Broken (Brody Brothers Book 4) Page 22

  “You don’t have to worry about me, Granny, not when it comes to Des,” she assured her, trying to find the right words. “Almost from the first moment, all he’s cared about is my welfare. Just look at that air-conditioning unit he’s putting in to make sure I’m comfortable. He doesn’t even own that property, but he doesn’t care about that. When he realized I was uncomfortable he just bulldozed ahead and found a way to make sure I was taken care of. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “It is a grand gesture.” Granny pondered the contents of her teacup for a long moment, before looking up at her. “I’ve never really talked about how I fell in love with your grandfather, have I?”

  She shook her head, surprised by the subject change. “Daddy never allowed talk about his father, or how you two got together. He never made it a secret that he didn’t approve of you two marrying.”

  “That was because your father, even as a small boy, was filled with so much hate he couldn’t understand anything having to do with love. And I loved your grandfather very much when I decided to marry him,” she added with a crooked smile. “From the first moment we met at a Quaker-run farmer’s market, Earnest Smiley went out of his way to sweep me off my feet.”

  “Sounds romantic.”

  “Oh, it was. Earnest came from a solid family, too. Nothing famous like the Brody clan, of course, but nothing bad had ever been said about the Smiley family within the Quaker community. Even my parents approved of him, especially after Earnest made quite the sensation when he took me out picnicking and hired a string quartet to play for us while we ate. I was dazzled.”

  “Wow,” she murmured, pressing a hand to her heart. No matter the era, bringing live music to a private picnic to woo your honey-bunny was a first-rate move. “What a player Granddad was.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s the word for him, all right. A player.” Her grandmother’s smile twisted, a hint of a sour note in an otherwise-beautiful symphony. “I met Earnest Smiley the first day of June, and was married to him by the end of the month. I couldn’t wait to be his bride, Winnie, and to build upon the family I was walking into. I hadn’t really spent any time with little Able, but with such a wonderful father I’d assumed there wouldn’t be any problem with his son. I was wrong. On every count and in every way, I was wrong.”

  Uneasily Winnie watched the light dim from her grandmother’s expression. “What do you mean?”

  “Your grandfather played the ultimate game with my life, Winnie. He won, and I lost. All his grand gestures while we were courting blinded me to the fact that Earnest had never actually said he loved me. Nor had he ever thought to show any sort of love in those small but important ways, like asking how I felt or if I was happy, or even finding out what my favorite color was. And, because I’d lived such a sheltered life and I’d never had a beau before, I didn’t know to look for those small cues that would’ve shown he cared. I was such a naïve fool.”

  “Granny, no.” Frowning, Winnie set her tea and banana bread aside. “You’re the smartest, most loving woman I know. It’s not your fault you were taken advantage of.”

  “I was taken advantage of, Winnie, which is why I’m sharing this with you now. You see, Earnest had been married once before, to Able’s mother. A good woman, by all accounts. And, by all accounts, Earnest had adored her. When she died in childbirth, it was like she’d taken his ability to love with her to the grave. As such, Earnest didn’t particularly care for the son he’d been left with. But as that son grew and clearly had the devil in him, Earnest thought the boy needed a mother to tame him. So he looked around, found a naïve girl who knew nothing about men or the world, and waged a calculated campaign to trap that girl into a life that was a barren, unloved hell.”

  Winnie’s heart cracked down the middle, and it was her turn to reach for her grandmother’s hand so she could kiss it. “Granny. Oh, my sweet Granny, I’m sorry. I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, sweetheart. That’s why I’m so worried about you. You deserve a life filled with love and happiness, and God willing, a passel of children who think the world of you. We may not be blood-related, but you’re so much like me in your willingness to love that you might not see the truth when it’s right in front of you—that the man you love might be in your life for anything and everything except for reasons of love.”

  “Granny, no.” Again she kissed her grandmother’s hand and smiled into her eyes. “If you’re talking about the homestead and Smiley Lake, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “I’ve already told Des that I didn’t inherit the property. In fact, the moment I told him I wasn’t the owner of Smiley Lake, the first thing he did was kiss me. It was our first kiss, and I’ll never forget how perfect it was.”

  “Your first kiss.” With a weary sigh, Granny shook her head. “My darling girl, please think. Everyone knows you’re my only heir, just like everyone knows no one lives forever. What you feel for Des Brody is real, just like what I felt for Earnest when I married him was real. But the veil of love that man draped over my eyes vanished the moment his ring was on my finger. Too late, I realized he’d chained me to a cold and loveless marriage just so I could raise his demon of a child.”

  Winnie winced. “Granny—”

  “If Des Brody kissed you after discovering you didn’t inherit the Smiley property, it could have been passion without an ulterior motive. I hope it was. But sooner or later, the Smiley property is going to be in your possession, and Des Brody knows this. He knows it, Winnie.”

  “Granny—”

  “Earnest played the long game with me during our courtship, and I was too unworldly and in love to see it. I just don’t want you to be blind to the possibility that Des could be playing the long game with you, too. After all, he is a Brody, and the Brodys have always been rattlesnakes when it comes to making their ranch a success. Throughout the generations, it’s their one abiding obsession. They don’t care who they have to mow down in order to make sure Green Rock Ranch is the biggest and the best.”

  “Des isn’t like that.” She shook her head, and all the while her heart hurt for the sweet, wounded woman before her. “In fact, he’s different even from his brothers. He started out as a Faircloth before he was dumped on the Brody family, so he’s definitely not like the typical Brody man you might be used to.”

  “Or it could be that he’s even more determined to prove just how much of a true Brody he is by being the one who finally captures Smiley Lake for Green Rock Ranch,” came the sad reply. “Please understand that I don’t want that. I pray this young man loves you as deeply and fiercely as you’ve come to love him. You deserve it, Winnie, and so much more. The one and only thing I don’t want for you is to have your heart broken and your life wasted on a man who couldn’t care less for your suffering. I lived that life, my sweet girl, and I wouldn’t wish that torment on anyone. So please… please… just remember my words.”

  *

  “Water tank’s in place and ready to roll.” Fin’s voice came through the truck’s speakers as Des drove down Main Street and parked in front of Cleone’s Closet. “It’s going to take approximately three days to pump enough water up from the new well to get it filled, so we’re using that time to shift as much hay as possible into the pasture, because everything that once grew there died off in the drought.”

  “Fine.” Des looked at the darkened windows of the dress shop and hit the steering wheel with his fist. “Fuck.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Other than the fact that he’d been looking for Winsome for an hour now and had officially run out of places to go.

  “I recognize that tone,” his brother drawled. “The last time I used it, Lilah let a damn calf drop on her head. It’s your woman, yeah?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Let me guess,” Fin said, clearly ignoring him. “You finally told Winnie about the Smiley Lake surveys and she shit a kitten.”

  “There’s
no need to tell her about those fucking surveys.” Tension crawled up his neck at the mention of those surveys of Smiley Lake. He’d just gotten her to trust him, for fuck’s sake. The last thing he was going to do now was put that in jeopardy. “Speaking of, I got the results back from that last water sample. Basically it’s pure enough to bottle and sell to newborns.” Or skinny-dip in.

  “Nice. If we ever manage to get our hands on it, I’d like to keep it as pristine as possible, and use it only in times of great need. You know, like now.”

  “I want to keep it clean, too. I was thinking maybe we could talk to our local land management officer to see what kind of native fish we could stock it with. We could even build a boathouse out there so we can actually take a day off once in a great while and go fishing.”

  “Ry would go crazy for that. So would Lilah and I, for that matter.” There was a beat of silence. “You sure you don’t want to tell Winnie about those surveys you commissioned? Maybe she’d understand.”

  “Yeah, and maybe she wouldn’t.” A shadow flickered way in the back of the store, snagging his attention. Without another thought he grabbed up his phone and turned the engine off. “I gotta go, Fin. Talk to you later.”

  “Okay—”

  Jaw locked in aggravation, Des shut the truck door none too gently and stalked down the blistering hot sidewalk outside the line of businesses fronting Main Street. The crew working on the second floor of Cleone’s Closet had already knocked off for the day. The sun slowly faded in the west, with its last rays making salmon and purple smears on the clouds rolling in from the Gulf, bringing the added misery of humidity into the mix. It had been months since the region had seen clouds of any kind, but Des didn’t even look up as he headed for Cleone’s Closet’s door, then swore out loud when he found it locked. Without a thought he banged on the glass bearing Cleone’s logo with one hand, while with the other he worked his phone’s screen and put it to his ear. Only when Winnie answered did he stop banging on the glass.

  “Where are you?” he demanded the moment he heard her voice, while relief was almost instantly replaced by anger. “Before you answer, I can tell you where you’re not. You’re not at the main house. You’re not at my place, or anywhere else on the ranch. You’re not at Cleone’s, or your apartment, and I drove by your grandmother’s place and the Smiley homestead, and you’re not there, either. So, now you tell me—where the hell are you?”

  “Right here.” The door to Cleone’s suddenly opened, and there Winnie was, looking cool and unruffled with her hair piled up on her head, her graceful neck bared, and looking as irritated as he felt. “What’s with all the commotion? Is something wrong?”

  “Something wrong? Something wrong.” For a handful of seconds he battled the urge to simply grab her up and haul her into the truck, before he surged past her into the shop now shrouded in the gathering gloom. When it came right down to it, the only thing that was wrong was that she apparently hadn’t given him a thought over the past several hours. “Yeah, there’s something wrong, woman. I had no goddamn clue where you were, and when you refused to answer my texts I began to fucking panic that you’d wandered off somewhere on the property and maybe fell down an arroyo or got snake-bit, or a thousand other grisly deaths. In fact, I’m frigging shocked you answered the phone just now, you’ve been ghosting me so bad.”

  “My phone.” She looked down at the offending instrument still in her hand like it had done her dirty. “I’m sorry. I had it on the console next to me while I was working, but I had it on mute so I wouldn’t be distracted. The only reason I answered your call was because I was about to phone the police when I saw you were calling me.”

  “The police?” All at once his blood ran cold, and he looked around the retail space for some sign of danger. “Why were you about to call the police?”

  “You were banging on the door so hard I thought you were some rando burglar trying to break in.”

  Jesus. “News flash, Winsome—burglars are never that noisy, and they sure as hell don’t knock.” He loosed a sharp breath and looked around the front room, now silent and weirdly eerie with the lights off and the CLOSED sign in the window. That was when it clicked. “Wait, what do you mean, you’re working? The shop’s closed.”

  “To customers, yes, and it’s going to remain that way until week after next, now that Cleo and Cleone are on their way to Dallas. With them gone to their trade show, I wanted to get a jump on the embroidery for the two-piece sets I’m going to make for the shop.”

  “The what?”

  “The two-piece skirt and top sets. Like the one I was wearing earlier today, in the, um… barn.”

  Shit, she was cute. Irritated as he was, he couldn’t help but drink in her blush that glowed even in the gloom. “Last I heard, you sent me a text that you couldn’t have lunch with me because you had to visit your grandmother.”

  She nodded, her expression unreadable. “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  Disquiet moved through him. “That was six hours ago, Winsome,”

  She looked at him like he wasn’t speaking her native tongue. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” It was a wonder his fury didn’t set fire to the damn place before a sudden, terrible thought slammed into him. “Are you here alone?”

  She glanced back over her shoulder to the short hallway behind the counter. “I am now. Cleone and Cleo left around three, so—”

  “You don’t mind if I make sure, right?” Without waiting for an answer—because he sure as hell wasn’t asking for permission—he barreled past the counter through the short hallway, and found himself in a good-sized room that had been turned into a makeshift workshop, with a fabric cutting table, a sewing machine and a weird machine that looked like it belonged in a craft room on a space station. A dozen spools of thread in a rainbow of colors sat on top of it like a multi-pointed crown, feeding down into machinery with a panel of complicated switches and dials and a small digital screen. Several embroidered pieces lay to one side of the machine, evidence of her work, but he only glanced at that as he prowled around the room, looking for any other sign of life.

  “Des,” Winnie demanded, her usually soft voice hard as she joined him in the backroom. “What are you doing?”

  “When a woman avoids her man, it’s a sign. I know how bad shit can get between a man and his woman, so I’m just reading the fucking signs.” He stuck his head back out into the hallway, listened for a long minute, then turned to face her. “You really are alone here.”

  She made an exasperated gesture. “Of course I am. Why would I lie?”

  “Because you’ve avoided me all day, and I haven’t been able to think of anything else but why you’ve been avoiding me. What I came up with is that you were with some fucking asshole who’s trying to steal my woman out from under me, when I only just got her where I want her.” He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Screaming was a new look for him, and it wasn’t a good one. “Just tell it to me straight, Winsome, and don’t lie, all right? I’m good with just about any damn thing you want to do, but do not lie to me. Are you seeing anyone besides me?”

  “No.”

  Her instant response and genuine look of horror mollified him, but only a little. “Were you avoiding me today?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  Fuck. “Why?”

  “I was upset, and I didn’t want you to see me upset. So I hung out in town until I was no longer upset.” She waved a hand at the space-age craft room gizmo. “And there were a bunch of embroidery insets that I needed to get done. As far as I know, that’s the only embroidery machine in town, so this is where that work has to get done.”

  He ignored that for now. “Why were you upset?”

  Again she waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Winsome.”

  A short sigh burst from her. “Let me put it another way. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Too bad.” Totally ignoring
the fact that he’d just said those very same words to Fin, he bulldozed right ahead. “You were fine when I last saw you, but now you’re not, so that’s got me thinking it’s your grandmother, yeah? She didn’t exactly keep it a secret that she’s not a Brody fan. Is she pissed that you’re staying at Green Rock Ranch?”

  The grimace that crossed her face spoke volumes. “Let’s just say she’s not happy about it. She’s old enough to remember all the times the Brody family went after Smiley Lake, so there’s not a lot of trust there.”

  “That was then. This is now. I get that she’s a big influence on your life,” he went on when she only shook her head. “But she doesn’t have the fucking right to come between us, Winsome. No one does. The only two people who count in this relationship are me and you, and that. Is. It. There’s no room for anyone else.”

  “I agree,” she said, surprising him. “That’s why I didn’t even want you to know I’d gotten upset, because it doesn’t matter. I’ve made my choice, and my choice is you. Desmond Brody, the boy next door, the man I believe in, and the man who believes in me. The man who’s taught me that I can be more at home with a person than I ever could be in an actual physical place. I’m not going to jeopardize that by bringing outside opinions in, even if they do come from someone I love. But I am still human, and those things can upset me. You need to understand that and give me the space I need to come to terms with whatever’s upsetting me on my own.”

  “No.” It didn’t matter that she was being reasonable, or that what she said made sense. What mattered was the last several hours when he’d been without her. Even now he was still reeling from what those hours had put him through. “You want space? Fine. You can have fucking acres of it, as long as I’m close enough to keep you in sight and make sure you’re staying out of trouble.”