Awakening Veronica(Divine Creek Ranch 17)(3)
Lately, Grandma Kate had been asking her to finally come to Texas for a visit. She’d never visited there before. Air travel and Veronica didn’t mix well, but she’d never revealed that to Kate. If ever there was someone in her life that she’d suck it up for, though, Kate was that person.
By the end of the conversation, Grandma Kate had convinced Veronica to make the plane trip as well as filling her in on her brothers Cord and Jackson’s news. They were engaged and embracing the Lusty ménage lifestyle and a party was planned for them in Lusty in a few days’ time. She dreaded the thought of socializing and being in crowds but she’d weather the anxiety to wish her brothers well. Of her siblings, they were the closest to her heart.
In the back of her mind was the inkling that she’d been bamboozled by the wily nonagenarian. No one else from her family would be attending the engagement party, either because they were in denial about the choice Cord and Jackson had made to commit their lives to one woman, or because busy schedules didn’t allow it. Veronica had a feeling the latter excuse was really a veiled form of the former excuse. Sometimes her family sucked.
On that note, she heard the shower shut off and she couldn’t ignore the tightening knot in her gut any longer.
Time to deal with Brent.
* * * *
Grandma Kate pressed her fingertips to her lips and then touched them to the computer screen as her beautiful relative and wildly successful romance author signed off from their Skype conversation. She’d be arriving in Lusty in a few days for a working vacation, which was better than she’d hoped for. Even though she’d kept up with the Montana Benedicts over the years, she couldn’t say her relationship with Emerson had carried forward to George and Norah—Veronica’s parents—and the rest of her siblings.
Bunch of horse’s patoots.
She reached across the desk to the stack of photos that had recently arrived in the mail. She tended to let the pictures pile up in her camera and then ordered them in bulk once or twice a year. Flipping through pictures of Chloe’s commitment ceremony, she smiled when she came across a picture of Grace Warner with her delightful spouses Jack, Ethan, and Adam. Grace glowed with happiness in the shot, and there wasn’t any reason to wonder why. Her men clearly doted on her.
Another shot slipped from the stack, this one taken in Divine the last time she’d been down when that adorable Julian Alvarez and his best friend Chris Potter had bound their hearts and lives with their lady love, Gwen Henderson. Chris had been quite the charmer and she felt a girlish giggle flutter inside of her as she remembered how he’d flirted with her after asking her for a dance at the wedding reception. Her jitterbug might be slower nowadays, but he’d stirred happy memories of dancing with her men in decades past.
Her fingers paused as she sorted through the photos and her eyes were drawn to another guest at that same wedding. A wizened fingertip, the skin soft and nearly translucent after close to a century of living, stroked the image of a tall, strong-looking man chatting with Grace. He was what her granddaughter Rebecca would call a sexy silver fox. It was only a one-dimensional image but Grandma Kate thought she saw the traces of a stalwart personality in his chiseled face and the set of his broad shoulders. She saw loneliness, too.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she whispered to herself.
Chewing her lip for a second, she recalled being introduced to him. She’d wondered back then at the sense of “family” she’d gotten from him, with his easy smile and mannerly ways. She’d had that feeling before in the past and she’d learned to not ignore it. Talking Veronica into taking a little side trip with her to Divine was sounding like a better idea all the time.
“Ah, I remember. Sheriff Hank Stinson. You look protective. I’ll bet you’re the type who believes watching out for the ladies is the burden the world has laid on your shoulders. I wonder what you’d think of sweet, young things being bullied. You wouldn’t take kindly to it, I imagine.”
Kate recalled from previous conversations that Grace also knew a thing or two about being bullied.
She was a night owl like Kate, and she’d still be up this late. “I need to finalize those plans with Grace anyway.”
* * * *
Grace slid her arms into the long, azure-blue satin robe, fresh from her shower and feeling much more relaxed.
Ethan had sat in on the chat with her and she’d watched his consternation grow as Veronica had been berated by a “fan.” The verbal pummeling Veronica had received from that troll, complete with laughing and giggling emoticons meant to veil the sarcasm and aggressiveness of the comments, had hit a little too close to home for Grace.