Because Colin, Sandra, and Orin had been straightforward and kind, and because all of
this seemed like an odd and implausible dream, Julia was beginning to get the sense that
maybe this—all of this—would turn out to be okay.
Until she met Liam.
She and Drew heard him before they saw him. The two of them were still sitting in
the kitchen with Sandra and Orin, the four of them taking the first, tentative steps of
getting to know one another in the warm and homey room, when they heard a commotion
outside the kitchen door, in the living room.
"Screw that," a voice was saying. The voice was angry, raised. It was the voice of
someone trying to pick a fight. "You can make nice all goddamned day long if you want
to, but what's the point of that? What's the fucking point? This guy comes here like he
thinks he's entitled to what we have, what we've built. And you want me to be nice?
That's bullshit, Ryan."
Another voice, this one quieter, murmured something they couldn't hear.
"Ah, blow me, Ryan. You always have thought you were my goddamned dad."
They heard the front door open, and then a third voice—Colin's—was added to the
mix. The dynamic was clear: Ryan and Colin were attempting to calm Liam, with results
that were less than successful.
"You gonna go out there and do something about your son?" Sandra asked Orin.
Orin ducked his head, as though maybe he could avoid that eventuality if he could
somehow make himself smaller and avoid Sandra's notice. "Well, I guess," he said. He
left the kitchen reluctantly.
"Now, don't you two worry yourselves about Liam," Sandra said, her wiry hands
holding a coffee mug. "He's my hothead. But he's a good man. He always comes
around."
If Liam was going to come around, it wasn't going to be today.
When the three Delaney sons came into the kitchen, Colin introduced Ryan to Drew
and Julia, and she thought the man seemed amiable enough. They all shook hands, and
Ryan's smile seemed warm and genuine.
Liam, however, stood in the doorway with his arms folded over his chest, his face
hard and his eyes narrowed in anticipation of what? An argument? A fistfight? He hadn't
seemed to notice Julia's presence at all; his steely gaze was fixed squarely on Drew, who
returned Liam's contempt with more of his own.
Julia rolled her eyes at the unknowable thought processes of men.
"Liam, for God's sake," Sandra snapped at him. "Get in here and act as your
mother raised you right. Because I know I did."
Liam was motionless for a few moments more as he seemed to weigh whether to
back down or face his mother's scorn. He opted for a kind of compromise: He stepped
into the room and offered his hand to Drew, but kept the look on his face that said he was
ready to kick somebody's teeth in at the least provocation.
That much was okay, Julia thought—at least it was something—but then Drew
escalated the situation by refusing the hand Liam had offered.
"Seems like I'm unwelcome here, as far as you're concerned," Drew said, looking
Liam in the eye and ignoring the hand that still hung in the space between them.
Liam scowled. "All I know is that you showed up out of nowhere, and I'm supposed
to believe you're family." He dropped the hand palm-down onto the table in front of
Drew with a smack.
"You don't have to believe a goddamned thing," Drew said, standing. "I don't give a
flying—"
"Hey, hey, hey." Colin put one hand on Liam's shoulder and put the other one up,
palm out, to stop Drew from finishing his sentence—a sentence that, once completed,
would certainly inflame tensions that were already high. "Let's just take a minute."
"Liam, for God's sake," Sandra said, glowering at her son. "Get out of here and go
cool down."
"I don't need to cool down. I need—"
"Boy, when I tell you to go cool down, you damn well better do it." Sandra stood
facing Liam with her hands on her narrow hips, her brows drawn together so tightly that
they looked like two caterpillars that had collided.
Sandra was more than a foot shorter than Liam, and she had to be half his weight.
But to Julia, it was clear who held the position of power here—and it wasn't Liam.
Liam's hands clenched into fists. "Yes, ma'am." He shot Drew another challenging
look and then left the kitchen, letting the door close behind him with a smack.
The remaining Delaneys in the room—Sandra, Ryan, and Colin—displayed a variety
of reactions to what had just happened. Sandra looked irritated, Ryan looked
embarrassed, and Colin just looked uncomfortable.
"As far as friendly greetings go, a basket of muffins might've worked better," Ryan
quipped.
"Oh, God," Julia muttered. She already felt like an invader here, and now, Liam's
reaction confirmed that she and Drew were exactly that. "We don't have to stay here.
Mrs. Delaney, thank you, but we can go. We can—"
"We're staying," Drew said mildly.
"What?" Julia turned to him, not sure she'd heard him correctly.
"If the invitation still stands," he went on.
"Well, I guess it does," Sandra said. "I don't suppose I'm going to let one of my
boys tell me who I can have as a guest in my own house. The day I do that is the day they
carry me out of here feet first." Sandra folded her arms over her chest and scowled, just
as her middle son had done a few minutes before.
"Fine, then." Drew nodded. "Since we're still invited, we're staying." He glared at
the closed kitchen door, where Liam had just been.
"Well, whatever happens, it's going to be interesting," Ryan observed.
Julia looked down at the coffee in her mug and wished it were something
considerably stronger.
Once Liam had stormed out of the house, things quieted down some. Breanna came
home from picking her boys up from school, and Julia and Drew met her and the two
boisterous children. Colin showed Drew to the guest room at the main house, and then he
and Ryan took Julia about a quarter mile down the road in her rental car to white wood
and red brick farmhouse with a big front porch and a flower garden in the front yard.
As Colin took Julia's luggage out of the trunk and carried it up onto the porch, a
pretty woman in her early thirties with red hair in long, wild curls came out the front door
and onto the porch.
"This is my wife, Gen," Ryan told Julia as they climbed the stairs toward the front
door.
Julia's encounter with Liam had left her stressed and on edge, and she didn't know
what to expect from this new Delaney. When Gen smiled warmly and pulled Julia into an
impulsive hug, it was hard not to be disarmed.
"It's so good to meet you," Gen went on before Julia could say anything. "This
the whole situation is so crazy, isn't it? I mean, who could have predicted something like
this? Come on in, we'll get you settled. I'm supposed to be at work today, but I wanted to
be here to greet you."
Gen ushered Julia into a bright, new house that was warm from the fire in the
fireplace, and that smelled like vanilla and cinnamon. "What is that smell?" Julia said,
stopping just inside the front door with the strap from one of her bags slung over her
shoulder. "It's wonderful."
"Cinnamon streusel coffee cake," Gen said. "I love to bake."
Julia let out an involuntary laugh. "That's good because I need to do some stress
eating after what just happened with Liam."
"I've got you covered," Gen said, giving Julia's arm a squeeze. "You can eat while
you tell me what Liam did." She rolled her eyes. "Though I think I can guess."
It occurred to Julia that with Drew at the main house and her here at Ryan's place,
she had very much gotten the better end of the deal. "Lead the way," she said.
Colin's level of family-induced stress was at a particular high as he left Julia at Ryan
and Gen's house. He was not a stranger to family-induced stress, of course, and in fact,
he considered himself something of an expert in the subject. But now, one thing was
compounding on top of another to raise the level to a peak.
Not only did he want things with Drew to go well—he felt an urgent need, one he
didn't fully understand, to restore Redmond's son to the family—but he also felt more
and more that he wanted to protect and take care of Julia, wanted her to be happy here,
with the family, with him.
Which was ridiculous. He wasn't dating her, wasn't even sleeping with her. Still,
there was something about her that put his male instincts on high alert. If he were a
caveman, he'd have gone out and clubbed a mastodon to death just so he could drag it
home to her.
And if Colin had two goals working in tandem here—one regarding each of the
McCray siblings—then Liam was threatening both of them.
"Don't you have work to do back in Montana?" Colin asked Liam irritably when
he'd gotten Julia settled and had arrived back at the main house. Liam was in the kitchen,
nosing around and filching small pieces of food from the cutting board as their mother
cooked dinner. Michael and Lucas were settled in at the kitchen table working on
homework as Breanna helped Sandra prepare the meal. Drew, thankfully, was nowhere to
be seen.
"Don't you have work to do down there in San Diego?" Liam responded.
"I do, but it can wait," Colin said.
"Well, there you go," Liam answered. "Same here. I've got Desmond keeping an eye
on things while I'm gone. He'll manage."
Colin scoffed. "Desmond."
"You've got a problem with Desmond?" Liam wanted to know.
Colin ran a hand through his hair. "Shit. No. I guess not." Desmond Byrne had been
working for the Delaneys for more than thirty years, first at the Cambria ranch, now at
the Montana property just outside of Billings. Colin had never cared for the man much—
mainly because he was surly and always seemed to be competing with Orin and
Redmond for supremacy—but there was no denying that he knew how to run a cattle
ranch.
Liam grabbed a slice of carrot from Sandra's cutting board and popped it into his
mouth. Sandra set down her knife and smacked Liam's hand.
"Where's Drew?" Colin asked.
Liam leaned his butt against the countertop, his legs crossed at the ankles, arms
folded over his chest. "He's gone straight to hell, I hope," he remarked casually.
"You quit that crap before I have to knock some sense into you," Sandra snapped at
Liam, waving her chef's knife in his general direction. "And you know I'll do it, boy, I
don't care how grown-up you are."
"All right, not hell, then," Liam said. "I'm not that lucky. He's upstairs getting
settled into the spare room." Then, under his breath: "I hope he falls down the
goddamned stairs."
"Oh, for God's sake, Liam, I swear…" Sandra started.
"I thought they seemed nice," Breanna said as she arranged some rolls in a basket.
Her dark hair, the same shade, and texture as Colin's fell down to her shoulders.
"Especially her. Don't make trouble," she told Liam.
"Too late," Colin commented. "Before you and the boys got home, Liam gave them
the welcome you'd expect."
"Oh … crap." Breanna scowled and smacked Liam on the arm, hard.
"Hey!"
"Can't you make him behave?" Breanna demanded of Sandra.
"If I haven't managed it so far, girl, what makes you think I can do it now?" Sandra
responded, not unreasonably.
Colin regarded Liam, feeling increasingly uneasy and maybe a little pissed off. His
brother had always been surly and quick to anger; he had their mother's temperament.
While that temperament had, over the years, mostly been a minor annoyance, now it
posed a threat to everything Colin was trying to accomplish here. If Colin had been the
kind of man who got into fights, he might have gotten into one now with Liam; it would
be satisfying to punch his brother in the damned face. But since Colin wasn't that kind of
man, he took another approach.
"Let's step outside for a minute," Colin told Liam.
"Are we gonna fight?" Liam asked in a conversational tone, as though he'd
somehow read Colin's thoughts.
"Don't be an idiot. Just come outside."
When the two of them were out on the front porch—the place where many serious
discussions in the Delaney family took place—Colin turned to Liam.
"You need to knock it off," he said, without preamble. "We've got a somewhat
delicate situation here, and you and your attitude—"
"My attitude?" Liam shook his head and looked out toward the distant ocean. "I
don't see why everybody doesn't have my attitude. Welcoming that guy into our house?
We don't even know if he really is Redmond's son. It's bullshit, Colin."
"He really is Redmond's son," Colin said. "And you know it."
Liam shrugged, still avoiding Colin's eyes. "Maybe."
"What's this about?" Colin's voice was quieter now. He could see that Liam was
genuinely troubled, was having an honest-to-God difficult time with everything that was
happening. His distress was real; it wasn't blustering. "What's it really about?"
Liam made a scoffing noise and turned to Colin. "He's scamming us, Colin. And
you're letting him. You're helping him do it. Like you even care what happens in this
family. You got out of here the first minute you could, and now here you are, acting like
you know everything, like you're going to tell us all what to do—"
Colin looked at his brother like the man had taken leave of his senses. "You think I
don't care? Liam, for Christ's sake. You think—"
"Hey, look." Liam held up his hands in surrender. "All of this right here? The ranch,
the cattle? It's not your thing, and I get that. That's fine, okay? You bolted down south at
the first opportunity, and if that's what floats your boat, then who am I to judge? But
given all of that, I just wonder whether you're the person to decide what's right for all of
us." Liam tucked his hands into the safe haven of his armpits and shrugged.
Colin gripped the porch railing because it gave him something to do with his hands
other than throttling his brother. "You think I'm not a part of this family? A part of all
this?" He gestured toward the land around them. "Who do you think makes all of this
possible? You think the cattle ranch supports itself?" He scoffed. "It's the goddamned
real estate investments that keep this place running. Investments I made for this family.
Do you want to know how much the family's net worth has increased since I started
managing the portfolio? Because I can show you the numbers, Liam. I can—"
"Ah, shut up." Liam's words didn't have much heat to them, and in fact, he'd
seemed to deflate a little. He leaned his forearms on the porch railing and looked out at
the hills and the trees. He shook his head slowly. "It's just … I wonder if we even really
knew him. Redmond. If we even knew who the hell he was."
Colin suspected that this was at the heart of it—the mystery of what had really been
going on in Redmond's head all those years.
"We knew him," Colin said. "We might not have known everything about him, but
we knew what kind of man he was."
"Yeah? Because now, I think maybe we didn't."
Though he didn't say it, Colin thought his brother made a damned good point...