Expecting His Brother's Baby

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“I suppose we’d better get it into the oven or it’ll never cook through.”

“We?” he asked with an arched brow.

“Do you know how to make stuffing?”

“You’ve got a point. I suppose you could oversee and tell me how to do it.”

“I know Dr. Marco said to rest for two weeks. But I can’t be inactive that long. And I have to get back to work at the temp agency.”

“At the end of two weeks, maybe you can think about work.” He dropped an arm around her shoulders. “You have to learn how to take vacations.”

“I’ve never had a vacation.”

When she looked up at him, their gazes locked. His arm was strong and muscled and protective. If he’d meant the gesture to be brotherly, it had failed. She could catch the scent of the soap he’d used from the downstairs bathroom. But he still smelled like hay, too, and a frosty morning. All too easily she got caught up in the moment, forgetting who he was, who she was and why he was here.

He must have remembered. Dropping his arm from around her, he headed to the kitchen. “Tell me what to do first.”

She could do that. Or she could clear the air. He was pulling out a chair for her by the kitchen table, but she needed to be on her feet for the next few minutes. “I don’t want you to feel responsible for me.”

“I am responsible for you. You’re my brother’s wife.”

Was that really the way he thought about her? “I have the Warner name. You have an interest in this ranch if I sell it. But you are not responsible for my well-being.”

The lines on his forehead deepened as the nerve in his jaw worked. Finally he asked, “Why don’t you want me here, Kylie, when you so obviously need help? Is it because you think Jack wouldn’t approve?”

“Of course not! Jack had no right, ever, to treat you the way he did. He had no right to make you feel as if you should be on the reservation with your mother. He had no right to favor Alex over you.” She’d never talked about Jack to Brock this way before, never put all of it into words, and she saw a surprise in his eyes now, as if he believed she hadn’t known the depth of what Jack Warner had done to him. How he’d made a small boy feel as if he didn’t belong. How he’d pretended Alex was a prince and Brock could leave tomorrow and not be missed.

“And just how would you know about any of that? When you came to live here, I was in college.”

“Alex and I went to school together. We were friends. From things he said, I knew what was going on. So did lots of people in town. Wild Horse Junction isn’t that big, and Jack was important enough that people talked.”

Turning away from her toward the window and the expanse of sugar beet fields and grazing land, he asked, “Why do you think I left?”

“Because your father favored Alex,” she answered honestly.

“No. I left because I wanted a life of my own.”

“You don’t want to be here now.” She knew that as well as she knew she never wanted to leave.

His expression became unreadable and he wore the stoicism that was so much a part of him. It hid thoughts and feelings and reactions he didn’t want anybody else to see. “Whether I want to be here or not isn’t the issue. As you said, I have an interest in Saddle Ridge, and I don’t want to see it fall into ruin.”

“Ruin? That’s not what’s happening. Once this baby’s born—”

“What? You’ll train horses day and night? And suddenly all the repairs will be made? The herd will be built up? You’ll establish Saddle Ridge’s name again?”

Her cheeks were hot, and she felt his questions were a personal attack. “Saddle Ridge already has an established name.”

“No, not anymore, and I wonder why that is. Haven’t you been schooling horses as long as you’ve been here? What suddenly happened?”

What had happened? She’d analyzed the past five years over and over again.

As if Brock were trying to figure it out, he continued. “Alex was technically good at training cutting horses, even if he didn’t have your gift. With the two of you taking clients, breeding stock—” He sliced his arm through the air. “You only have four horses in the barn now. What happened?” he asked again.

She’d never been less than honest with Brock, but she didn’t know how to be honest about this. In spite of how Jack had treated them both, Brock had loved Alex, and she knew he was grieving as deeply as she was. But for her, there were other losses thrown in. There was so much more than grief, and she didn’t know how to explain any of that. Not without disillusioning Brock. Not without making him more bitter than he already was.

“You might as well tell me, Kylie. I’ll figure it out when I get to the last year or two’s expenses.”

She looked into his bottomless, dark, dark brown eyes, felt the twittering in her belly that wasn’t the baby moving and realized her heart was pounding because just being around Brock always did that. Complete silence in the house intensified the tension until it was broken by the wind whistling against the kitchen window.

“It’s Thanksgiving, Brock. Can we just enjoy the day without getting into everything?”

Still wearing that cut-in-stone face, a masculine mix of Apache and Anglo, he asked, “Have you become a procrastinator?”