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Jodie looked up.
“He thought I’d settled.” Arden rubbed her thumb across Ripple’s coat. “He kept pushing me to sell the ranch and go back to school. He thought I was wasting what I could have been.”
Jodie knew enough about Sean to understand why that would have turned into a fight. From everything she’d ever heard, Arden and her brother had loved each other fiercely and argued with equal commitment.
“The last time we talked, he was getting ready to deploy,” Arden said. “We fought about it again. He told me to sell. I told him what he could do with his Swick boat.”
Jodie’s mouth twitched despite herself.
Arden noticed. “It was anatomically ambitious.”
That got a laugh out of her.
Then Arden looked back at Ripple. “He deployed. We never got another conversation.”
Oh, God. I can’t imagine how much that must have hurt.
She reached for her friend’s hand and squeezed it. There were no words.
“He thought I was afraid to leave,” Arden said. “I thought he was judging a choice he didn’t have to live with. We were probably both assholes about it.”
“That sounds like siblings.”
“Pretty much.”
They stood quietly for a minute. Then Arden looked at her. Jodie immediately distrusted the expression.
“What?”
“When are you going back?”
Jodie blinked. “Back where?”
“To school.”
Oh.
“No.”
Arden’s eyebrows rose.
“I mean, I don’t know. We’re not doing this.” Jodie focused on Ripple’s hoof in the water.
Arden put her hand on her hip. “Doing what?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Damn her.
“Kyle and I talked about it when he hired me,” Jodie said finally. “A long time ago.”
“I know. California tells me damn near everything.” Arden smiled. “So?”
“So nothing. I told him maybe someday.”
“And?”
“And someday is very flexible.”
