chapter 24

She didn't take his call. Goddamn it, why didn't she take his call?

Colin stared at the phone. Never in his life had a woman refused to take his calls

after a night of great sex, though he guessed there was a first time for everything. He

thought of the chick flicks Breanna liked, full of women sobbing to their friends about

men who used them for their bodies and then didn't call.

Was Colin the scorned woman from a chick flick?

He could text her again; after all, she had answered his texts. But that would injure

his pride in a way he wasn't quite prepared to accept. If she didn't want to talk to him,

there wasn't much he could do about it. But that didn't mean he had to like it.

That didn't mean he understood it, either. What had gone wrong, apart from the

incident with Liam? What had changed between the time they'd been together, and now?

And then it hit him: She'd gotten a ride back to the ranch from her brother.

Colin groaned softly and ran a hand through his hair.

Drew.

Nothing like a little scolding from a brother, a little guilt-inducing, angry rant, to

change a person's mind about a budding relationship.

Colin tossed his phone on the bed and thought about it while he took a hot, steamy

shower. What was he supposed to do here? What was the best way forward?

One thing was certain: If Julia didn't want to be with him for her own reasons, then

that was fine. He could be a man about it and walk away. But if she didn't want to be

with him because of Drew or Liam—because those two hot-tempered fools couldn't

accept the fact that Colin and Julia had something developing between them—then he'd

have something to say about it.

He'd have a lot to say about it, as a matter of fact.

Julia got showered and dressed and went downstairs at Ryan and Gen's place, and

the news about the fight between Colin and Liam had already spread. Ryan was gone;

Gen said he usually left the house at the crack of dawn. But Gen was bustling around in

the kitchen, pulling freshly baked muffins out of the oven and putting them on a rack to

cool. Over the scent of the muffins, Julia smelled strong coffee.

"Good morning," Gen greeted her. Gen had a white cotton apron on over a pair of

jeans and a T-shirt. Her red curls were piled on top of her head.

"That smells wonderful," Julia said. "I thought you'd be at work already."

"The gallery doesn't open until ten, and I wanted to make sure you got a good

breakfast," she said. Gen was an absurdly good and happy host; when Julia had come into

the kitchen, Gen was actually humming.

Gen shot Julia a lookout of the corner of her eye. "I heard there was a thing between

Colin and Liam last night. Punches were thrown. Jackson Graham had to break it up."

Gen's voice was calm and conversational, as though this sort of thing happened every

day around here. Who knew? Maybe it did.

"You heard about that already?" Julia paused, coffee mug in her hand, and looked at

Gen.

"Sure. Ryan was out in the barn after dinner tending to a sick calf, and Liam came

in, all pissed off and brooding. He told Ryan, and Ryan told me." Gen's face was serene

as she puttered around the kitchen. Such a lack of response over her brothers-in-law

coming to blows could only mean it wasn't a rare occurrence—or it wasn't unexpected.

"Is Liam always such a"—she searched for an apt description—"a seething ball of

fury?"Gen turned toward Julia, put one hand on her hip, and considered the question.

"Always? No. But it doesn't take much."

"Well, God." Julia poured herself a cup of coffee and added milk and sugar.

"I'll tell you what, though. He's a good guy. I mean, he's a really good guy. He

might occasionally punch his brother, but he'd throw himself in front of a train for any

one of us."

"Well." Julia plunked down onto one of the kitchen chairs at the big table in the

center of the room. "I couldn't imagine him throwing himself in front of a train for Colin

last night. Throwing me in front of it, maybe."

Gen put a muffin on a plate, added some cut fruit beside it, and placed the plate in

front of Julia with a napkin and a fork.

"This looks amazing," Julia said.

"This? This is nothing." Gen sat across from Julia at the table. "So. I heard you come

in last night. Almost three a.m." She wiggled her eyebrows meaningfully.

Julia froze. She'd hoped that she'd managed to sneak in on the sly, but apparently

Gen had the superhuman hearing of a dolphin, or maybe a bat. Julia opened her mouth to

say something but didn't know what to say, and so she shoved her muffin in there

instead.

"Oh, come on," Gen said. "You're not going to give me a little dirt on you and

Colin? I know we just met, but you can tell me. I'm an in-law. I don't have any emotional

baggage! At least, not about this."

Gen did seem like she'd be easy to talk to, and Julia really wanted to talk to

someone. She chewed her bite of the exceptional muffin, swallowed, and was just about

to launch into the story of her date with Colin, when the kitchen door burst open and

Breanna rushed in. Breanna most resembled Ryan, with her thick, dark hair and deep

brown eyes. Her cheeks were pink from the chilly morning air, and she whisked off her

jacket and scarf as she came into the kitchen.

"Okay, Julia. The kids are at school. I've got time on my hands, and I heard you

slept with my brother last night. So, dish." She grabbed a muffin from the cooling rack,

sat down at the table next to Julia, and focused on her.

News really did spread fast around here.

Julia shifted uncomfortably in her seat and said to Breanna, "You don't really want

to hear about your brother's sex life, do you?"

Breanna winced a little. "Ideally, no. But I'll do it, because it's been so long since

I've had a sex life of my own, I have to live vicariously through someone. Ooh, coffee."

She got up, took a mug from the cupboard above the coffee pot, and poured herself a cup.

Julia shook her head a little to clear her confusion. "But, wait. I thought the Delaneys

hated the idea of Colin and me together."

"Just because we're a family doesn't mean we share the same brain," Breanna said.

"Right. Okay," Julia said.

Despite the discomfort of being put on the spot like this, she was beginning to think

she liked both Gen and Breanna, despite whatever the Delaney family politics might be.

She'd never been good at making female friends—in school, she'd found the things girls

talked about to be silly and frivolous. But right now, in Gen's warm kitchen, it felt good

to be talking to women—it felt good to think that these women might become her friends.

"All right. Colin took me to dinner at Neptune, and Liam saw us in the window, and

—"

"We know that part," Gen said.

"Okay, right. So, then there was the fight, and—"

"We know that part, too," Breanna reminded her.

"Oh. So what you want to know is …"

"How was it? How was my brother-in-law in bed? And are you going to keep seeing

him? Are you in love? Is he?" Gen leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her chin

propped in her hands. She batted her eyelashes at Julia.

Julia couldn't help but laugh. That was, until she remembered how she'd left things

between herself and Colin. Her heart sank, and her face fell. She swallowed hard. "I told

him we shouldn't see each other anymore."

"Oh, no. Was it that bad?" Breanna asked.

"What? No! It wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't bad at all. It was … well, kind of

spectacular, actually. It was amazing. It was—"

"Then why did you dump him?" Gen looked genuinely puzzled.

"Did you miss the part about Liam?" Julia said, flustered.

"What about him?" Breanna demanded.

"What do you mean, 'What about him?' He hit Colin! He punched him right there on

Main Street, in front of everybody! Because of me! I don't want to come between two

brothers! I don't want to be that woman who tears a family apart!"

Breanna waved dismissively with one hand. "One: I don't think this family could be

torn apart with a bulldozer and a chainsaw. Two: People can't choose who to fall for

based on how other people feel about it. And three: Liam didn't hit Colin because of you.

He hit Colin because of Redmond. He just doesn't realize that yet."

Gen nodded her agreement. "Liam and Redmond were close, and now Liam's

grieving and he's hurting, and all of that hurt has to go somewhere. So he's pointing it at

you and Drew. But he'll work all of that out and get past it. And if he doesn't, Sandra will

smack some sense into him."

"If she hasn't done it already," Breanna added.

As if on cue, Sandra came into the kitchen. Didn't anyone knock around here?

Sandra was wearing faded jeans and a football jersey, this one for the Oakland

Raiders. Her graying hair was in a ponytail, and she wore blue and white Nikes on her

feet, in place of the fuzzy slippers Julia had seen her wearing before.

"Good, you're here." Sandra nodded at Julia.

"Um … I …" Julia started.

"I'm here to tell you not to pay any attention to my dim-wit son. Liam, I mean, if

you didn't know which one I was talking about. It's inexcusable the way he acted last

night—yes, I heard all about it—and I won't have it. He can take his butt back to

Montana if he can't respect someone who's a guest in our home. And I guess that's all I

have to say about it." She nodded to herself, apparently satisfied with her speech.

Julia looked at Sandra in surprise. "Sandra, I appreciate that, but—"

"There's no but about it," she snapped. "Bad manners are bad manners, and that's

that. The boy's lost his mind, you ask me, and there's nothing more to be said about it. I

raised him better than this, by God. What kind of muffins are those? Blueberry?"

"Lemon poppy seed," Gen said.

"Well, I suppose that'll do." Sandra grabbed a plate from the cupboard, put a muffin

on it, and then put it on the kitchen table and got herself a mug of coffee. She plopped

down into a chair as though she belonged there. Which, from the look of things, she did.

"We were just talking about Julia and Colin," Breanna said. "And their date. She

was going to tell us how Colin was in b—"

Julia kicked Breanna, hard, under the table.

"Ouch! That's going to bruise." Breanna glared at her.

"All I can say is that he'd damned well better call you today, after the thing you

kicked Breanna to keep her from saying. A man who doesn't call a woman after being

with her the night before is just a—"

"Julia dumped him," Gen broke in.

"I didn't—"

"Oh, come on. You did," Gen said.

"Well, what the hell?" Sandra demanded. "What'd he do to bring that on?"

"He didn't … It's just …" The conversation was moving too fast, and in too many

directions, for Julia to keep up with it.

"It's because of Liam," Breanna put in. "She doesn't want to cause trouble."

Sandra fixed Julia with a glare that probably had served her well as the mother of

four children. "Liam decks somebody who's just trying to eat his damned dinner, and

you're the one causing trouble? For God's sake."

When Sandra put it that way, it did seem kind of stupid. Julia was just pondering

whether the older woman had a point, and whether she should try talking things out with

Colin, when the kitchen door opened and Colin himself came in. Julia began to wonder

whether Gen's kitchen had some kind of gravitational pull that dragged everyone within a

certain radius into it.

"Colin," Julia said. She could feel herself blushing.

"Oh, good. You're here," he said, repeating his mother's words from earlier almost

exactly. "We need to talk."

"You're goddamned right you two need to talk," Sandra groused. "This one over

here thinks she shouldn't see you anymore because Liam doesn't like it." She snorted and

shook her head. "Liam."

"I just wanted—"

"I heard there are muffins in here," Orin said, coming into the kitchen with a sheepish

look on his face. "That is if you've got enough, Gen."

"I've got plenty," Gen said. "Have a seat."

"Well, I thought I'd just take one to go if you don't mind. Ryan needs me in the

barn." He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his work pants and rocked back and forth

on his feet.

"How about if I pack some up and you can take some to Ryan, too?" Gen said.

"Well, that's fine, Gen. Appreciate it."

Gen started to pack some muffins into a paper bag, and Colin tried again to get

Julia's attention amid the bustle of a room that was teeming with people.

"Julia," Colin said, more firmly. "Could we maybe step outside?"

Julia looked around her for some kind of help, and her gaze fell on Breanna.

"You used him for sex and now you're not even going to talk to him?" Breanna said

in a low voice, so only Julia could hear her amid the chaos of the bustling room. She

raised her eyebrows and fixed Julia with a look full of meaning. "Because we all find that

so attractive when guys do it to us."

Breanna was right. Julia was acting like one of those guys, even if her motives were

more true. She steeled herself, got up, and followed Colin out of the room and onto the

front porch.