Thankful For You

“Do you want to swim?”

“Now that you’ve put the idea in my head, I’d love to get in the water.”

“Go grab me one of your pairs of jeans, then.”

He returned with his last pair of clean jeans; he’d been avoiding wearing them because they were brand-new and too expensive to use for the kind of dirty work he’d found himself doing of late.

“Give me a minute,” Dallas said.

“Hey...what are you going to do with those?”

“Give me a minute,” she said again.

Good as her word, she was back in about a minute. “Here. Go put these on and let’s go.”

Nick took his jeans from the cowgirl. His expensive jeans were now shorts. He didn’t bother to ask her what she had done or why she had done it. That part was obvious.

“These were brand-new,” he said.

“They’re still new.”

The way she shrugged made him believe that she was completely naive to the price of the jeans she had just ruined.

“They’re just shorter. Go put ’em on.”

* * *

Dallas peeled off her sweaty T-shirt, balled it up and dropped it on the bank of the small, clear-water lake. She sat down to yank off her boots as quick as she could. So hot, sticky and gritty. She couldn’t wait to get into that cool lake water. Her luck and her curse were that she was focused to a fault. All she could think about after practice was cooling off in the lake.

“I’d thought that I’d been to all of the Bent Tree lakes when I was a kid,” the lawyer said to her.

“It’s always been my private spot.” Dallas unzipped her jeans, shoved them down over her hips and legs so she could step out of them.

Dallas had strategically worn her old Speedo bathing suit under her clothing so she could get into the lake anytime she wanted. Her feet were tough from years of walking barefoot, so the pebbles and broken brush along the side of the lake didn’t bother her.

“You much of a swimmer?” Dallas loved the feel of the earth, warmed by the sun, beneath her bare feet. She always had, ever since she was a little girl.

Nick joined her by the edge of the lake. She glanced over at him as he peeled off his shirt. It was a quick glance, but long enough to notice how light the skin on his stomach was compared to the golden color of his arms and neck. He was a fit man; not ripped and shredded like a bodybuilder, but toned as if he spent some of his time, at least, working out. She seemed to like looking at Nick whether he had a shirt on or not.

“I was captain of my high school swim team.”

His profile to her, Nick seemed to be taking stock of the clear-water lake.

“It’s deep enough to dive from that boulder over there.” She pointed a couple of feet away from where they were standing.

Not able to spend one more second in her grubby skin, Dallas tromped through the short brush, careful not to step on the Sweet William wildflowers that grew in brightly colored clumps along the bank of the lake.

The boulder was hot beneath her feet. To her, the burning was a challenge. The longer she could stand it, the tougher she was. And being tough, being able to handle her business alone in the world was a matter of survival. She didn’t have anyone to depend on. Now that Davy was gone, she didn’t feel like she had a family. The way her brother had treated Davy in his last years, like he was a pariah—that wound might scar over, but it would never truly be healed.

No. She was alone in this world.

Dallas stepped to the edge of the boulder, lifted her arms above her head and touched her fingers together like a steeple. With one strong vault, she arced into the air and cut the water with her hands with only the smallest of splashes. She knew this lake—had spent hundreds of hours in her youth swimming in this lake. This lake was her swimming pool; the banks of this lake were her playroom. At Lightning Rock, she was more at home than any other place on earth. She hadn’t known how attached she was to the place—she hadn’t realized how hard it was going to be to say goodbye to this beautiful slice of paradise—until she had begun to clear out her father’s belongings. How many times a day had she stopped herself from tearing up? Countless.

Dallas touched a rock lodged at the bottom of the lake before she somersaulted forward to push herself up to the surface with her feet. She broke through the surface of the water just in time to hear Nick’s warning.

“Incoming!”

Dallas was treading her legs so she could wipe the water off her face and out of her eyes. She opened her eyes just in time to see Nick performing a cannonball off the boulder. Nick landed a short distance away from her with a giant splash. Some of the water displaced by his cannonball hit her in the face. She sputtered a little bit, spitting out lake water and wiping the water out of her eyes for a second time.

“What score would you give me?” Nick asked after he swam over to her.

The man’s arm strokes had been clean, strong and confident. She had spent so much of her time around rodeo men who had a propensity for stretching the truth a bit, she had half doubted Nick’s claim to be captain of his high school swim team. But not anymore.

The cool, fresh water made her feel renewed. She smiled with a laugh and held up two fingers playfully. “I had a better cannonball when I was nine.”

“Oh, yeah?” Nick asked, treading water beside her. “You think you can do better? Show me.”

The competitive spirit in her made her swim to the edge of the lake and back to the boulder to at least match, if not surpass, Nick’s “city boy” cannonball. Without paying attention to the time, the two of them tried to one-up each other in the cannonball arena. They should have been heading back to the homestead and tackling the trailer, but instead, they frolicked together in the lake as if they had nothing better to do and all the time in the world. The early afternoon slipped away from them, and it wasn’t until Nick called a tie that Dallas decided to let the competition end. She shared her bar of soap and shampoo with Nick, and they both left the lake a heck of a lot cleaner than they had gone in.

Together, they sat on the boulder to dry off in the sun. Sitting next to Nick, at one of her favorite spots in the world, felt as natural as being on the back of a horse. It didn’t—couldn’t—escape her notice that Nick had been making it easy for her to let down her guard. He liked her, she could see that in his eyes when he looked at her—she could hear it in his voice when he spoke to her—but he’d always been respectful. He’d always been kind. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt so close to a man. Was she falling for Nick Brand? Her feelings were so mixed-up lately, she couldn’t be sure. But, the nervous excitement she felt in her stomach whenever he stared into her eyes made her think that she might be falling for the Chicago lawyer. Hard.

“My sinuses are clear, that’s for darn sure.” Nick pinched his nose with his fingers and shook his head a bit.

Dallas had grabbed her towel and had spread it out so they could both sit down without burning their butts and the backs of their legs.

“Mmm, I feel so good right now.” Dallas tilted her head back to let the sun shine down on her face. “There’s nothin’ I like better than spending an afternoon swimming in Sweet William. This takes me back. It really does. Way back.”

“Sweet William? That’s the name of this lake?”

“Not the official name.” Dallas kept her eyes closed. “But it’s what me and Pop call it.”

She opened her eyes and pointed to the flowers growing wild along the bank of the lake. “See all those flowers? Those are Sweet Williams. They love to drink up the sun and bloom in the summer. I love me some good ol’ American wildflowers, don’t you?”

* * *

An American wildflower. That’s what Dallas was. Much like the wildflowers she loved so well, Nick had finally found a way to think about the cowgirl in a way that made sense to his brain. She was just as pretty and wild and hearty as those Sweet Williams growing on the side of a secret lake in Montana.

Sitting next to Dallas on that boulder, so close that he could smell the sweet scent of the soap on her browned skin, he couldn’t think of a time in his life when he wanted to touch a woman as badly as he wanted to touch her. He wanted to kiss away the little droplets of water on her neck and her shoulders. He wanted to slip her modest bathing suit straps off her shoulders, just enough to kiss the water from between her modest breasts.

The cowgirl had been difficult to read, but the giant “hands off” sign she wore like a badge of honor was easy enough to decipher. If he tried to kiss her, which had been a thought in his head for a couple of days, she would freeze him out. They were friendly acquaintances now; if he made any sort of move that she interpreted as sexual, he’d lose that precious ground and then some.

Why did he care so much about preserving his budding friendship and trust building with Dallas? He wasn’t entirely sure. Yes, he was attracted to her. But he didn’t have any illusion of starting a lasting relationship with a wild-child barrel racer. His life plan and hers were at serious odds. He had tried to imagine Dallas in Chicago and had failed. So it had to be the challenge that Dallas offered to his ego. He hadn’t always been the best-looking guy in the room, or the tallest, but he was decent looking, had blue eyes that women often gushed about, and he always had access to money and lots of it. Rejection wasn’t something he’d had to deal with too often in his life. With Dallas, it seemed like a 100 percent certainty.

* * *

“I’d like to make a quick run back to the ranch for supplies. I didn’t realize how bare our cupboards are,” Dallas said as she came out of her horse trailer dressing room wearing a clean, ribbed tank top and pair of faded blue jeans. Her hair was still damp and blowing in curly wisps around her face.

His uncle Hank and aunt Barb had let Dallas “shop” at Bent Tree every week to stock up on supplies so they didn’t have to make the trip to town. Would the supplies have flown so freely if he was the only one camped out at Lightning Rock? No. He was certain of that. His uncle had refused to talk to him about the sale of Lightning Rock; his uncle had refused to discuss easement rights that would allow the new owner to travel across Bent Tree land to reach Lightning Rock. So far, he’d been happy to avoid that “come to Jesus” moment he needed to have with his uncle. There was still so much cleanup left to do. But he couldn’t let his uncle put this off indefinitely. Uncle Hank, who was known in his community as being levelheaded and fair, lost all of that levelheadedness and reason when the topic of rightful ownership of Lightning Rock came up.

“You comin’ or stayin’?” Dallas put her cowgirl hat on, which signaled to him that she was officially ready to go.

Normally, he would steer clear of the farmhouse in order to avoid any possible confrontation with his uncle. Today, now halfway through the cleanup efforts, Nick realized that time for avoidance was running out.

“I’ll come with you.”

If Dallas was surprised by his choice, she didn’t show it on her face. She was a woman who kept her cards held tightly to her chest. Dallas had to know that she was smack-dab in the middle of a family feud, yet she never asked him one probing question. She kept herself focused on tying up the loose ends of her father’s life and let him handle his own family business.

Dallas climbed behind the wheel of her early-model Bronco and cranked the engine. Nick had been subjected to the cowgirl’s driving enough to grab the handle above the window and hold on tight. She preferred to be the one in the driver’s seat—so did he. If they were in Chicago he would be driving, but he was on her turf now, and she had won that battle. On the rare occasion that they had to go somewhere together, she drove.

“You missin’ your life back East?” Dallas asked him. This was about as personal as she had ever gotten with him.

“I do,” he admitted to her.

He hadn’t wanted to pressure her to go through her father’s stockpile of possessions on a timer—this was part of her grieving process and he was trying his best to be respectful. He saw his friends having a good time on social media, he thought of all the work waiting for him at his new gig at his father’s law firm and it made him miss life in Chicago. He missed fine dining and yachting and a comfortable bed. He missed his new Jaguar.

“Yeah.” Dallas had one arm resting on the open window, her left leg bent so her boot was resting on the driver’s seat. “I miss my life.”

He’d already known that about her, so this admission was just confirmation. She had this restlessness about her. There was always a distance in her eyes, as if only half of her was really with him in Montana. There wasn’t a boyfriend out there pulling her away—it was her life. It was the road. It was the competition.

“Do you have a place you call home?” Nick tightened his grip as they flew over a couple of bumps in the road. “Other than here, I mean.”

Dallas gunned the gas, steering the loud Bronco onto the paved highway. “Not really.”

Okay. Let me rephrase that question. “Do you have a place in mind to land once you stop barrel racing?”

Dallas laughed and glanced at him like he had asked a very odd question. “I ain’t never gonna quit barrel racing.”

The next question he asked came out of nowhere for him, and afterward he was left wondering what had possessed him to even bring the subject up. “Do you want to get married? Have kids?”

“I haven’t really spent too much time givin’ it much thought.”

The conversation stopped abruptly with that last question, and Nick discovered just how easy it was to step on a land mine with this woman. Most women weren’t offended by the question of marriage and children even if they planned on building their career instead of building a family. Not so with Dallas Dalton. His asking her about her future status as wife and mother had seemed to touch a raw nerve.

“That’s Clint’s truck right there.” Dallas nodded toward one of the trucks parked near the main house at Bent Tree.

Damn.

If Clint was at Bent Tree, there was a good chance his older sister, Taylor, was with him. He loved his sister—they’d always been close. But they were on opposing sides of the Lightning Rock issue and he didn’t want to get into yet another battle of words with Taylor. He had stopped by his sister’s house in Helena when he first arrived in Montana to meet his niece and catch up, but the minute the conversation had turned to Lightning Rock, they had gotten into an argument. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d argued with Taylor.

“And that’s Brock’s truck right there.” Dallas shifted into Park and shut off the engine. “It looks to me like you’re in for a bit of a family reunion.”

Nick nodded in response.

Both of his sisters, one older and one younger, had married Montana men and settled within one day’s driving distance to Bent Tree Ranch. He had opted to not stay at Bent Tree to avoid conflict with Hank and he had begged off staying with Taylor or his younger sister, Casey, for the same reason. He’d been in Montana for the first time in years, and he’d spent most of his time there avoiding his own family. Maybe it was time to stop avoiding and start facing them. Maybe it was long past time.

Chapter Four

His sisters greeted him in the only way they ever had: with open arms. Yes, they disagreed about how to handle Lightning Rock, but that couldn’t stop them from greeting each other with love. They had grown up in a home that was almost the exact opposite of the warm, welcoming feel of the farmhouse at Bent Tree Ranch.

Their house in the wealthy area of Hyde Park was a mansion; his mother insisted on keeping a full staff around the clock. Aunt Barbara, who had grown up in Chicago and run in the same social circles as his mother, prided herself on her cooking. His mother prided herself on having the ability to hire a personal chef. Hank and his father, Angus, were the closest brothers in age, but they couldn’t be further apart in temperament. Angus was austere and withdrawn from the family; the more his marriage to Vivian fractured, the more time he spent at the office. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he saw his parents show real affection toward each other. There was always tension crackling in the air when they were together—Nick often wished that they would just get a divorce already. So, very early on in their lives, it had been Taylor, Nick and Casey against the world.

“Nick.” His sister Taylor used one arm to hug him while she held her daughter, Penelope, with her other arm. “I didn’t know you would be here today.”

“We’re just in for supplies.” Nick tweaked his little niece on the nose while his eyes shifted from one person to another until they landed on his uncle seated at the head of the long table in the center of the kitchen.

Taylor switched with their little sister, Casey, who stepped into his arms and hugged him as if she hadn’t seen him in a long time even though they had seen each other when he first arrived in Montana.

“How are you feeling?” Nick asked his redheaded sister.

“I’m okay.” Casey smiled up at him. There was something in that smile that he didn’t believe. Casey had been diagnosed with uterine cancer and had undergone a partial hysterectomy. His younger sister had never made it a secret that she wanted to bear her own children; the cancer had taken that away from her and the family was watching her closely to see how she would handle it long-term.

One by one he made contact with everyone in the room. He had his hand clasped with the hand of his cousin Luke, a retired marine, when he saw Dallas come in to the kitchen. She walked directly to Clint, her best friend and Taylor’s bull-riding husband; the cowgirl hugged Clint and her eyes were full of trust and happiness when she looked at the bull rider. Nick felt a twinge of jealousy at the closeness between Clint and Dallas—it made him wonder how Taylor, who was looking at Dallas a little warily, could handle her husband having a woman as a best friend.

Aunt Barbara interrupted his train of thought. “This couldn’t have worked out any better if I planned it myself. Why don’t the two of you go get yourselves washed up? We were just about to sit down to eat.”

It felt a little bit as if the universe had conspired against him, but he was happy to see his sisters and his aunt’s kitchen smelled amazing. There was no sense passing up the delicious-smelling pot roast in the oven. He couldn’t cook worth a damn and neither could Dallas.

“Go on.” Aunt Barb tried to herd him toward the foyer so he’d hook a sharp left and wash his hands in the downstairs bathroom.

“Let me just say hello to Uncle Hank first.”

A look of concern brushed over his aunt’s face, but she let him do things his way. His way was to talk to his uncle without ruining his aunt’s lovely dinner.

“Good to see you, Uncle Hank.” Nick held out his hand to him.

Hank Brand, a man who closely resembled his own father, half stood up, shook his hand firm and brief and then sat back down.

“Go wash up like your aunt wants,” his uncle said. “We’ll have time to hash over things later.”

Aunt Barb must’ve been working on her husband night and day—this was a huge change in his uncle’s position. The fact that his uncle was even willing to sit down and discuss the future of Lightning Rock was better than he’d been willing to do for over a decade.

“Thank you, Uncle Hank.” Nick gave him a nod. “I look forward to it.”

That wasn’t necessarily true. He wasn’t looking forward to “hashing” things out with his uncle; he had resented his father for shirking his own responsibility and putting it on his shoulders. Yes, his father’s caseload as a circuit court judge was jammed. But for once, Nick wished his father would “unjam” that caseload and put his family first.

Aunt Barbara orchestrated the seating and he took his seat between Clint and Luke.

“Dallas!” he heard his aunt holler above the din of the family talking among themselves, all voices mingling together in a loud cacophony. “Where are you going?”

Nick followed his aunt’s sight line to where Dallas was just about to disappear into the foyer. “I’ve got work to do.”

“You’ve got eating to do.” His aunt shook her hand and gestured for Dallas to sit down.

Nick thoroughly enjoyed watching Dallas actually get outbossed by his aunt. Dallas ruled her own roost, but Bent Tree was ruled by Barbara Brand. Period. End of story.

* * *

Dallas hadn’t planned on joining the Brand family for dinner, but she couldn’t deny that she was glad Barbara had invited her to stay. Ever since she had been a little girl, eating at the Brands’ had been a treat. This was the table where she learned what it was like to be a real family—with a mom and a dad who loved each other. And perhaps she would always felt a little bit like the girl with her nose pressed against the glass, even when the Brand family did everything they could to make her feel like she was an honorary family member. Either way, sitting down for a meal in the farmhouse was the closest thing to a typical American family she had ever experienced. Barbara’s kitchen was buzzing with activity—loud talking, occasional arguing and so much laughter. Dallas sat quietly, watching, enjoying and soaking every second in.

The food started to get passed around the table, and Dallas’s stomach started to churn with hunger and anticipation. Nick smiled at her happily as he filled his plate with heaping spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and smothered it with his aunt’s gravy made from the pan drippings, pot roast with homegrown carrots and onions. For the first part of the meal, she noticed that Nick didn’t talk—he just ate. Every now and again, Nick would make happy noises in between chewing and washing down the food with glass after glass of his aunt’s homemade root beer.

“This beats our dinner prospects out at Lightning Rock, hands down,” Nick said to her while he loaded some more food onto his plate.

It was Dallas’s pleasure to watch Nick interact with his family. She could see how close he was to his sisters, how much they adored him, and it spoke well of the kind of man he was. A decent man. A good man. A man to admire.

A man to love?

By the end of the meal, Dallas had landed on one certainty – having dinner with Nick and the rest of the Brand clan would be one of her favorite memories.

* * *

After his second full plate of food, Nick felt satisfied enough to slow down and actually enjoy the third plateful of food and the atmosphere of his first family meal at Bent Tree Ranch since he was a teenager. It had always felt homey and welcoming here at the ranch; his aunt had a big hand in that.

He’d found himself comparing his mother with his aunt, and wondering how two women from the same place, the same neighborhood, could turn out so radically different. But they did. Aunt Barb always had something good cooking in the kitchen. She was a homemaker, wife and mother, and proud of it. This was what he remembered: good food and good conversation. Laughter. Family. He’d missed this feeling and all those childhood memories he had pushed aside when the family fractured after the reading of his grandfather’s will bubbled to the surface. It had hurt to be separated from his aunt and his uncle. It had hurt not to be able to return to Bent Tree Ranch.

“Save room for dessert.” His aunt, who had leaned over him from behind to take his empty plate, stopped first to give him a little hug.

Nick groaned. He knew he would have double helpings of whatever his aunt would be offering for dessert. No doubt it would be homemade, chock-full of sugar and butter, super delicious, and fattening. He didn’t eat a lot of sweets even though he had a substantial sweet tooth. Law school required him to spend a lot of time sitting and studying—he didn’t want to develop a “dad bod” this early in his life. But with all the physical exertion he was putting out just to keep up with Dallas out at Lightning Rock, he could stand to eat a slice or two of whatever awesome dessert his aunt had baked.