Feeling overly emotional and nostalgic, he slowly approached Bonnie. She smiled down at the baby with such love—love that Darren felt burning through him too.
“This is Jacqueline,” she said, tilting the little girl toward Darren. She had feathery dark hair, the exact same color as Sam’s. “We’re calling her Jackie.”
Darren tore his eyes from the baby to his brother. “After Mom?”
Sam gazed at his daughter with unadulterated love and nodded, his throat working against his emotion.
Darren tried to swallow and couldn’t. “Can I hold her?” His voice sounded choked, and he wasn’t quite sure how to hold an infant, but Bonnie turned the baby into his arms effortlessly.
She gurgled and grunted, and Darren chuckled, wishing with everything inside him that he lived close enough to Sam and Bonnie to see Jackie every single day. Watch her grow up on this farm the way he had.
And he suddenly understood why Sam had felt such a powerful call to return to Coral Canyon and their father’s farm.
“She’s beautiful,” he murmured, automatically bouncing the baby like his fatherly instincts were alive and well.
“We sure like her,” Sam said, clapping his hand on Ben’s back as he joined them.
Darren passed Jackie to Ben, who cooed at her like his baby had already been born. “What should we name our little girl?” he asked.
“You’re havin’ a girl?” Sam asked.
Ben grinned and nodded. “We’ve known for a while, but wanted it to be a surprise. Don’t tell Rae I told you.” He swayed with baby Jackie, the little two-month-old seeming to smile in her sleep.
Darren turned back toward the door and the steps that led down to the basement. “So I’ll be in my old room?”
“It flooded last spring,” Sam said. “It’s brand new down there. Let me show you.” He led the way as the brothers went downstairs, and Darren’s breath caught in his throat. This basement wasn’t anything like what they’d had as boys. Light gray paint on the walls and bright white trim kept the airy atmosphere of upstairs present even underground.
“The windows are huge,” he said as Ben came thundering down the steps, obviously having passed Jackie back to Bonnie upstairs.
“I had them enlarged,” Sam said. “It’s so much brighter, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.” Ben spoke with the same reverent tone that Darren felt in his soul. His mother would’ve loved a basement like this. She was always telling their dad that it was too dark down there, and she worried about her sons sleeping in a damp, dark dungeon.
New carpet stretched from wall to wall, and Darren found a queen-size bed in each of the two bedrooms downstairs. Fresh linens adorned the beds, and there were even live plants.
“Bonnie has a green thumb.” Sam gazed at the plants like they were his children. “I don’t know how she keeps them alive down here, but she does it.” Love colored his voice, and Darren’s throat tightened. He cleared it, and set his bag on the end of the bed in his and Logan’s old bedroom.
“I put Logan and Layla upstairs with me and Bonnie,” Sam said. “You and Ben can have the basement. Then you won’t hear Jackie scream in the middle of the night.”
Ben nodded like it was no big deal, but Darren wanted to sequester himself in the bedroom and wait out the weekend. He didn’t want to be relegated to the basement because he was single. It wasn’t a bachelor pad, for heaven’s sake.
Ben left, leaving his bag in the remodeled living room, leaving Darren alone with Sam. “You okay?” Sam asked, his voice low and filled with concern.
Darren collapsed onto the end of the bed next to his suitcase. “Some days, I don’t know.” He ran both hands over his face, pushing off his cowboy hat and pulling his fingers through his hair. “Some days, yeah, I’m okay.”
“What’s today?” Sam asked, leaning into the doorway as if they were talking about the weather.
“Today’s unknown.”
“I’ve had those days.”
Darren was sure he had. It didn’t make his heart hurt less or his muscles release. But at least someone else knew what it felt like to be alone. While Rae wasn’t here physically, she was still with Ben.
Out of the Buttars brothers, only Darren was still alone. And he’d never felt it more powerfully than he did sitting in a room he didn’t recognize.
“Stay down here as long as you want,” Sam said. “You’ll know when Logan gets here.”
Darren appreciated Sam’s brotherhood. The way he’d always taken care of the family. The way he seemed to know when to push and when to back off. Still, something seethed inside him, and he fell back onto the bed, wondering if he could simply sleep away the next four days and then fly back to the cozy, quaint, quiet farm that he’d just bought.
