“Are you all right?” he asked. She’d been so quiet since they’d left the hospital that Brett wondered if he should bring her back. The obstetrician and Livvy had kept her for a while to make sure that her blood pressure came down. But he worried now, as they drove back to the Four Corners, that it might go up again, especially with what he’d told Frankie that she and the others needed to do.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry that you had to make the long drive to the hospital for nothing.”
“Nothing?” he asked.
“I wasn’t in labor,” she said. “It was just those Braxton Hicks contractions, false labor.”
“You were in pain,” he said. “And you have a pulled ligament and high blood pressure.”
She touched her side. “The babies are taking up a lot of room.”
“And you’re taking on too much stress,” he said.
She groaned. “I don’t want to argue,” she said.
“That’s the last thing I want to do,” he agreed. “I don’t want to upset you. And I didn’t mean to do that earlier. I wasn’t telling you not to do the kids’ camps and petting zoo. I was just saying that you shouldn’t do them alone.”
“So who would help me?” she asked. “You don’t want to do them.”
“That doesn’t mean I won’t help you,” he said. “And everyone else will, too, Trish. You don’t have to do this alone. And you don’t have to use your personal money for it. We’ll figure out a way for the ranch to finance it but still keep the camps separate from the cattle business.” He glanced across to see her smiling. “What?”
“I thought you weren’t the boss,” she said. “How can you make that decision without talking to the others?”
“You know my brothers and Elise, especially, support your plans,” he said.
“Then what about Frankie?”
He shrugged. “I don’t even know how much longer she’s staying. Since the estate will be settled once it goes through probate, she’ll be able to go back out on the road like she wants.”
She sighed. “I hope she does what she wants and that it’s what shereallywants to do.”
He chuckled. “I can’t imagine anyone stopping Frankie from doing what she wants.”
“If she’s really been waiting to leave until the estate was settled, then I must have stopped her,” Trish said, her voice soft with regret.
“I think she’s forgiven you.” Frankie had sounded so worried when Brett called her from the hospital. “Now, your lawyer…” He chuckled. “She’s never going to forgive his part in all of this.”
“Never say never,” she murmured.
“Why not?” he wondered aloud.
“Look at you, offering to help me with kids’ camps and a petting zoo,” she said. “I bet that was something you never thought you would do.”
He chuckled again. “You’ve got me there.”
She reached across the console and touched his hand on the steering wheel. “Thank you. Thank you for getting me to the hospital. Thank you for keeping your promise.”
“Promise?”
“You said that I would be okay and that the babies would be, too,” she reminded him.
He grunted. “Yeah, that was a stupid promise to make. Totally out of my control…”
“But you still made me feel better,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “I don’t want to add to your stress.” She’d already lost so much; he didn’t want to be the reason she lost anything else.
“I’ve added to yours,” she said. “Over the will and now this…” She yawned.
