did the math. “Wow, six kids. I’m jealous. I was an only child. My mother raised me on her own.”
Claudia reached out and touched Joss’s shoulder, a fond kind of touch. “Sweet girl,” she said softly. And Joss felt all warm and fuzzy inside. “You come to dinner tomorrow night,” Jace’s mom said again. “We would love to have you join us.”
“Thank you,” Joss said, and left it at that.
A few moments later, Jace led her out onto the Rib Shack’s patio where the band was set up but taking a break. They found a reasonably quiet corner where they could talk without having to shout.
“My mother likes you,” Jace said.
“You say that like you’re not sure if it’s good or bad.”
“Yeah, well, Ma thinks I got my heart broken and she really wants me to be happy. She’s decided I only need to meet another woman, the right woman, so I can get married and settle down like my brothers and my sister. Now she’ll be finding all kinds of ways to throw us together.”
“We’ll resist, of course.”
“Of course we will.”
“Who broke your heart, Jace?”
He hedged. “It’s a long story.”
“I told you mine,” she teased.
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, you know, this isn’t the place or the time.”
She got the message. “You don’t want to tell me—and you know what? That’s okay.”
“Whew.” He made a show of wiping nonexistent sweat from his brow. “And even though I hate to give my mother the wrong idea about us, I think you ought to come to dinner at Jackson’s tomorrow. You know, just to be social.”
She gave him a slow look. She knew he was up to something.
And he was. He admitted, “I also want you there because I like you.”
“Uh-huh. What else? Give it to me straight, Jace.”
“Fair enough. If you come, everyone will think we’re together—I mean really together, as in more than friends. And that means my family will stop trying to set me up.”
“You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend?”
“You don’t have to pretend anything. If you’re with me, they’ll assume there’s something going on. It doesn’t matter if you tell them that we’re just friends. They won’t believe you. It doesn’t matter that I will tell them we’re just friends. They’ll only be certain we’re in denial about all that we mean to each other.”
“Still, it seems dishonest.”
“Is it our fault if people insist on jumping to conclusions?”
Strangely, she found that she wanted to go to dinner at his brother’s house. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good. And don’t let my mother get you alone. She’ll only start in about the family business and how she needs me in Midland and she hopes that you will be open to the idea of moving to Texas because she’s already hearing wedding bells in our future.”
“What is the family business anyway?”
“I didn’t tell you? It’s oil. Except for my oldest brother, Dillon, who’s a doctor, we’re all in oil.”
She laughed. “Knee-deep?”
“All the way over our heads in it, trust me. We’re Traub Oil Industries. I was a vice president in the Midland office. I quit the first of April. I was supposed to be out of there by the end of May. My mother and Pete kept finding reasons why I had to stay. I finally escaped just this past Wednesday. I’m never going back.”
“You sound determined.”
“Believe me, I am.”
“How come you call your dad Pete?”
“He’s my stepdad. My father, Charles, was something of a legend in the oil business. He died in an accident on a rig when I was little. My mom married Pete about two years later. Her last name is Wexler now. None of us were happy when she married him. We were loyal to our dad and we resented Pete.”
“We?”
“My brothers, my sister and I. But Pete’s not only a good man, he’s also a patient one. He won all of us over eventually. Pete had a heart attack a couple of years ago. We almost lost him. That really taught us how much he means to us.”
“It’s so obvious he’s head over heels in love with your mom.”
“Yes, he is. A man like that is damn hard to hate.” He took her arm. “Come on, I want you to meet my brothers.”
They wandered back inside. Joss met Dillon and Ethan and Corey and Jace’s twin, Jackson. The two did look a lot alike—meaning tall, dark and handsome. But it wasn’t the least difficult to tell them apart. Joss also met the Traub boys’ only sister, Rose, and Rose’s husband, Austin, and she visited with the wives of Jason’s brothers. She liked them all, with Lizzie, Ethan’s wife, possibly being her favorite.
Lizzie Traub was tall and sturdily built, with slightly wild-looking dark blond hair and a no-nonsense way about her. She owned a bakery, the Mountain Bluebell, in town. Everyone said that Lizzie baked the best muffins in Montana.
And beyond Jace’s brothers and sister and their spouses, there were Traub cousins, too: DJ and Dax and their wives Allaire and Shandie. And also Clay and Forrest Traub, two cowboys from Rust Creek Falls, which was about three hundred miles from Thunder Canyon.
Joss was starting to wonder how she was going to keep all their names straight when a woman named Melba Landry, who was Lizzie Traub’s great-aunt, caught up with them. A big woman with a stern face, Melba possessed a truly impressive bosom. Joss tried not to laugh as the energetic old woman cornered Jace and insisted she wanted to see him at her church the next morning.
“Of course he’ll come,” Joss told Melba. “There’s nothing Jace enjoys more than a good Sunday service.”
Beside her, Jace made a low groaning sound.
And Melba turned her sharp hazel eyes on Joss. “Excellent. I want to see you there, too, young lady.”
“Well, now, I don’t exactly know if I—”
“We’ll be there,” Jace promised. Joss elbowed him in the ribs, but he didn’t relent.
Aunt Melba said, “Wonderful. The service begins at ten.” And she sailed off to corner some other unsuspecting potential churchgoer.
The party continued. It really was fun. Joss forgot her troubles and just had a good time. She spotted Theresa Duvall dancing with a tall, lean cowboy, one of Jace’s cousins from Rust Creek Falls. Theresa clung to that cowboy like paint. She didn’t seem the least
