studied Zach and Zach could feel disapproval simmering just beneath the surface. Connor had been friendly, but only in a perfunctory manner and Zach thought it was just a matter of time before Connor quizzed him about his relationship with Emma.
There had been enough curious looks from all of them to remind him that Emma did not bring men home with her for the weekend. He had wished a hundred times over that he had not accepted her invitation, He would have to last until tomorrow afternoon when they would leave for his ranch.
“Zach,” Emma said, “my nieces are so impressed with you. I told them you are a world traveler. They want to know the scariest trip you’ve had or scariest place you’ve been.”
He smiled at a row of little girls staring at him expectantly and told about waking up with a huge snake in his tent, but that was not as scary as swimming and discovering a shark approaching him. By the time he got to that part, the boys had gathered around to listen. The girls sat quietly, their eyes opening wider, and he didn’t want to scare them. “Those were scary moments. Then there was a time I was camped far from a town. My things kept disappearing. I thought someone who worked for me was taking them until I discovered it was a very sly monkey. We found the stash and I got back my things, except my golf cap. I left that for him and hoped I’d see him wearing it, but I never did.”
As the girls laughed, he glanced at Emma to see her smiling while she watched her nieces.
He got out his phone. “I have pictures,” he said, opening it and quickly finding his electronic scrapbook. He held out the phone and Emma had to join the kids to look. She gasped, maybe only slightly less than the little girls. She bent closer, looking at a massive snake that was held by four men.
“Zach, is it alive?” she asked.
“Yes, but it had been fed, so it wasn’t moving much and everyone was safe.”
She glanced at Zach, and he suspected he had just dropped a notch in her estimation of his lifestyle. He suspected she liked homebody types who spent their weekends playing with the kids versus someone who traveled and encountered wild snakes and ran some big risks.
After lunch, they cleaned up and when everything was put away, a tag football game was planned with everyone participating.
“You can be scorekeeper, Zach. We always have two or three scorekeepers, so no one person has to keep up with all of us,” Brody said. “There’s a lot of give and take to scorekeeping for one of our family games. Usually we end up with about as many different scores as scorekeepers, so don’t take any of this too seriously. You’ll see.”
Zach agreed to the task, sitting on the sidelines with his foot resting on a cooler. Brody’s sister, Beth, joined him as scorekeeper along with Brody’s mom, Grandma Kate. Emma’s maternal grandmother, Grandma Nan, was on the field to play; she looked too young to be a grandmother. The oldest of the nieces and nephews was only six, so everyone played around the kids. As three-year-old Willie grabbed the ball and tried to run with it while the family cheered, Zach joined in, laughing at the child clutching the football as if it were a lifeline.
Zach glanced at Emma on the playing field. She had leaves in her hair. She had shed the bulky sweatshirt and wore a bright pink T-shirt with her jeans. She was watching him, laughing with him over the kids, and desire stabbed him. That electrifying tension flared to life, as unwanted and unexpected as it had been the first time she had walked into his home. He wished they were alone. Someone stepped between them and the tension eased, but it did not vanish.
The kids provided constant laughs with their antics and he saw why she liked to come home for the weekend. They were all happy with each other, having great fun. He had known fun with his brothers, but life had been tense if both his parents were present unless they were entertaining a house filled with their friends. Even then, it had never held this relaxed closeness. He realized he was enjoying a whole family of people who loved each other and exhibited a joy in being together. He had this now with his brothers, but they seldom were all together and until Caroline, there had been no small children around.
He could see why Emma thought he was missing something and why she had hated to leave him alone. He looked at her parents, thinking how different they were from his own. The love they shared showed constantly even though they were across the field from each other, or at opposite ends of the long table earlier. He realized he had never seen that kind of warmth between his parents. He looked at Emma, laughing with a small niece. Maybe Emma was the wealthy one after all.
Breaking into his thoughts, he looked down into big brown eyes as a little boy walked up to him. “Did you give my team a point?”
He wasn’t certain which child stood before him, guessing it was Jake. “Yes, I did give your team a very big point,” he answered, amused that the little kid was checking on him.
The child nodded. “Thank you.” He turned to his great-grandmother. “Did you give my team a point, Gran-Gran?”
“Yes, I did,” she said, leaning forward to hug him. “You’re playing a good game,” she said.
“Thank you.” Smiling broadly, he ran off, half skipped to his dad, who asked him a question, glancing over his head at Zach. The child told his dad something and his dad smiled at Zach and turned back to play.
Zach was unaccustomed to sitting out anything active. During the time-out, he motioned Emma over.
“I hate sitting on the sidelines. If three-year-old Willie can play, so can I.”
“Zach, you have to stay off your foot.”
“This shoe protects my foot. I am not accustomed to being a spectator. I’ll stop if my foot hurts. It’s only tag football.”
“You’ll be on my team then, so I can keep up with you.”
“Don’t hover. Your family will really think we have something going.”
Zach got into the game, enjoying himself even though he knew he was being foolish and risking more injury, but he hated doing nothing except keeping score. He had never been one to sit on the sidelines and he didn’t want to miss out now. He hobbled around and it was easy to keep up when they had geared down to a three-year-old level.
Before dinner they gathered wood to build a fire in a stone fireplace. When Zach started to help, Emma stopped him.
“This isn’t a chore you have to do. Go sit and we’ll get the wood.”
“I’m not doing much,” he said, brushing past her. Minutes later as he picked up a dead branch and turned, Connor blocked his way.
“Thought you were supposed to stay off your foot.”
“A few branches and I’ll quit. I still can’t get accustomed to sitting around.”
“Which is why Emma works on your ranch?”
“Right,” Zach said. He could feel anger from Connor and see curiosity in his expression.
“You’ve been all over the world, so you’re pretty sophisticated and experienced. Emma’s not. Did she tell you she’s never brought anyone home before?”
“We work together. I don’t know what she’s told the family, but I think I’m here because she feels sorry for me.”
“Yeah.
