Bridie chuckled. “Finn’s told me that you bought Zane a pink shirt and even though he grumbles every time he wears it, now it’s his favorite.”
Trinity’s stunning smile showed why she’d been the one to thaw Zane’s untrusting heart. “And if I do say so myself, he does look good in pink.” She slipped her arm through Bridie’s. “Let’s go and see if he’s wearing it now because twenty minutes ago he still had his ripped grey one on.”
Arm in arm they went downstairs and into the kitchen.
Zane was wearing his pink shirt and as they entered the large open plan room, the tender look he sent Trinity, caused Bridie’s eyes to mist. He’d been alone for so long and to know that he and Finn had found happiness with Trinity made Bridie’s heart melt. She might have just met her strong and silent brother but she felt like she’d known him all her life. They’d bonded over a mutual interest in horses and cattle and a deep love for their mother.
Zane grinned at her, a smile almost identical to her own, as he opened a bottle of red wine. “Perfect timing. Mom needs help finding a recipe. She’s disappeared into the library.”
“Okay. I’ll go and find her.”
Bridie made her way to the library her mom had started when Zane was a baby and which now was a room of wall-to-wall books. She still found it hard to believe her mother had had another life before she’d married her father. A life she only talked about to her husband and not her daughter because it had caused so much heartache. Naïve and young, she’d married an older man to please her family. Her cold and powerful husband soon became abusive and once he had the sons he’d wanted, he’d used her postnatal depression to force her away from her home and her children.
Bridie walked into the room that had been her mother’s sanctuary and that she no longer needed with her ex-husband now long gone. Sadness filtered through Bridie. Even though her gentle mother never had the chance to reconnect with her youngest son, Russ, who’d died in a light plane crash, she was finally reunited with Zane and had met her grandson.
Her mother stood beside a small table, a pile of books beside her. Dressed in an elegant pale blue dress, she barely resembled the wan and rail-thin woman Bridie had put on a plane to Montana six weeks ago. Her grey hair was coiled into a neat bun, her frail limbs were now fuller and stronger, but most of all the light had returned to her blue eyes.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Her smile widened. “Don’t you look nice?”
“Thanks.” Bridie kissed her cheek and breathed in her familiar lavender scent. “You do too.”
Emotion thickened her words. She’d come so close to losing her. Before her father had fallen ill, her mother had fought long and hard to survive breast cancer.
“Can I please have your pavlova recipe to share with Payton? I’m also trying to find an old-fashioned lime cake recipe my mother used to bake. I know I once had a cookbook with it in it.”
“No worries.” Bridie walked toward the door. “I’ll write it down for Payton after I’ve helped with lunch.”
On her first visit to the long table Zane had placed in the shade of an old cottonwood tree, Bridie sat two pitchers of water. She waved to Henry who sat in a comfortable chair across the lawn, talking to Lesley, the bookstore owner, and Hank, the Hollyhock Creek ranch foreman.
On her second visit she set a vase of sweet-smelling pink roses in the middle of the elegant table. She stepped back to check the table settings were complete. Her grief stirred. If only she could have set a place for her father and he could have shared in her mother’s special day, a day they’d once celebrated as though it could be her mother’s last. Bridie’s walk back to the kitchen wasn’t quite so fast.
On her third trip Bridie placed a basket of fresh bread rolls on the table. She looked up and her eyes met Ethan’s. He smiled and she forced a smile in return. Finn left the sandpit and walked over to where Ethan stood with Cordell and fellow rancher, Rhett, and slipped his small hand into Ethan’s. This time the emotion that lanced through her wasn’t only grief. Being around Finn these past weeks had awakened her deep yearning to have a family of her own. And being around Ethan had unlocked feelings she wasn’t ready to examine.
Throat tight and desperate for air, she swung away. She couldn’t wait until her next mountain trip to be alone. She needed space ... now.
When Bridie again went through the kitchen door, instinct told Ethan she wouldn’t appear again. With every trip to the table her shoulders were a little more stiff and her smile more brittle. She might look picture-perfect in her summer dress that clung to her curves and revealed the shapely length of her legs, but he knew better. She’d perfected the art of presenting a brave façade to the world when inside her heart bled.