Page 25 of Burnin' For You
No, probably they wouldn’t, but his mother would, he guessed. But Gerri Marshall would never admit to being needy. She’d been a rancher her entire life—grown up on the neighboring Grady G, and the wordclingywas not in her vocabulary.
Even after his father died.
“I dunno, Mom.”
A pause, then, “Actually, Knox could use some help. Our new hired man, Uriah, has to have hernia surgery, and he’ll be out for a few weeks. You were always so good at hay bucking—”
“Knox is still haying the old fashioned way? Mom, seriously—”
“It’s the way your father taught him.”
Them.The way their father had taughtthem.
Reuben tried to ignore the omission, the way it felt like a stab in his side. He’d walked away from his birthright voluntarily—probably he should remember that.
“We’re having a few other families out for a barbeque. I think Chelsea moved back last fall. She’s joined her father’s practice—”
“Mom. Chelsea and I are old news. Besides, you should be talking to Knox, not me.”
“I never understood what happened between you two.”
“It’s done, Mom.” Because he’d never tell her how he’d found his kid brother tangled up in the barn with Chelsea only a few months after Reuben and she had started dating.
He should have gotten the hint, then, that Knox would take whatever belonged to him. But he’d stood there, dumbfounded.
Because no one should have to stand on the sidelines watching their future, everything they thought they wanted, being ripped away.
Especially by his own brother.
“I just worry about you, Reuben.”
“You don’t need to, Mom. I can take care of myself.”
“You can always come home, you know.”
No, actually, he couldn’t, but he didn’t want to break his mother’s heart. “I’ll try, Mom.”
“Your father was proud of you. And so am I.”
Oh. He had no words suddenly, his chest tight.
“Please be careful,” she said quietly. He wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t recognize her way of saying she loved him.
“I will.”I love you, too, Mom.
He hung up. He probably hadn’t needed that reminder of his bad decisions. And his inability to fix them.
He pulled up to Conner’s fifth-wheel camper at the far edge of the permanent campground. Jed’s motorcycle was parked next to Conner’s truck.
As he opened the camper door, holding the box of cupcakes, Reuben caught the tail end of Jed’s voice.
“It seems the arsonist has either stopped targeting us or vanished.”
Jed looked up at Reuben, and Reuben nodded. With no new fires in the last couple of weeks and Conner’s last drone lost somewhere in the Cabinet Mountains, maybe the arsonist had given up.
Or—and this thought had Reuben’s gut in a knot—he was regrouping.
Jed had a map spread out on Conner’s table, the locations of the arson fires marked in red, and all others—natural and man-made—fires in blue. He stood over it, drinking a cup of coffee, his face grim, his expression that of a leader. The kind who planned on keeping his team safe and out of trouble.