Sandy smiled. “Glad you two could join us. Not sure how everything tastes. Your dad insisted on cooking.”
Brooke put a hand to her heart and pretended to reel. “I remember the last time . . .”
“Hey!” Doug called from behind the stove. “The recipe was wrong. In any case, it’s hard to ruin hamburgers.”
“I haven’t tried the coleslaw yet,” her mother said in a stage whisper. “But at least we have Grandma’s leftover cake.”
Brooke introduced Adam to Lou, who stood up and grinned as he looked Adam up and down.
“I was in Korea. Nice to meet a fellow vet.”
Once again, no military talk for Adam, who simply shook Lou’s hand, then sat down opposite him next to Josh. Brooke felt like scurrying all the way around the table instead of sitting next to Adam. She knew it would look stupid—it was stupid—so she sat next to Adam and helped herself to one of the burgers piled on a platter at the center of the table.
For a while, talk was concentrated on the ranch, from estimating how many of the cows were pregnant to which fence had to be repaired to Adam’s first eventful day. Adam said little, eating as if he hadn’t eaten in a long time, which amused Brooke. He’d done his best to act like feeding cattle was easy to learn, but she could tell by his appetite that he’d worked hard. He hadn’t questioned her, hadn’t tried to suggest doing something a different way, as some men might—hell, like he used to. Now he just listened to her instructions and followed her lead. He’d made mistakes—and his sore body would remind him of that by tomorrow—but he usually didn’t make the same mistake twice.
Very different behavior than when he was in high school, she mused. She could remember when they’d been assigned to work in the same group on a history project. He hadn’t wanted to put in the effort of leading, but he always had a comment on everyone else’s work. He thought he was way too smart. Apparently, the Marines had taught him otherwise.
During a lull in the conversation, Brooke said to Lou, “Too cold a day to expect any tourists, I bet.”
Lou shrugged. “I’ll hear the bell if anyone rings it, so yeah, I’ll probably get other chores done.”
Adam glanced sideways at her curiously, but since he had a burger at his mouth, she answered his unspoken question.
“We have a beautiful old sleigh from my great-grandparents’ day. Dad had it fixed up last winter, and we started giving sleigh rides to tourists in the afternoons. We’ll even do it in the evenings if someone makes a reservation. Otherwise, they just show up and ring the bell. There are signs in town advertising it at the community center, and we put some ads in the paper. But that’s it.”
“It’s pretty successful,” Josh said, after taking a swig of milk. “Nate’s good with the advertising.”
“The sleigh is actually a big draw,” Nate added. “Josh did the leather tooling on the bench.”
“It’s beautiful,” Brooke agreed. “And I take my turn driving occasionally when Lou can’t. It’s very relaxing, and I’m always surprised by the people I meet.”
“She tries to pretend she’s all into the solitary ranch life,” Nate said in a teasing voice. “But sometimes I wonder.”
Brooke laughed along with her family, but inside she felt a little jolt of surprise. What did he suspect?
Adam glanced at each of them dubiously. “Do you three get along this well all the time?”
“It gets a little sickenin’,” Lou said, cutting himself a slice of cake from the pan.
“Oh, they’ve had their fights,” Sandy added, leaning back in her wheelchair from her half-eaten plate.
Brooke frowned at how much of her mom’s food had gone untouched. Her appetite didn’t seem quite the same yet. She told herself her mom had just gotten home from the hospital, that the meds affected her appetite, so it was only natural . . .
And then she heard a guffaw, and realized all the men were laughing hard. She’d missed the punch line. Even Adam’s eyes seemed bright with amusement although he hadn’t given in to open laughter.
“What did I miss?” she asked, smiling.
Josh leaned forward to see around Adam. “Don’t you remember how mad you were that Nate graduated from a pony to a horse?”
She rolled her eyes. “Not that story again. Let’s not forget that I was, what, six?”
“Eight,” Doug said, sitting down at the other end of the table. “We caught you on Nate’s horse about a mile from the house, clingin’ to its mane, ’cause the saddle’d already fallen off.”