Page 8 of Winning His Wager
“So…what exactly do youdo?” Dylan finally couldn’t take the silence. What was she going to do, stare at himallnight? The low lamps and candles he’d lit gave his far-too-handsome face a slightly evil glow and everything. Freaky.
Then again, she’d been going to bed around midnight most nights, only to toss and turn and everything until she got back up at six and went to help in the diner her father’s mother had started forty-something years ago or the dining room at the inn his father’s family had built one hundred years ago. She wastired.She could curl up there on that couch, with its blankets and soft-looking pillows andsleep.
But what if she cried in her sleep or something? Or had nightmares again? She had stopped having those nightmares about getting eaten by chupacabras years ago, but this was a time of stress. Anything could happen. She really hadn’t stopped having nightmares since the whole Surprise!-You-are-a-Talley! thing—and they’d just gotten worse since.
What had happened with Meyra, where her cousin could have died. And with the dead guys in the snow not even a week ago. Dylan hadn’t been able to get the sight of them out of her head. She just hadn’t.
Dylan had found those men dead. Buried in the snow behind the inn.
She would never forget.
She wasn’t so sure about sleeping in the same room with Cowboy “Truckie” Tyler, though. Not for a moment.
Still, she was sleeping in the dude’s house. She was going to just have to get used to him. Not like he would do anything he shouldn’t—he was her sister’s almost brother-in-law. And, well, she knew he wasn’t attracted to her or anything. Nothingreal womanabout her, after all. He had made that abundantly clear.
“What do you mean? I run this ranch.”
“Okay, well, unlike Nikki or Dusty, I do not really know what that means. We always lived inside city limits, even in little bitty towns. So Mom could get to help if she needed it.” Her mom would panic if they were too far from medical help. They’d always rented houses near hospitals. It was just one of thosethingsDylan had long accepted.
“I handle calving and repair the damned tractors. I keep snow off the damned drive. I fix fences, keep water available. I don’t know. I just do what needs to be done. Not like I make a list. I have three hands that come help. And I am working on something with a guy out of Texas to increase soil yield and better herd management. I just work.”
Okay, so getting a conversation started was going to take some effort. “Did you ever want to do anything different? I mean, did you just sort of hatch knowing you would be a rancher and everything?”
“Hardly. Figured I’d just grow up to be a hand somewhere. Gil did. Or thought I would work this one with my dad. Before he died.”
“Yeah, I think we have all heard the story ofGil.” His older brother had been a ranch foreman. His boss had died—and left Gil Tyler millions. It was the stuff legends were made out of. And Fletcher’s other brother had successfully published a bunch of mystery novels that Dylan had been reading for years. Wealthy and successful, both of them.
Their sister Nikki had marriedHunter Louis Clark,hottest guy in the universe, and was helping him build a movie production company in Masterson now.
And then there was the youngest brother right in front of her, Fletcher Truckboy Tyler. The man whose truck Dylan had stolen during a daring rescue of her sister Devaney during that whole Surprise!-You-Are-A-Talley! thing and all. She hadn’t had much choice, but Fletcher had hated her ever since. “So, Gil is the businessman, Ben is the author, Nikki is all about movies and books, and you…cows?”
He stiffened. Like she’d touched a nerve. Which…Dylan hadn’t meant to. “Something like that.”
“Hey, not saying it’s a bad thing. This isyours.Something you are doing yourself. No one can take that away.” She pulled the old quilt he had given her up. “How long has this been in your family?”
“This one was my parents’. They bought it right after Gil was born. I have lived here my whole life. The other half of my property—it has a house I’m going to rent out as soon as there is a tenant—was my uncle’s. His last name was Fletcher. He left it to me a few years ago. It was in his family for over one hundred and fifty years. My parents bought this place right next to his because it had been a part of the original homestead. My mother’s great-grandparents built this place, a bit at a time. Living area burned once—this part was rebuilt in the sixties.”
“So it’s back with whom it belongs.” Dylan squirmed again. “So…that’s like the inn. All of those real Talleys have had it since the very beginning, I guess.”
“Why do you do that?” he asked abruptly.
“Do what?”
“Every once in a while, you’ll slip. Refer to the Talleys as a separate group. One you aren’t a part of. Call themreal.Like you aren’t. They are your family.”
Well, she supposed she deserved that. She might have been a bit insulting earlier. “Because I’ll let you in on a little secret—I don’tfeellike a real Talley at all. I don’t know that I really want to be one, either. Not really. I mean, I like them all, and they are awesome, and I love them because they are my family, but…I don’t belong there. At the inn or the diner, I mean. We both know that. I know it. You know it. Queen Sister Darcey knows it. Charlotte definitely knows it. They all probably know it, but they just don’t want to say it out loud.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. Flo wouldn’t?—”
“No. She won’t say it, but I know it’s the truth.” She’d had four months to figure this out, after all. She just didn’t feel likeDylanat the inn with the rest of them.
She just didn’t.
But that was a secret she would never share—at least, not with her family. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt them.
Her grandmother, her uncle, her older sisters, her cousins—even her Poophead Dad—were all soproudof being Talleys, of the inn, it would hurt them to know she just didn’t feel like she belonged there. Like she didn’t feel she was one of them at all.
So Dylan would keep her mouth shut and just brazen her way through. Somehow.