Page 60 of Meant for Her

Now probably wasn’t the best time to pummel him with questions, but she did want to learn a little more about them. “I think Luke said that you guys hadn’t seen your dad for a while before he passed?”

“No. As soon as we graduated from high school, we left town. The man was hard to live with. If he lost at the tables on a particular night, he’d be angry, sometimes trying to take it out on us.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Don’t worry. He wasn’t successful. Luke and I were big. We could have done some damage to him if we’d wanted to. Mostly, he treated us like hired hands, only he didn’t pay us.”

“Seth and Trevor now receive a paycheck, but when they were teens, I don’t think they were paid.”

“If our dad had worked side-by-side with us, it might have been okay. I swear he treated the animals better than us.”

Surely he was exaggerating, but his perception was his reality. “I’m sorry.”

Ryan shrugged. “It’s why Luke learned to cook so well. Dad would just drink all night instead of making us a meal.”

She couldn’t imagine. “Was it a hard decision to leave?”

“Hell no. Besides, he had Pete Rizolli. The man did the work of half a dozen men. I imagine he did some shopping and cooking for my father now and again too,” Luke said.

“When you left, where did you go?”

“Not all that far. To Bozeman where we both worked several odd jobs for a while to earn money. We came back a few times a year to see that Dad was still kicking, but the visits became fewer and fewer.”

“Was he happy to see you?” she asked.

Ryan chuckled. “He sure as hell didn’t act like it. Oh, he liked it when we did the chores so he didn’t have to.”

“That had to be tough.”

“It was basically all we knew. We only came back for good when Pete contacted us and said Dad had been murdered—by wolves.”

She shook her head. “Did Pete know who had killed your dad?”

“No. He suspected it was someone he owed money to. Pete buried him somewhere on the property.”

“Did the sheriff question where your father was?”

“He did. Pete told him that dad had been sick for a while and just passed in his sleep. If the medical examiner had seen his throat ripped out, it would give wolves an even worse name.”

She could understand.

Feet sounded outside the door, and Luke came in.Whoa. The man knew how to dress to impress. He’d mastered the casual but elegant look at the same time. His white button-down shirt, open slightly at the throat, looked good with black jeans and polished black boots.

“What do you think?”

“I imagine that if my mom was a werewolf, her eyes would turn gold.”

Luke seemed to work hard not to smile.

“What about me?” Ryan asked.

Malia was not going to get into a comparison debate of the two. “You look super-hot too. Are we ready for the grilling to begin?”

The men were well aware what this dinner was about—making certain that they were good enough for a Granger.Ugh. It was times like these that she wished she’d been born into a very ordinary family.

Ryan drove. Luke didn’t ask any of the questions that Ryan had. He actually seemed at ease with this whole affair. Just wait until her father started asking him difficult questions. His attitude might change.

Since they hadn’t been to her parents’ home, she had to give them directions.