he’d wanted nothing more than to smell roses. It hadn’t made sense. The Hill Country was filled with wildflowers, and his family didn’t grow roses. But the desire to smell them had taken over and dogged him for days. He’d begun to think the heat had finally used his skull for an oven and baked his brain.
When he’d been shipped back to San Antonio to mend, he’d asked one of the nurses at Brooke Army Medical Center to get him a vase of roses. She hadn’t even blinked at his request, making him wonder what other types of odd things broken soldiers asked for after they’d been to hell and back. The scent of those roses had helped him more than the therapy sessions during those early days, convincing him each day that he was truly back home in Texas.
“Yoo-hoo, Earth to Ryan,” Simon said.
Ryan opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented.
“It’s your turn to draw tiles,” Brooke said beside him. Her voice sounded as soft as those yellow rose petals.
He plunged himself fully into the present, drawing letter tiles from the bag and refusing to catch his mother’s gaze. He suspected she would be wearing that too-familiar expression of worry for him. She thought she hid it well, but she was wrong.
When he revealed the three tiles to his teammates, Nathan groaned at the Q. But Brooke took it and the other tiles and immediately started rearranging letters. He did his best to hide the wide grin that wanted to spread across his face at the word her quick fingers produced. If the other team made the right play, his was going to be off to a great start. Suddenly, a game of family Scrabble didn’t seem like such a hardship.
BROOKE KEPT HER expression neutral, but she almost lost it when she glanced at Ryan and saw the edges of his mouth twitching. If she knew him better, she’d be tempted to nudge him in the ribs to keep him from giving away that she had a high-scoring play in the making.
“They’ve got something good,” Grace said as she nodded toward him.
Simon looked up from examining his team’s tiles. “What? No one’s even made a play yet.”
Brooke kept her competitive spirit tamped down until the other team placed their opening word, stare, on the board for a total of ten points. Only when she put her team’s last tile into its spot did she meet the eyes of her opponents and smile.
The forty points of oblique stared up at everyone.
Merline slapped her palms against her knees and laughed. “We’ve got ourselves a serious player.” Her pale blue eyes sparkled, and Brooke recognized the look of excitement at the upcoming challenge.
As play after play was made, Brooke wondered if there had ever been a more raucous game of Scrabble. She found herself laughing along with everyone else, and it felt good, like a massage to her bruised emotions. It’d been a long time since she’d had anything to laugh about. It was nice to be appreciated again, too, and that’s exactly how she felt when the various members of the Teague family went back for seconds—or in a couple of cases, thirds—of her desserts.
“I’m going to be fat in a week with your cooking, Brooke,” Simon said as he polished off another slice of orange-juice cake.
“You’ll just have to find more crooks to chase,” Ryan said.
Crooks? She met Ryan’s gaze, and he must have seen her unspoken question.
“Simon is our local sheriff. Ranching isn’t enough for him. He has to chase bad guys, too.” Ryan said it as though it was an old joke, but the revelation caused Brooke’s mood to shift. She thought of the last time she’d spoken with police officers and the horrible aftermath. Would Simon be able to tell she was hiding something?
Fatigue settled on her like a heavy, suffocating second skin. As soon as her team pulled out a win, she decided to make her exit. Luckily, it appeared as if everyone else was calling it an evening, too, so she didn’t stand out.
“Sorry if it felt like you got a bit of trial by fire tonight,” Merline said as she accompanied Brooke into the kitchen.
“It was actually fun. Can’t tell you the last time I played a board game.”
“Good. Now do you need some time off tomorrow to get settled?”
“No, I can be here whenever you need me.” She tried not to think about how early life got started on a ranch and how tired she was.
They nailed down the details of the work schedule for the next few days, and it felt good to have a solid plan instead of the uncertainty that had been her constant companion lately.
“Where are you staying?” Merline asked.
Heat crept up Brooke’s neck. “The Rochester.” The lofty name did not fit the run-down little motel a few miles outside Blue Falls, but the place had two things going for it. One, the low rental rate. Two, never in a million years would Chris think to look for her there.
“Oh, honey. You can’t stay there,” Merline said. “It’s awful.”
“It’s okay. I’ll look for a more permanent place on my day off.”
“No. You can stay here tonight if you don’t mind the couch. The bedrooms are full of stuff or torn apart for remodeling. And all the cabins are occupied.”
“Really, I’ll be fine.”
“What about the bunkhouse?” Ryan piped up.
Brooke looked across the kitchen island to where he stood on the other side. He didn’t meet her eyes as he twirled an apple that sat atop a pile in a large wooden bowl.
“That’s a good idea,” Merline said. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s clean and way better than the Rochester. Ryan, can you help Brooke get settled in the bunkhouse?”
He hesitated for a moment, as if he might be regretting opening his mouth, before finally nodding. “Sure.”
Brooke thought about objecting again, saying she could manage on her own if they’d just point her in the right direction. But she was exhausted, and the quicker she found a bed to collapse on the better. She could go get what little she’d left in her motel room tomorrow.
After another round of good-nights, she followed Ryan outside, smiling at him as he held the kitchen’s screen door open for her. Chris had held the door for her countless times, but looking back she realized it was all for show, to keep up his image. With Ryan, she got the impression that courtesy was as natural as breathing, that he would never not think to do it. She didn’t know how she’d deduced that about him after so short an acquaintance, but she believed in the absolute truth of it.
“The bunkhouse isn’t far,” he said as they stepped out into the night.
“Good. I think I’m even more tired than I realized.”
“You’ll sleep like a baby out here then.”
She nearly sighed out loud at the wonderful thought. The night before had been anything but restful. On top of her nervousness about her interview was the fact that guests of the Rochester obviously didn’t stay there to sleep.
When they reached her used Focus, packed like the proverbial
