“We were always so close. And now …” She threw her hands up. “Brandon’s moved out of state, he married a woman we didn’t meet or even know about until a few days before their wedding, and now we're settling in different places. Is this how it’s going to be? Brandon in Virginia with his family, you here with yours, far apart when we should be having Sunday dinners, holiday parties, and celebrating every major life event?” She thought of her baby niece. “He still hasn’t met Ginger!”
“He saw her on FaceTime,” Rick said.
“That doesn’t count.” Zoey swiped a hand through the air, dismissing the idea that meeting your niece on video chat was the same thing as being able to hold her close and breathe in her heavenly baby scent.
Rick grinned. “He’s a newlywed, Zo. The last thing he wants to do is leave the love nest to come visit a baby.”
“Or maybe he is still avoiding us because you stole Maryanne from him,” Zoey said flatly. There. It was out in the open, and there was no taking it back.
“Whoa, whoa.” Rick held up his hands. “Brandon’s been over that for—”
“I’m not trying to stir up trouble.” She lifted a hand to stop him. Brandon was happy with Allie. They were so in love it oozed like honey from the two of them—yuck. “I’m happy you and Maryanne wound up together—you two are made for one another, and now we have Ginger. But neither of you has ever dealt with—or even talked about—what happened. Someone needs to fix our family.” All they’d done was gloss over the issue again and again until one day Brandon decided he was done and left. And Zoey wasn’t having it anymore. She was going to fix this.
Rick’s voice strained, “I can practically see the wheels in your head spinning—and I’m frightened.”
She shot up from her chair as an idea percolated in her mind. “I’m gonna fix us!”
Rick’s eyes widened in fear. “No—you’re going to stay out of this.”
“I’m tired of watching my big brothers act like they have the IQs of mollusks,” she said. “I want my family back, and if that means getting to the root of the problem, then I’ll do it, since neither of you nitwits has the spine to open the door.”
She turned to leave, and Rick jumped out of his chair, knocking it back into the wall behind him. “Stop,” he said in his most commanding tone—a tone that at best-fed determination into her and at worst made her laugh uncontrollably. He’d been using it on her without any success since she’d been able to talk. “You’re not going to Zoey-train this.”
She sucked in a breath and spun on her heel to face all six feet, three inches of him—in her four-inch platforms, she wasn’t all that shorter than him. “Zoey-train?”
Rick flinched back—he’d pushed the wrong button and he knew it. Retreat was his only chance at survival.
“Zoey-train” was a phrase Rick and Brandon used to describe how she maneuvered people or situations to get things done. It was that talent, mixed with a competitive nature, that had gotten her straight As in college and made her such a good fixer now, but she hated the phrase. It sounded too much like “freight-train”—the moment in a rodeo when a bull lowers his horns and plows people over. In fact, she was pretty sure that’s where they’d gotten it.
“This isn’t your problem to fix, Zoey,” Rick said. He pushed his blazer back and rested his hands on his hips, feigning confidence. “You can’t just move us around like dolls until we meet your expectations of what you want us to be. You’ve got to let us deal with this on our own.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. She was a part of this family too, and their actions affected her too. “Do I?”
He frowned. “Zoey?”
She turned and marched out of the office.
“Zoey, what are you going to do?” he called after her.
Her job. She was a fixer, after all.
* * *
“Cheese and rice!”Zoey breathed out as she pulled in front of her brother’s new manor house and parked her truck and horse trailer in the gravel drive. She’d only been to Harvest Ranch once, when Brandon had married Allie, but the wedding had been so unexpected—even for her brother—that she hadn’t seen his house. She leaned across her truck’s bench seat and stared. It was a nice place—not as nice as their family home in North Carolina, but nothing to turn your nose up at—with its farmhouse charm, wraparound porch, blue shutters, and top floor with lots of windows and scenic views.
What most caught her eye was the large white barn off to the side of the house with doors wide open and burn marks covering most of the inside. “What on earth happened here?” A farrier’s truck was parked just outside the doors, his anvil stand set up and ready. Inside the barn, the tap-tap-tap of a shoer putting on a horseshoe echoed.
She hopped out of the truck, with the soft sounds of braying horses coming from her trailer, as she stared at the damage. The tidy mess of it all was disturbing. The fire had been cleaned up as best as it could be. There were boards piled up outside that she was sure her brother was using to replace the pieces that were beyond saving. From the look of it, the damage appeared contained to that front wall and side door.
She shook off the unsettling feeling the black marks left with her, turned to the house, and ran up the steps of the wraparound porch and to the front door. She rang the doorbell three times and took a step back. Voices came from inside as she played with the ends of her new extensions, no braids this time but a weave, which was long and curled today—she’d had put them in yesterday in preparation for her move, wanting to look her best for her new start. It’d taken her all day.
The front door swung open, the massive frame of her big brother filling the door. “What?” Brandon practically barked. His hair was disheveled, and if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought there was a little pale berry-colored lipstick on his chin. When he registered that it was her, his expression went from irritated to shocked to happy in the space of a couple of seconds.
She chuckled. “Hey, big guy. How’s it going?” She gave a small sigh of relief, though not enough that Brandon would notice. She didn’t want him to know something was wrong. But he was happy to see her, and that was enough for her to know she’d made the right decision coming here.
“Zoey?” In one large step, her big brother was out of his house and pulling her into a hug—his massive frame practically swallowing her. He smelled like fresh-baked bread. “What are you doing here?” He pulled back as he said it, his body tensing.
She stared up at him, then out to where his gaze had landed on her truck and trailer and the load of boxes in her truck bed.
