What the hell was going on here? The tension in the room was so thick Annabelle felt like she was choking on it.
“Hello, Annabelle. I’m Hope. Thank you so much for attending my wedding.” Her smile was strained.
“No problem. Thank you for inviting us.” Annabelle deliberately added the ‘us’ so that the rest of Ethan’s family would know they were there as a unit.
She then looked at the two other men in the room, who were obviously Ethan’s brothers. The first was built like his father and dressed the same, and she guessed he was the middle Gelderman. He looked smooth and confident, and Annabelle didn’t like the look in his eyes as he ran them over her body, but she had encountered that look before so she simply gave it back to him.
“My brother has been absent from Texas too long and seems to have lost his manners, Ms. Smith. Therefore I’ll rectify that and introduce myself.” He rose to his feet and walked towards her holding out one hand. His smile was polished and didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m Brad Gelderman.”
Annabelle didn’t acknowledge the squeeze he gave her fingers, instead giving them a good shake then releasing them. She then turned away from him, but not quickly enough to miss seeing the glare he gave Ethan, which just pissed her off more.
Annabelle wasn’t sure what she’d stepped into, but she knew the Texan standing silent at her side. Even though he flirted with every woman who crossed his path, she knew he was a kind man, a good friend and she didn’t like to see him looking as he did right now.
“And I’m Taylor.”
The last man in the room was dressed casually, like Hope, and his smile was shy as he stepped forward. Ethan took the hand he held out to him. Like Hope, Taylor stood directly in front of his brother, blocking the view of the others. Annabelle watched the brothers exchange a look before he turned to her.
“Hey, Taylor, really nice to meet you.” Annabelle shook his hand too.
Soon they were all seated, with Annabelle taking the chair beside Ethan’s.
“Ethan so rarely comes home, and when he does, he never brings friends, so your appearance here would suggest you’re special to my son, Ms. Smith. What is it you do in Howling?”
“I’m a nurse, Mr. Gelderman,” Annabelle said to Ethan’s father.
“Well, now, that does make me feel better. I like the idea that my son has someone on hand to help him, because he’s always been accident prone.”
The words, like the question that had prompted them, could in no way be classified as mean; in fact, they were the kind of thing a thousand parents would say to a girlfriend or boyfriend of a beloved child—yet, beside her, Ethan stiffened.
“And where do you work?”
“In a clinic in Howling.”
“How nice for you. I understand that it is a small town, and of course leaving it would have been difficult for you, I’m sure. It’s my understanding you were raised there.”
Ethan hadn’t told him that, because Annabelle knew how much he hated his father and would share nothing with the man, so Mr. Gelderman must have had her investigated. Looking into his eyes, Annabelle realized that the smile he’d been wearing since they’d entered the room wasn’t nice at all. It was like Brad’s, totally fake. It was then that she saw the real man in the depths of his eyes, the controlling head of the Gelderman family.
Had Ethan not told her that this man was an asshole, perhaps it would have taken her longer to work that out, but she would have got there. She was sure he was a master manipulator, but he did it all behind a smiling veneer.
She shot Ethan another look. She couldn’t believe he was just sitting beside her quietly, looking forward, a blank expression on his face. The Ethan she knew was never still or, for that matter, quiet.
“How many times have you patched up my son, Ms. Smith? Quite a few, I should imagine? Is that how you met?”
“Ethan’s not accident prone, Mr. Gelderman,” Annabelle said, her smile matching his. “I’ve known him for years and I’ve never seen him so much as trip on a curb. In fact, it’s a constant cause of annoyance for us, his friends.” She put emphasis on the wordfriends. “We get pretty tired of just how perfect he is.”
“Perfect!” Mr. Gelderman let out a booming laugh. “He must have changed some, then, Annabelle.”
“You know how it goes, Dad. They all feel like that about him at first,” Brad said.
The other family members all just sat quietly and listened to Mr. Gelderman and Brad, no one coming to Ethan’s defense.
“True. Give it a while, honey,” Mr. Gelderman said, and while thehoneyhadn’t been followed by a leer, Annabelle wanted no one but her Texan to speak to her that way. She was also allowed to insult Ethan, and even watch his friends in Howling do it, because they were never mean, but she was damned if she’d sit by and watch his family do it, especially when she knew they weren’t just teasing.
She knew enough about Ethan to know what kind of man he was. Jake had told her about their time together in Iraq and how tirelessly Ethan had gone about his duties, and she’d spoken to a few tourists he’d flown around Oregon. Each one had loved him.
“I’ve known him for a long time,” she said, “and I don’t see my opinion changing anytime soon. In fact—”
“We’ll see you for dinner this evening.”
