the terminal and made their way to the outdoor parking area, where the truck waited.
Slim was there, pressing his nose against a partially lowered window as they approached. He gave a happy yelp of welcome and scrabbled to and fro across the backseat, unable to contain his excitement.
“You have a dog?” Nash asked, opening up his ears again and almost, but not quite, smiling.
“His name is Slim.” Zane confirmed the obvious with a nod, as he opened the truck’s tailgate and tossed the duffel bag inside. “Knows a thing or two about hard luck, I guess.”
“Then we ought to get along,” Nash replied, sounding far too world-weary for a twelve-year-old. “The dog and me, that is.”
CHAPTER THREE
NASH LOOKED AROUND the ranch house kitchen with a discerning eye—surprisingly discerning, in fact, for somebody in a skull-and-crossbones hoodie, with six inches of underwear showing above his belt line.
“Man,” he said, quickly evaluating the long-neglected space surrounding them. “This place is seriously underwhelming.”
“Kind of like your manners,” Zane retorted lightly, but without rancor. In the few hours he’d spent with this young half brother of his, he’d begun to understand the kid a little better. Nash probably thought he was doing a good job of hiding what he felt, but he was scared all right, jumpy as a cat in a room full of cleated boots. Ready to be shunted off at a moment’s notice to the next place where he wouldn’t fit in, and determined not to let anybody know he gave a damn when it happened. He’d consumed three cheeseburgers, a double order of curly fries and a milk shake when they stopped for lunch on the outskirts of Missoula, prompting Zane to wonder if Landry had fed him a meal or two before hustling him on board the first westbound plane with an available seat.
And then there were those god-awful clothes. Going by appearances, his duds being rumpled, worn-out and not recently washed, the kid might have made the whole trip in the cargo hold instead of the main cabin. Landry, the multimillionaire investment whiz, couldn’t have sprung for a few pairs of jeans and some T-shirts?
Most likely, Zane thought, with a stifled sigh, his brother hadn’t wanted to be bothered with anything so mundane as taking the boy to the nearest mall and outfitting him with the basics. After all, he had to get to Berlin, where he had an Important Meeting.
The message in that was obvious: the meeting was important, but Nash wasn’t. Susan, the soon-to-be ex-wife—again—had probably come to the same conclusion about her own place in Landry’s high-octane life.
Zane seethed a little, feeling self-righteous—until he recalled that, up until Landry’s phone call, he couldn’t have said where Nash was, what he was doing, who he was with. He hadn’t kept any better track of his kid brother than Landry had.
The boy was blood. How had he been able to ignore that fact for so long?
“Where do I put my stuff?” Nash asked, breaking into Zane’s rueful thoughts, having reclaimed the duffel bag when they got out of the truck a few minutes before. “By the back door, maybe?”
“You plan on making a quick getaway?” Zane countered evenly, as he refilled Slim’s water bowl and set it on the floor so the thirsty dog could drink.
Nash responded with a mocking grin. “You never know,” he said. He made a hitchhiking motion with one thumb. “I’m a travelin’ man.”
“You’re a kid,” Zane pointed out, after taking a few seconds to rule out the snarky answers that came to mind ahead of that one. Leaning back against the sink, he folded his arms while Slim lapped loudly from the bowl of water. “And you ought to know, better than most, how mean the big world out there can really be.”
Nash didn’t bat an eyelash; he was already a hard case—at twelve, for God’s sake. “But I’m safe now, right?” he drawled, dripping sarcasm. “No worries. You’re going to give me a home, right here on the range.”
A familiar desire to find Jess Sutton and throttle the man with his bare hands washed over Zane, but it was quickly displaced by a flash of admiration for Nash. The kid might be a smart-ass, but he had a quicksilver brain.
“Where, as it happens,” Zane responded, playing along, “the buffalo don’t roam.”
Nash rolled his eyes, then his shoulders. He was on the small side, and skinny and raw-boned, but he’d match Zane’s six-foot height one day in the not-too-distant future, maybe even exceed it.
“Can I take a look around?” the boy asked, sounding glum. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting much.
“Be my guest,” Zane answered. “Pick out a bedroom while you’re at it. There are plenty to choose from.”
Offering no comment, Nash wandered off to explore the premises. He was gone for a while, Slim trailing faithfully after him, which gave Zane a chance to assess the grub situation, peering into the fridge, opening and closing cupboard doors. Despite yesterday’s shopping trip in Three Trees, it wasn’t a pretty picture.
“Don’t you have any furniture?” Nash asked, upon his return.
Zane shook his head. His household goods were still in L.A., in his condo, and he already knew there was no point in having all that expensive junk trucked to Montana. None of it would look right here—especially his bed. It was a gigantic, mirrored thing, a monument to unbridled hedonism, lacking only notches on one of the pillar-size posts to tally his conquests.
He would miss the water-filled mattress, though.
All the other pieces—chairs and couches, a dining room set, a TV so big it took up a whole wall—were decorator-approved and half again too fancy for a run-down stone ranch house. Like the bed, they’d be so ostentatious as to be an embarrassment.
Not that he’d be showing off his sleeping quarters anytime soon, of course.
When an image of Brylee Parrish seeped into his mind like smoke, he nearly laughed out loud. As if, he thought. She’d probably already written him off as a hedonistic, interfering movie star, but even if she hadn’t, she would once she checked all the online gossip sites and found his name on practically every one of them.
“Just moved here myself,” he finally replied, feeling a distinct lack of nostalgia for the old place back in L.A., and the fast-paced life that went with it. “I haven’t had time to make a plan, let alone shop for a houseful of stuff.” By then, he was sitting at the card table in the center of the kitchen, with his laptop open. It was time to do a little research on child-rearing. “Anyway, there’s a lot to be done around the place, as you’ve probably noticed.”
Nash dragged back the second folding chair, which completed the dining ensemble, and fell to the seat with a sigh. “It’s not so bad,” he said, taking Zane by surprise. Had the kid actually said something civil? “Anyway, beggars can’t be choosers. That’s what my mom always tells me. When I can find her, that is.”
“You’re not a beggar, Nash,” Zane said, looking up from the computer screen, which indicated that he had a shitload of emails waiting for him. A daunting prospect, since at least eight of them were from his ex-wife, Tiffany. Tiffany. What had he been thinking, marrying that woman-child? Maybe he’d give her the monumental water bed; God knew, she’d get plenty
