got up to answer and found his younger brother there. Behind Josh the July sun glowed low on the horizon. It was a time of day Jackson especially loved on the ranch, but lately he’d been too distracted by dealing with Morgan to appreciate it.
“Hey, Josh. You want a beer?” Jackson went to his small office refrigerator and extracted a couple of bottles.
“Thanks.” Josh popped the lid and settled onto a chair with a groan.
“Something wrong?”
“Same as always. I came up from Texas since Grandpa was making noises as if he was finally ready to give up the ranch. Then I get here and it’s business as usual, so I’m heading back in a couple of weeks. I’d leave earlier, but you know Mom. I thought she’d have kittens when I said I wasn’t staying.”
Jackson nodded sympathetically. The family plan had been for him to get Great-Uncle Mitch’s ranch, and Josh their maternal grandfather’s place. The second part of the plan kept getting delayed.
“Never mind,” Josh said. “I just need to unwind.”
“Yeah.” Jackson thought for a moment, then opened his mouth. “You want to know something weird?” he asked. “I saw Kayla Garrison in town today, except she’s Kayla Anderson now. Remember her?”
“Who could forget Kayla? I saw her, too, on my way to the post office. She’s even hotter than in high school. Say, are you still interested in her?”
Jackson almost let out an emphatic no before recalling that Josh didn’t know the history between him and his old girlfriend.
“Can’t say that I am,” he said slowly.
“Then, would it bother you if I asked her out? That is, if I run into her.”
Jackson gulped a mouthful of beer rather than reply too quickly. He didn’t know what kind of woman Kayla had become, any more than he knew what she wanted to talk about with him. She might have even called to apologize for claiming he’d gotten her pregnant—unlikely, but not impossible.
He finally shrugged. “It makes no difference to me. Just employ the usual caution when it comes to women.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
ALEX SQUIRMED AS he listened to the faint murmur of his mother and her grandparents talking downstairs after dinner.
The discussion he’d dreaded all day was coming. Okay, so he’d been dreading it since the moment he’d decided to ditch Dad and head for Montana.
He just hadn’t been able to stand the way Dad got so excited about spending time with Brant, his new stepson, but didn’t seem to notice when his other two kids were around. Dad used to claim he didn’t care about sports, but now he was doing all that outdoor stuff with Brant and wasn’t interested in the things he and Alex had once done together. And it sounded as though the two of them had really gotten buddy-buddy on that camping trip they’d taken right after school got out.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Brant wasn’t such an obnoxious little creep.
Nah, Alex decided. Finding out his dad had adopted him when he was little would have been rough no matter what, though Brant being an obnoxious creep hadn’t helped.
Worst of all, Alex realized he should have figured it out a long time ago. He and Dad weren’t at all alike. Maybe, deep down, he had known and hadn’t wanted to admit it.
His sister slid into the room. “I gotta say,” DeeDee said, “I never thought you’d have the gazoomba to run away from home.”
Alex pulled himself up and faced the squirt. Why did she have to make up such strange words? You’d never know she was practically a genius. Maybe. Personally, he thought she’d just fooled the teachers and school counselor.
“I didn’t run away from home,” he informed her haughtily. “Guys who run away from home don’t leave letters to tell their mothers what they’re doing. Besides, I also emailed Sandy about it.” Sandy had been his best friend for as long as he could remember.
“That’s a technicality. Boy, was Mom pissed.”
“You’re too young to talk like that. Besides, Mom doesn’t get pissed, or at least I don’t think so.”
“Shows how much you know. She was pissed at Dad, too, at first because he thought you’d gone off for the day without telling anyone and hadn’t done anything about it, and then because he didn’t call her right off.”
“So she wasn’t mad at me?”
“Of course she was. Mom gets mad when she’s scared.”
“Really?”
DeeDee snickered. “You can build a computer, but you’re too much of an idiot to figure Mom out.”
“I wasn’t too much of an idiot to get here on my own, was I?” he countered.
“Probably just dumb luck.”
There was a knock on the door and Alex called, “Come in.”
It was Mom, and he couldn’t tell if she was angry or not. “DeeDee,” she said, “please go watch the baseball game with your grandpa.”
His sister grinned. “I’d rather stay and watch Alex get shredded.”
“Out.”
“Jeez, I never get to have any fun.”
“DeeDee,” Mom warned.
“Okay, okay.” His sister winked at him as she slid through the door.
“Close it,” Mom ordered.
“But closing it means I’ll have to work even harder to hear what you’re saying.”
“I don’t think so, young lady.” It was Grandpa, who’d come down the hallway and put his arm around DeeDee’s shoulders. “We’re going down to the family room to see how the Cubs are doing.”
“Okay.” DeeDee stuck her head back into the room again. “By the way, Alex, I am glad you didn’t get splattered on the road or kidnapped and taken by pirates to Shanghai or something. Surprised, but glad.”
“Get out of here, squirt.”
DeeDee simply grinned, and Alex was almost sorry when she was gone since their mother’s attention would have been split between them.
“Okay, I’m really sorry,” he rushed to say. “I guess it was a stupid thing to do, but I—”
“You guess it was stupid?” Mom interrupted, sounding incredulous. “I thought we’d brought you up with more sense than to do something so dangerous.” Her face was so tired and pale that Alex felt awful.
“You did, but...uh, Dad spends all his time with Brant and doesn’t
