he wanted to be there when she met his brother. He wanted to be the one to introduce them.
“Ruby,” he called out as he began to take long strides in her direction.
She’d finally spotted him and stopped in her tracks, staring at him from just outside the barn.
“Ruby,” he said again, more softly this time, as he finally came face-to-face with her.
“Hi, Brooks.” Her almond-shaped eyes widened in a curious stare, waiting for him to speak.
“Hi.” He smiled like an idiot. He couldn’t even pretend to be cool around her anymore. “Good seeing you.”
She nodded but said nothing more. Yet the question in her eyes gave him pause.
“Are you working this afternoon?” he asked.
“Yeah, I was planning on taking Spirit out. Why?”
“My brother’s here with his fiancée. They just arrived. I wanted to introduce you.”
“Right now?”
He shrugged. He felt like an ass. And Ruby was trying not to look at him as if he’d lost his mind. Beau had invited everyone for dinner tonight to meet Eve and Graham, and as far as Brooks knew, all of the half brothers and Ruby were coming. “Well, yeah. I want you to meet Graham and Eve right now.”
Ruby’s brows drew together. “It’s important to you?”
“It’ll take only a minute or two, and yeah, it’s important to me.” Ruby was becoming important to him, more and more. It had taken seeing her with her ex to make him realize it. He was having some heavy-duty trepidation about his relationship with her and where it was going. Or not going. He’d grown up in a small family, without a father figure to look up to and sharing this part of himself with her meant a great deal to him.
Ruby eyed him for a short while, making up her mind, and then nodded. “I can do that.”
“Okay, great.” He wanted to wrap her up in his arms and kiss her senseless right there on the spot. He wanted to tell her she was more than a fling to him, more than a secret affair. She was beginning to fill up the voids inside him that he hadn’t even known were there. But now was not the time to tell her.
“I’ll just go to my place and change.”
“Change? Good God, Ruby.” He took in that shining sheet of black hair, those incredible cocoa eyes, the way her clothes hugged her body. “You don’t need to change a thing. You’re perfect just the way you are.” He put out his hand. “Come with me?”
She flushed pink at his compliment. “Galahad. You do have a way about you.”
And when Ruby put her hand in his, a sense of peace settled over him.
* * *
The introductions had gone well yesterday and Brooks was glad of it. Who knew Eve and Ruby would hit it off so well? The pretty green-eyed president of Elite Industries, soon to be his new sister-in-law, and Ruby, horse trainer extraordinaire, had talked fashion, country rock music, Cool Springs versus Chicago, and football, of all things. And because Graham and his fiancée were anxious to see some local Texas color, he and Ruby had brought them to the C’mon Inn for drinks tonight.
Now, as the Newport brothers nursed their whiskeys at the very place Brooks first set eyes on Ruby, the girls chatted and filled the corner booth with bright laughter. Both women were beyond pretty. Both were strong-willed and determined and accomplished.
Sitting beside his fiancée, Graham reached for Eve’s hand, claiming the woman as his, while Brooks looked on, wishing he could do the same with Ruby. His brother kept his eyes on Ruby and him, and that twin thing happened. Graham had figured out something was up. Brooks would be hearing about it later. Graham wasn’t one to keep his thoughts to himself.
The conversation turned to the feud between the Winchesters and the Newports, and Eve was trying to put things as delicately as she could. “So, you see, Brooks had this vendetta against my father and dug up some dirt—that proved not to be true, by the way—and went to the media to reveal the whole sordid scandal.”
Ruby’s gaze fell solidly on him. “That doesn’t sound like Brooks.”
“How well do you know my brother?” Graham was teasing, but the comment fell flat.
“I thought I knew him well enough,” she answered.
“It’s a long story and the bottom line is, we’ve resolved those differences,” Brooks said in his own defense. “Haven’t we, Eve?”
The uncertain look in Ruby’s eyes was knifing through his gut. What she thought of him mattered, and he didn’t want to lose his Galahad status with her. At the time, he’d had good reason to go after Winchester, but that was over and done with, and he’d made his peace with his brother’s fiancée.
Eve was cordial enough to agree. “Yes. Thanks to Graham. He took back all the allegations and, well, stole my heart in the process. But I will confess that Brooks thought he was justified in going after my father. For a time, it was thought that my dad, Sutton, could’ve fathered the twins, since he and their mother had been in love. And Brooks thought Sutton was hiding something.”
“As it turned out, Sutton is our younger brother’s father,” Graham said. “But our mom hid that pregnancy from Sutton and moved on with her life. He only recently found out Carson was his son.”
Brooks sipped whiskey. The entire mess that was his life these past few years was coming to light. He wasn’t ashamed of his actions—he’d thought he had good reason—but if he had to do it over again, he might’ve done some things differently.
His obsession with Sutton Winchester was coming to a close. The man was dying, and there’d been enough grief and heartache already over the mistakes and actions of the many people involved. It wasn’t just Sutton. Brooks’s mother wasn’t entirely faultless. Nor was his Grandma Gerty. There was enough blame to go around.
“Well,” Graham said. “It all turned out okay since I now have Eve and a baby on the way. So something wonderful came of all of it.”
Brooks raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”
Graham brought his tumbler up, and the women raised their iced tea glasses.
“To family,” Brooks said, staring into Ruby’s eyes.
“To family,” they all parroted, and then clinked glasses and sipped their drinks.
“Ruby, would you like something stronger?” Brooks asked.
“No thanks. I think I’ll lay off tonight. I ate too much of Lupe’s tamale pie at dinner.”
“Gosh, me, too. It was delicious,” Graham said, patting his stomach. “I hear you’re a pretty good pool player, Ruby.”
“She’s a hustler,” Brooks said, grinning.
“Is that right? Eve’s pretty good, too.”
The women exchanged
