Page 51 of Knox
Tate dropped the pretzel in his mouth, crunched, shook his head. “Takes these little midnight strolls around the bus, but otherwise stays in her bunk.”
“You’re sleeping in the bus?”
“Where else am I going to sleep—the luggage compartment?”
Knox said nothing, but he couldn’t help but glance upstairs to Ruby Jane and Coco’s room, where Kelsey and her bandmate—Glo?—now slept. Shoot, he wasn’t jealous, was he?
He schooled his voice. “Okay. So she needed to get away. And you thought of here?”
Tate lifted a shoulder. “Seemed like the right place.”
Except that Kelsey had said she didn’t want to see Knox. Not that he was complaining, but, okay. He could work with this.
“Stick around for Ma’s birthday, okay?”
“That’s sorta the plan.”
Knox nodded. Opened the fridge to grab the container of orange juice. Reached for a glass in the cupboard.
“Did Daisy give birth to a bull today?”
“Yeah,” Knox said, pouring a cup. “Out of one of Hot Pete’s straws.”
“Think he’ll be a bucker?”
“Counting on it,” Knox said. “Goodnight, Tate.” He left his brother there and headed into the den off the great room, the former family room before the addition. Now, it had turned into a place to put his stockinged feet on the worn coffee table, settle back into the ancient leather sofa, and watch football. Or, this time of year, hockey.
Knox picked up the remote and scanned the channels. Maybe he could catch a Blue Ox game, watch his brother Wyatt catch pucks between the goalposts.
Knox had left at least three messages for his superstar brother but hadn’t yet gotten a return call. He’d left the same message for Ruby Jane and emailed Ford, hoping he wasn’t aboard a ship in the Middle East or wherever Team 2 deployed.
As for Reuben, yeah, he was just starting his preseason training for a hot wildfire season up north in Ember, but his big brother had been the first to text his RSVP. With his fiancée—cute, petite redhead pilot Gilly Priest.
Knox just might be able to keep his spur-of-the-moment, impossible promise to his mother.
He found a Canucks versus Blue Ox game and forgave his brother a little when he saw the score. Oh, that was rough—3-0, third period.
Knox settled back with his orange juice and tried not to think about Kelsey, unable to sleep. Kelsey, the way she looked as she’d crouched in front of Daisy today, something forlorn and rattled on her face.
He’d wanted to reach out and save her all over again.
It had taken him a couple hours to clean up the birthing pen, then he’d driven his pickup into the back field to see if any more cows might be birthing. His hired man, Lemuel, had pulled a few of the near-to-delivery mamas back to the barn, and was watching them, but Knox didn’t want any animal forgotten and in distress.
The sun had hung high, the day beautiful and warm, the snow glinting off Black Mountain to the east, the Garnet Range ahead of him. He loved this pocket of land where he could see all the way down into the valley, to the little town of Geraldine.
He didn’t really want to leave the ranch. Probably.
But Knoxhadfought a spark of heat when he came in later, grimy, sweaty, tired, and found Tate lounging on the leather couch, playing a hand of rummy with the other bandmate, Glo.
And Kelsey in the kitchen with their mother, helping with the cookies.
Someone had to run the place.
He’d showered, changed, and come down for dinner.
Kelsey was painfully quiet, picking at her mashed potatoes. She retired right after the cookies and ice-cream portion of the night.
Oh, how he hoped she was sleeping.