He had no time for mochas or mysterious women.
So there was really no reason Matilda should haunt him the way she did today, like she’d come in last night and shrugged off more than her coat and—
You need to stop,he ordered himself.
He glared at his brother.“Who says I’m in a mood?”
“I don’t rightly know,” drawled Dallas, looking entirely too relaxed for a man who’d been hermitting in a deeply foolish Rocky Mountain lighthouse for the better part of the last decade.“Could be the way you’re stomping around like you’re hoping the floorboards give way.The way you’re slamming everything down when you touch it.Or maybe it’s just the force of our deep brotherly bond after all these years and I can just tell from looking at you.”
“Great,” Tennessee muttered.“We’re talking aboutbonds.That’s terrific.Maybe later we can braid each other’s hair and read out a few select pages from our feelings journals.”
“I thought we were turning over a new leaf.”Dallas could clearly tell that Tennessee was out of sorts, becausehelooked like he was having the time of his life.He settled back in the chair behind the counter and treated his older brother to his best shit-eating grin.“After all, this is the new blended family model.We’re all going to be happy if it kills us, Tennessee.Even if that meansfeelings journals.”
Tennessee rubbed his hands over his face.He was much too tired for this.Still.“In theory, I couldn’t be more supportive.Truly.In practice, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
“That’s a hard same for me,” Dallas said with a laugh.“All kidding aside.”
“Count me in on that,” came another voice, and Tennessee wasn’t sure he liked the fact that he recognized it immediately.Or that it… sounded a lot like his own voice.
He and Dallas turned, and Tennessee wasn’t particularly surprised to find Finn Patrick standing there on the other side of the counter.The oldest of the Patricks, that put him between Tennessee and Dallas.And the truth was, while none of them were particularlysurprisedto find out they had half siblings, maybe—that didn’t make it easy.It didn’t keep it from feeling weird.
That didn’t make it bad.Just weird.
Finn grinned, and Tennessee had to believe he wasn’t the only one who found this whole family resemblance thing part of the weirdness.There was justso muchof it.
He and Finn were just about the same height, though to his mind, Finn hadcowboystamped all over him.Not that Tennessee hadn’t been called a cowboy himself—a title he was happy to own, born and bred Montanan that he was—but he didn’t think he looked like he was about to leap on a horse at the slightest provocation.
Finn, on the other hand, looked like he might have cantered over to the store bareback.No matter the weather.
But aside from that, it was wildly evident that they were all related.They all had the same chins.The same blue eyes.Finn’s hair was much darker than Dallas’s and Tennessee’s, since they tended toward a hint of their mother’s copper.And maybe his build was also a little leaner, a touch taller.
It was wild.
“I can’t stop staring,” Dallas admitted, crossing his arms.“It’s weird to have a fully grown new brother, that’s all.”
“Again, agree,” Finn said in the same tone—friendly, but with no small bit of authority underneath.He shook his head.“Not that it’s a bad thing.”
“Not at all,” Tennessee agreed.
The funny thing was, weird as it all was and would likely continue to be, he meant it.
It had been less than a week since his mother and Peyton had dropped the bomb, gathering them all together in the old Victorian house halfway up the hill.It wasn’t that much of a bomb for the Patrick side of the family, of course.Because Helena had been here the whole time, hadn’t she?Right here, under their noses, and somehow Tennessee and the rest of his family hadn’t noticed how much she looked like one of them.Like Cat especially.Now that he’d seen it, he couldn’t unsee it.
Point of fact, it was so obvious that he had to wonder if they’d all been willfully blind.
“We figured we should start a kind of tradition,” Finn said, not letting too much of a pause build up.“If the Lisles are open to it, the Patricks would like to institute a weekly gathering.”
Tennessee might have been exhausted.He might have Matilda Stark’s Viking braids in his head in a way he could not explain or seem to get past.Still, he understood immediately what Finn was doing with this.It was smart.
He wasn’t really sure why it hadn’t occurred to him to do it first.
Maybe he’d put that on the night’s sleep Matilda had stolen from him too.
“I like it,” he said.“What were you thinking?”
“I think it should be something informal,” Finn said, with that grin of his that was nothing but pleasant, yet Tennessee found himself thinking about the fact that this man had been running a cattle ranch in Colorado that he’d expected to own one day.And that got him thinking that where he tended to wear his responsibility like a hammer, according to his siblings when they were unhappy with him, Finn clearly preferred to cloak it in a little bit of velvet.
“I’ll take that to mean we’ll leave our mothers out of this gathering,” Tennessee said.Dallas frowned, but Finn nodded.
