go,” he told Snidely, and started back.
By the time they reached the house, Brylee had the kitchen cleaned up, about two dozen loaves of bread wrapped up in foil and ready for tomorrow’s bake sale, and was actually sitting down at the table, sipping from a cup of tea while she waited for the stove timer to ring so she could take out the last batch.
She’d pulled herself together while Walker was out, and he was grateful, because he never knew how to comfort her when she got into one of these jilted-bride moods.
“I kept back a few loaves for you,” she told her brother, smiling a genuine Brylee smile when Snidely walked over and laid his chin on her lap so she could stroke his long, gleaming back. “One in the breadbox, two in the freezer.”
“Thanks,” Walker said, hanging his hat on its peg next to the door and proceeding to the sink to roll up his sleeves and wash his hands the way he always did when he’d been outside. He remembered their father doing the same thing in the same way, and their granddad, too. There was a certain reassurance in that kind of quiet continuity.
“I guess you must have seen Casey and the kids today,” Brylee said easily.
“I saw them,” Walker said.
“And?”
“And what?” Walker grabbed a dish towel and dried his hands, his motions brisk.
Brylee chuckled. “Whoa,” she exclaimed. “Touchy.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about being touchy,” Walker pointed out, frowning at her.
Brylee held up both hands, palms out. “Okay, fair enough,” she conceded. “It’s just that I’m allergic to white lace and promises.” Her hazel eyes, set wide above high cheekbones, twinkled, and she reached back to free her hair from the rubber band that had held it in place, shaking her head a couple of times so her curls flew around her face. Before the wedding-that-wasn’t, Brylee’s hair had tumbled past her waist, but she’d had it cut to shoulder-length afterward, which was better, Walker supposed, than getting a tattoo or having something pierced.
“You might want to get over that,” Walker remarked, walking over to the fridge, opening the door and taking out a can of cold beer.
“Are you going to make a speech?” The question was mildly put, but it had an edge to it nevertheless. Brylee narrowed her eyes, her cheeks flushed from an afternoon spent baking bread in a hot kitchen. “Because you’re the last person on earth, Walker Parrish, who has room to lecture anybody about their love life.”
He hooked one foot around the leg of a chair at the table, scraped it back and sat, plunking his can of beer down on the red-and-white-checked cloth and regarding her steadily. “Who said I was fixing to give a lecture?” he asked coolly.
Brylee flashed him one of her wide, toothy grins. The woman was a walking advertisement for orthodontia now, but as a kid, her pearly whites had gone every which way but straight down. “It isn’t as if we don’t have this conversation every time there’s a wedding anywhere in Parable County.”
“What conversation?” Walker took a long, thoughtful draft of his beer. “You said you were allergic to white lace and promises, and I said you might want to think about getting over that. Where I come from, that doesn’t qualify as a conversation.”
Brylee rolled her eyes. For somebody who’d probably been down in the mouth all day, she’d certainly perked up all of a sudden. “I come from the same place you do,” she reminded him. “Right here on this ranch.”
“Is this discussion going anywhere?” Walker asked, suddenly realizing he was hungry. The only food he’d had since lunch, after all, was a slice of white cake, a few pastel mints and a handful of those tiny sandwiches held together by frilly toothpicks.
She reached out then, rested her hand briefly on his forearm and then withdrew it. “I know you worry about me, Walker,” Brylee said softly. “But I’ll be all right. I really will.”
“When?” Walker wanted to know.
“Things take time,” she hedged, making her big brother wish he’d left well enough alone and talked about things like the price of beef or the weather or, better yet, nothing at all.
“How much time?” he asked, because they were already knee-deep in the subject and wishing he’d kept his mouth shut in the first place wouldn’t help now. “It’s been a couple of years since you and Hutch parted ways and, far as I know, you haven’t so much as looked at another guy since then, let alone dated.”
Brylee propped one elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm, regarding him with a sort of tender amusement. “I’m running a business, Walker—a successful business, in case you haven’t noticed—and that keeps me pretty busy.”
“Too busy, if you ask me,” Walker grumbled.
“I didn’t ask you,” Brylee reminded him sweetly. Her brow furrowed in a slight frown, quickly gone, and another twinkle sparked in her eyes. “Are you afraid I’ll wind up an old maid, and you’ll be stuck with me for good?”
An image of Brylee sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair, her hair gray and pinned back in a bun, wearing a church-lady dress and knitting socks, flashed into Walker’s mind and made his mouth twitch upward at one corner. “Heck, no,” he teased. “I’d just park you in some nursing home and get on with my life.”
Brylee didn’t laugh, or even smile. Her expression was sad, and she gazed off into some unseeable distance. “What if we do end up all alone when we’re old?” she murmured. “It happens.”
“I reckon I’ll wait a decade or two before I start worrying about that,” he said. There had to be things he could say that would encourage Brylee, get her off the sidelines and back into the rough-and-tumble of life, but he was damned if he knew what those things were.
Like quicksilver, Brylee’s mood changed again. The timer on the stove made a chiming sound, and she pushed her chair back to stand, dislodging Snidely’s big dog head from her thigh. All hustle and bustle, she picked up a couple of pot holders and started taking tinfoil loaf pans out of the oven and setting them on the waiting cooling racks. “You’re right,” she said, as though there had been no lag in their verbal exchange. “Let’s wait twenty years and figure it out then.”
Remembering that he was hungry, Walker stood, went to the breadbox on the counter, a retro thing coated in green enamel, took out a loaf and set it on the counter while he rummaged through a nearby drawer for a knife. “It’s a deal,” he agreed, proceeding to open and close cupboard doors until he found a jar of peanut butter and one of those little plastic bears with honey inside. The bottle was sticky and the cap was missing, and honey went everywhere when he squeezed too hard.
“Honestly,” Brylee scolded, elbowing him aside, constructing the sandwich and shoving it at him, then wiping up the mess with a damp sponge.
Walker grinned at her efficiency. “You were born to pack lunches for a bunch of little kids,” he observed.
“Gee,” Brylee said, “thanks.”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant, Walker,” she broke
