ice storm just a month and a half ago,” he ventured after several moments.
“Yeah, we got hit up in Tulsa, too,” she said, “but then that area almost always gets it. You guys down here not so much.”
“Usually once a year,” he noted, “and this year it got us really good.”
“Holt and Cara must have been in a panic, with the wedding coming up and all,” Ivy commented idly.
Ryan chuckled. “Nope. Nobody was thinking wedding then. Well, Holt and Cara weren’t. The rest of us could read the writing on the wall. I have to hand it to them, though, once the idea hit, they didn’t waste any time. Almost before we knew it, we were standing up there in front of the altar watching them do the deed.”
Ivy shook her head. “Maybe that’s how it has to be sometimes,” she mused, “fast and furious. What’s that old saying? ‘Don’t let the grass grow under your feet’?”
“No danger of that,” Ryan quipped. “We’re already expecting to hear any day that they are expecting.”
A tiny gasp escaped Ivy. “So soon?”
“Why not?” Ryan asked. “Ace, Cara’s little boy, is just a year old, but chances are he’d be at least two before Cara could give him a brother or sister, and as Holt points out, they would like them to be close in age—similar to the two years between Holt and me.”
“What about Ace’s father?” Ivy asked carefully.
“He died not long after Ace was born.”
She hunched her shoulders, drawing her wrap tighter. “How sad.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” Ryan didn’t say that from the sound of things, the marriage hadn’t been a very good one or that Ace’s natural father had looked on him as more of a means to extract cash from his own parents than as a treasured son.
They walked on in silence for a few moments. Dawn hovered over the horizon now, ready to illuminate the city with the softest tendrils of day and outline the still-leafless skeletons of the stately pecan and hickory trees. It felt as if the world waited for the dawning of the Easter sun.
“I’d forgotten that sound,” Ivy said suddenly.
“What’s that?”
“The oil pumps.”
“Yeah,” Ryan lifted his head to catch the rhythmic ka-shunk, ka-shunk. “I never notice it. Unless it’s not there. And one day it won’t be. They’re gradually replacing these old pumps with a quiet electric system.”
“That’s too bad,” she said wistfully. “I find it a comforting sound.”
“Yeah, I guess I do, too. It nearly drove Ty crazy at first,” Ryan divulged with a chuckle. “Turns out that a penthouse is a very quiet atmosphere.”
“How did Charlotte and Tyler Aldrich ever get together?” Ivy asked, looking up at Ryan.
Suddenly struck by the elegant perfection of her features—delicate chin and brows, high smooth forehead, large, deeply set eyes of warm reddish brown, glossy pink lips bracketed by the most beguiling dimples, and a straight, slender nose—he couldn’t respond for a moment. Then a memory intruded, one he hadn’t even known he’d locked away, and before he could think better of it, he heard himself blurting it out.
“Wait a minute. Didn’t you used to have a little bump on the bridge of your nose?”
Ivy lifted a hand to that spot on her face, patches of dusky red blossoming on the apples of her cheeks. “You aren’t supposed to know that!”
“You did,” Ryan teased. “You had a cute little bump right at the top of the bridge of your nose.”
Dropping her hand, she grimaced. “Cute stops being cute at about twenty-four, thank you very much.”
“So you had it removed.”
“Yes, if you must know, I had it removed.”
Grinning, Ryan couldn’t resist the urge to tease her a little more. “You were the envy of every girl in town back in high school, and all along I’d bet you were obsessing about that tiny bump.”
“I didn’t,” she insisted. “Well, maybe a little bit, but it was my boyfriend who insisted I do it.” Abruptly, she snapped her mouth closed, as if regretting that last part. Ryan felt a pang on her behalf.
“What a jerk,” he declared.
“You don’t know the half of it,” she muttered darkly.
Again, a question fell out of his mouth without routing itself through his brain first. “How’d you wind up with a jerk like that?”
She sent an elbow to his ribs, just hard enough to make him laugh. “Basically, the same way I wound up here with you,” she retorted. “Now, enough about me. We were talking about Charlotte and Tyler Aldrich.”
“Right. Charlotte and Ty and how they got together.” Ryan cleared his throat of his laughter. “Simple really. Ty got stranded here overnight back in the fall. One night became a week. Later, his visits pretty much became dates. The next thing we knew, they couldn’t live without each other. You know how it goes. Now they’re building a big new house here and hoping that our grandfather, Hap, will move in with them once it’s finished.”
“Is that likely?”
Ryan sucked in a deep breath, mentally shifting gears. “I’m not sure he’ll have any other choice in the end. He’s almost eighty-one, and his arthritis isn’t going to get any better. If not for Cara, he couldn’t manage the motel now.”
“And if she has a new baby, she won’t be able to help out,” Ivy concluded.
“Exactly. I can’t see Holt letting her continue much longer in any event,” Ryan mused aloud. “Quite the protector, our Holt. Can’t say I blame him, though. It’s physically demanding work, and as you know, Cara’s a little thing.”
“What will happen to the motel if your grandfather gives it up?” Ivy asked.
“Ty and Charlotte have a young Hispanic couple they’d like to bring in to take over, with an eye maybe to buying the place. Makes sense when you think about it. None of us is going to take on the place. But, as I said, it’s Hap’s decision.”
“Will he be unreasonable?”
“No, I don’t think so. That’s not Granddad. In the end, I think he’ll give it up for the great-grandbabies.”
“Babies? Plural?”
Ryan shrugged. “Holt and Cara make no secret of their intentions, and Charlotte and Ty will start a family eventually, I’m sure. Probably sooner rather than later. And there’s Ace, already.”
“Hap accepts him as part of the family?”
“Of course. We all do.”
Ivy turned a
