“Uh…” He grimaced slightly as if he was uncomfortable. “Frankie moved into your old room when she gave hers up to Liam and Elise and the baby since her room was bigger,” he said.
Since Frankie had lived full-time at the ranch after her own parents died, she’d had the bigger bedroom with the en suite bathroom. It wouldn’t have made sense for Trish, who’d only visited for the summer and holidays, to have that room. But Dad had insisted she decorate hers as she’d wanted it to look, and he’d said that it would always be there for her whenever she wanted to use it.
“We didn’t realize you were coming tonight, or she could have taken my room,” Brett said.
“You weren’t waiting up for me?” she asked. Not that she was under any illusion that he’d intended to welcome her home. In fact, she was surprised that he was trying to help her. After realizing he was staying in the house, she’d half expected him to bar her from entering the ranch.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“That’s why I kept driving,” she said. After she’d sent the text to Maci that she was finally coming home, she’d been so excited and sleep had seemed impossible. But now that she was here, she was exhausted. She certainly didn’t have the energy to deal with Brett Lemmon, especially now that he was being kind to her.
The text she’d sent Maci hadn’t given an exact time that she would arrive at the ranch. “I should have called to let Frankie know that I was going to drive straight through, but I didn’t want to wake her up this late.” She’d thought she would just be able to let herself into the house, with the key she’d kept all these years, and into her bedroom without waking anyone up. But things had changed at the Four Corners, maybe even the locks.
“You can take my bed,” he said. “I’ll sleep on one of the couches.”
He was willing to give up his bed for her. Would he give up his share of the ranch? Would he let her have the one thing she had left of her father for just herself and her family? She wanted to ask him, but first she had to talk to Maci.
She had to learn what her father really wanted. And she had to respect that, just as she wished people had respected her wishes for what she’d wanted out of her own life. “Thank you,” she said. “I have an overnight bag on the passenger seat. That’s all I need for tonight.”
Tomorrow, after getting some rest, she would figure out what she would do with the rest of her stuff and how to carry out her plan for what to do with the rest of her life.
* * *
The sound ofvoices woke Frankie up, not that she’d been sleeping all that deeply. Since learning that her cousin was coming home, she’d been on edge. From a distance, Trish had been causing so much trouble. What would happen when she was here, presumably staying under the same roof with Frankie and the Lemmon brothers?
But it wasn’t just the guys now. Liam was married to Elise, and they had baby Lucy. So Frankie had given them her room, and she slept in Trish’s now, which was exactly as she’d left it all those years ago like a shrine Uncle Frank had kept of his daughter. Maybe Frankie should have moved out when they’d returned from the party at Ranch Haven. But Trish hadn’t said that she was coming tonight. And it had already been so late that Frankie hadn’t believed that she would arrive tonight or maybe at all.
She recognized the voices she heard coming from the living room. One was Brett’s. She wasn’t surprised that he was still awake; he’d been even more on edge than she was. While all the Lemmons loved the ranch, Brett was the most invested in it.
He’d come to work here first, and then when he’d seen how much trouble the Four Corners was in, he’d enlisted his brothers to help. And maybe he was most invested in the ranch because it was all he had, unlike his brothers, who’d found love.
Not that Brett wanted love any more than Frankie wanted it. She wanted to go back to her band and life on the road. But she couldn’t do that until she made certain that her uncle’s wishes were carried out. For everything that Uncle Frank had done for Frankie, she owed him that, as well as her life.
The other voice belonged to her cousin Trish: the reason that Frank’s wishes hadn’t been carried out yet. And now she was here.
Frankie rolled out of bed and pulled open the door. Then she hurried down the short hall to the living room. Brett blocked Trish from her view. A bag dangled from one of his hands as he argued with her cousin. “You can’t sleep on the couch in your condition. Take my bed.”
“Condition?” Frankie asked with concern. Trish was more than a cousin to her. After Frankie had lost her parents, her uncle had become her guardian and Trish had become her sister and her best friend. What was wrong with her?
Brett turned toward Frankie, and as he did, Trish stepped out from behind him. It had been a few years since they’d last seen each other, but Trish didn’t look any older. In fact, with her dark hair curling around her heart-shaped face, she looked younger. She must have finally given up trying to straighten it like she used to. The only thing giving away her age, or at least her stress, was the dark circles beneath her eyes. Frankie’s gaze skimmed below her cousin’s face to see that she wore leggings with a shirt over them that was stretched tight across her belly. A gasp slipped through Frankie’s lips. “You’re pregnant?”
Of all the things Frankie had been thinking about Trish lately, the fact that she could be pregnant had never crossed her mind.
Trish nodded, and a faint smile curved her lips as she patted her burgeoning belly. “With twins.”
“But…you said in your text that you’re divorced?”
Trish nodded again. “These aren’t Harold’s babies.”
Frankie gasped again.
Trish laughed and shook her head. “I don’t mean it like that. I mean that I did this alone, through IVF and a sperm donor. They’re just mine.”
Brett sucked in a breath, probably over the possessiveness in Trish’s voice. Was she just that way about her babies or was she being possessive of the ranch, too, wanting it all for herself?
But Frankie suddenly realized that maybe Trish wasn’t thinking only of herself, but also of these babies that she looked like she was about to deliver any minute.
“When are you due?” Frankie asked.
