Beth Cornelison - Rancher's Deadly Reunion

“You’re back from the airport already?”

“Yeah. Plane was on time. We got back a few minutes ago.” Brady propped a hip against the counter and jabbed his fingertips in his front pockets.

Roy Summers gave a small nod. “And how is Piper?”

“Fine.” Still beautiful. And witty. And determined to deny the feelings that are so clearly just beneath the surface of our broken relationship.

His father stopped at the sink to wash his hands. “She met Connor?”

“Yep.”

“And?”

“And what?” he asked irritably.

Roy frowned as he dried his hands on a dishcloth, then yanked open the refrigerator. He selected a beer and popped the tab on the can. “Jeez, never mind.”

“What do you want me to say? They met. Connor charmed her with his jokes. We stopped for ice cream. Connor and Piper had chocolate fudge. I had butter pecan. Anything else you want to know?”

His father took a long drink of his beer and gave Brady a sour stare. “Nope. Not a thing.”

Shoving away from the counter, Brady stalked across the worn linoleum floor to move Connor’s school backpack from the table to a hook by the mudroom. With his back still to his father, he said softly, “Sorry. I’m just...edgy.”

“Welp,” his dad said, pausing to take another sip, “best get yourself pulled together before this evening. Zane stopped me on the way in from the stable to ask us to join the family at the main house tonight for some kind of meeting.”

Brady faced his father and narrowed a dubious look at him. “A meeting? About what? Why does he want us there?”

“He didn’t say. Just that he’d like us to come. He wanted our input on some business or other about the ranch.”

Brady scratched his cheek while a wary curiosity warred with the logistics of attending the mysterious summit. “What do I do with Connor?”

His question earned a slight hitch of his father’s shoulder as Roy settled in his favorite living room chair. “Don’t know. Bring him. Or ask Helen if she’ll keep an eye on him for a bit.”

Helen Shaw had been a cook at the ranch for the last five years and the girlfriend of ranch hand Dave Giblan for the last two years. She’d flirted with Brady when she first arrived, but he’d let her know, as kindly as he could, that his heart belonged to someone else. Maybe that had been a mistake. Helen was great. She was everything you could want in a girlfriend and potential spouse. Except that she wasn’t Piper.

At the time, he’d still hoped that Piper would come around and realize they were meant to be together. But in every subsequent visit from Boston, Piper had been increasingly distant, more evasive, more guarded around him. Brady knew he should move on, find someone else to build a life with, but his heart was stubborn. Setting aside his feelings for Piper wasn’t easy, and just a glimpse of her when she was home for the holidays or stilted pleasantries when they crossed paths in the stable or ranch yard was enough to rekindle his hope.

And then Zane had agreed when Brady volunteered to pick Piper up from the airport today. He’d spent more time with her this afternoon than in all the years since their breakup combined. When she’d stumbled into his arms at the luggage carousel, the urge to kiss her had smacked him hard, shaken him to the marrow. If she hadn’t pulled away when she did, he’d have given the kiss her eyes had asked for...because her face had said she still wanted him. The sexy catch in her breath had been the same telltale signal of her desire that he’d learned when they made out in high school.

But then, damn it, she’d raised the shield she’d used for the last seven years to keep him at bay. The shift in her body language had said clearly that nothing had changed for her. She had closed the book on him and moved on.

Fine , he told himself, pulling out his cell phone to text Helen about babysitting. Message received, Piper. He was no glutton for punishment.

And yet... Brady knew he was sitting on a landmine. He had a moral responsibility to deal with the situation and correct all the wrongs that had been done in the past. He gritted his back teeth as resentment curled through him. All of his life he tried to do the right thing—for his father, for Piper and now for Connor. For all his best efforts, he’d gotten nothing but heartache, frustration and the burden of untangling the messes other people dropped in his lap.

He sent his text to Helen, and as he stashed his phone in his back pocket again, he hitched his chin toward his father’s beer. “If we’re meeting with the family tonight on ranch business, then maybe you should lay off the booze. At least until after the meeting.”

His father responded with a surly look and another pull of his beer. Then with a grunt of fatigue, his father shoved himself off the stuffed chair and carried his can to the sink. After pouring the rest of the beer down the sink, he sent a dark look to Brady. “There. Happy?”

Brady swallowed the bitter retort that rose on his tongue. He’d only be happy when he no longer had to retrieve his old man from bars where he’d gotten too drunk to drive home. And when he no longer had to cover for his father around the ranch on mornings when Roy was sleeping off a bender. His father had always been a heavy drinker, but this year, since Scott and Pam’s deaths, Roy had crawled deeper into the bottle.

Roy moved to the refrigerator and sent Brady a hooded glare over the open door. “What’s for supper?”

Brady scrubbed his hands on his face and shook his head. “Hadn’t gotten that far. There’s leftover soup. Guess I’ll make Connor a sandwich to go with that. What time is this meeting we’ve been asked to attend?”

“Seven.” His dad, the foreman at the Double M for the last twenty-eight years and a hand before that, bore all the signs of a life in the sun, a career of hard work and heavy drinking. Tanned, leathery skin with heavy creases around the eyes made him look older than he was, and his thinning brown hair bore a permanent crease from his sweat-stained Stetson.

Was that what he had in store? Brady wondered. Aging prematurely and finding his only solace to a lonely life in the bottom of a bottle? He loved ranching, loved fresh air and the wind in his face. He even loved the Double M as if it belonged to his own family. He appreciated and respected the McCalls, but he dreamed, too, of having his own place someday. He wanted to build a prosperous cattle ranch that he could leave to Connor. Maybe there was still a chance he’d find a way to go to veterinary school. He supposed it was getting time to make some decisions. Some hard choices. Having Connor in the mix now, along with his concerns about his father’s drinking, complicated things. He needed a steady income, a place for Connor to feel he had roots and stability for a while longer.

Of course, he’d also always thought he’d settle down and raise a family with a woman who shared his passion for the outdoors, animals and hard work. In his mind’s eye, ever since he’d stolen his first kiss from her behind the bunkhouse when they were twelve years old, that woman had always had Piper’s glossy dark hair and gray eyes. Her willowy body and full lips. Her sunny smile and contagious laugh.

After the last seven years of receiving the cold shoulder and distance from her, he really needed to let that vision go. Folding his cards and moving on was the smart thing to do. He knew that. But how did he walk away when he’d so recently been dealt the ace he now held?

No, he’d keep his seat awhile longer and play out the hand. Piper was worth one last chance.

That evening after dinner, Piper walked into the den with Josh and eyed the available seats for the family meeting. Spying her father’s big, comfy recliner, she headed for it. As did Josh. Realizing his destination, she quickened her step, as did he, until they were racing for the prized seat. They arrived from opposite angles at the same time and end up in a tangled, laughing pile that made the chair rock and creak.