It was, Jenny thought.It really was.
Tennessee and Finn frowned at each other, as if they were as thrown by their significant similarities as their mothers had been in that coffee shop.Raleigh and Dallas looked a little more quizzical—though Raleigh was more smiley with it, reminding Jenny of Dallas long ago.
Helena and Cat, on the other hand, looked suspiciously blank as they gazed at each other and—on Cat’s side—finally saw what Jenny had understood on first sight.
“Is he really dead?”Tennessee asked, not shifting his gaze off of Finn.
Across the room from him, arms crossed in a very similar manner, Finn laughed.“Please say no.”
“What we’d really like is to take Patrick Lisle or Lyle Patrick or whatever else he called himself out of this conversation,” Peyton said then, with a little extra South in her voice just then.“We all know who he was.We know what he did, or we can surely guess.We certainly know how he behaved.But that only affects us if we let it.As far as Jenny and I are concerned, he’s dead and will stay buried.”
“And the last thing on earth that man wanted was for his families to meet,” Jenny said quietly.“Much less get along.”
They all looked at her, these six grown children who she suspected harbored wounds to match her own, but wasn’t that the way?You did your best for your children and they still ended up with scars.There was no avoiding it.Still, she had to think that shining a light on these things made them better.
She knew too well that the dark only made them worse.
“Peyton and I think it would be a splendid sort of revenge if, instead of leaning into the sad part of this with the betrayals or even too close attention to the timelines, we step back from all that.”Beside her, Peyton nodded vigorously, her gaze on her daughter.“We’ve spent a good long while talking about this, and we think that since your father clearly didn’t want us to be a family, we should be.”
“One big happy family,” Peyton agreed, like she was making a toast.“In spite of him.”
“We really can’t think of anything better,” Jenny concluded.
For a moment, the six grown children took that in.Then they shifted their gazes and looked around at each other, arrayed around Jenny’s living room.They looked stiff.Uncomfortable.
It was only to be expected.
But then, as she watched, Tennessee—of all people—smiled.
“Goddamn right,” he said, as if it had been his idea from the start.As if he was making it his.“We’re going to be the happiest family that ever drew breath on this earth.Starting right now.”
Chapter One
The last thingTennessee Lisle needed—or wanted—to see on his doorstep in the middle of a snowy February night was the chaos demon otherwise known as Matilda Stark.
Especially since she was holding a bedraggled, woebegone creature before her like an offering.
“Whatever that is,” he said, by way of a greeting once he hauled the door open and scowled at her because she was not, in fact, a hallucination or a very bad dream, “I don’t want it.”
“It’s a puppy,” Matilda replied, frowning at him as if there was something wrong with him.When she was the one standing on his porch in the middle of the night.
Tennessee could see that the weather behind her had not gotten any better since he’d last paid any mind, which had been hours ago when he’d brought in more wood for his fire.There was a typical Montana winter storm howling down from the higher elevations, dumping snow and ice as it pleased, and he’d accepted that he’d likely be digging his way to work in the morning.
That was par for the course in the Rocky Mountains.Besides, Tennessee was no flatlander, seduced by a pretty day or two in August and not at all prepared for the realities of life here.Tennessee was the oldest son and current head of the Lisle family—and Lisles had been right here in Cowboy Point before it had a name.
None of that explained what the disheveled, walking commotion that was Matilda Stark was doing on his doorstep.At all, much less at this hour and in this kind of weather.
He could see ice encrusted on Matilda’s red braids that hung out from beneath her winter hat—itself a shade of livid yellow that would have hurt his eyes if he’d let it—making her hair into her very own icicles.
Knowing Matilda as he wished he didn’t, he assumed she would think this wasdelightfulif asked.
Tennessee did not intend to ask.
“Matilda,” he began, though he didn’t understand why this was happening.
Like everybody else in Cowboy Point, he was perfectly aware that Matilda Stark spent the bulk of her time rescuing animals.No one could avoid knowing this.Rumor had it that she transformed the outbuilding behind the cottage she’d lived in with her sister Rosie—before Rosie had married a Carey, which, given the age-old feud between the Lisles and the Careys, Tennessee was required to view as a downgrade and yes, he felt that way about his sister’s questionable Carey marriage too—into some kind of private animal shelter.Maybe the cottage was a shelter now too.Maybe she had a zoo.
He wouldn’t put it past her.
