from here, though, and the airline ticket would cost a lot of money.”
“I’ll bet you could get a ticket with Dad’s frequent-flier miles. He’s got a million of them.”
“We’ll see,” Tricia hedged, as they all stopped to wait for Valentino to sniff the base of a streetlight.
Sasha changed the subject again, this time to the horseback ride on the Creed ranch, scheduled for the following Sunday afternoon. She was practically skipping along the sidewalk, she was so excited.
Tricia listened and smiled, gently taking Valentino’s leash from Sasha, but behind that smile, she was wishing for a gracious way to get out of the whole thing.
With Natty away, she really should help run the rummage sale and chili feed, and she’d already be super busy at the campground and RV park, with so many customers reserving spots. The biggest job—cleaning up—would come after everyone had gone home, but Murphy’s Law would be in full operation throughout the weekend, too. Things invariably went wrong with this electrical hookup or that part of the antiquated plumbing. Such situations made for unhappy campers, and Tricia had to be on call to make sure the repairs were done promptly.
Where, she wondered now, had she thought she would get the time to go riding on the Creed ranch? And what if she got hurt?
Valentino made good use of his walk, and Tricia, carrying her trusty plastic bag, picked up after him.
Back at the apartment, Valentino and Winston greeted each other as joyfully as if they’d expected to be apart forever, touching their noses and then retiring to the dog bed again.
Tricia washed up and started supper—a simple meat loaf made from canned soup—and Sasha, having been granted permission, sat down in front of the computer and went online to check her email.
It seemed to Tricia that kids today came into the world already hard-wired for all forms of technology. When she was Sasha’s age, she reflected, personal computers were just coming into common use, and things like digital cameras and MP3 players hadn’t even been invented yet. She’d listened to CDs and watched movies on VHS and wondered how her parents, not to mention her great-grandmother, had gotten by with vinyl records and analog TV.
She was considering all this, and keeping one eye on Sasha and the display on the computer monitor, plus chopping vegetables for a salad to go with the already-baking meat loaf, when the wall phone jangled.
“Hello?”
“It’s you, dear,” Natty’s quavery voice responded, with relief. Whom, Tricia wondered, had her great-grandmother expected to answer?
Natty promptly answered that unspoken question, as it happened. “I meant to call Conner Creed,” she said. “I must have dialed your number out of habit. How are you, dear? How is Winston?”
Tricia barely registered the words that came after I meant to call Conner Creed, but she managed to get the gist of them. “Winston and I are both doing fine. How are you?”
Natty sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve developed a little hitch in my get-along,” she said. Then, almost too quickly, she added, “Not that it’s anything serious, of course. I planned to be back in Lonesome Bend before the weekend, so I could oversee the chili making, but it seems my heartbeat is a tiny bit irregular and the doctors don’t want me traveling just yet.”
Tricia was so alarmed that she forgot to ask why Natty wanted to call Conner. “Your heartbeat is irregular? I don’t like the sound of that—”
“I’ll be fine,” Natty broke in, chirpy as a bird. “Don’t you dare waste a moment worrying about me.”
Tricia closed her eyes, opened them again. Forced a smile that she hoped would be audible in her voice. “I have a visitor,” she said, and proceeded to tell her great-grandmother all about Sasha and the move to Paris. “Oh,” honor compelled her to add, at the tail end of the conversation, “and I’m fostering a dog. I hope you don’t mind. He’s really very well behaved and Winston seems to like him a lot.”
“I didn’t object to Rusty,” Natty said, sounding less shaky-voiced than before and thereby lifting Tricia’s spirits, “and I certainly won’t object to this one. You’re alone too much. A dog is at least some company.”
Sasha, eavesdropping shamelessly, frowned.
When Natty and Tricia finally said goodbye, Sasha planked herself in front of Tricia, hands on her hips. “You’re just fostering Valentino?” Sasha demanded. “He doesn’t get to stay with you?”
