Chapter 4

4

Okay, so what was she supposed to do now ? It was well past ten. The house was nice and toasty. They were sitting in the low light from battery lamps.

He’d lit a fire in the woodstove.

If they had actually liked each other, and she wasn’t just living there to do two things—beat him at his stupid bet and escape her father’s control for a while until she figured life out and everything—they could cozy up in front of that stove and wrap themselves around each other. And have a really good time.

But that was never going to happen.

And the man just didn’t talk. Sheesh. She’d tried everything.

Dylan sprawled in the recliner and watched him in the low light. He was a seriously yummy version of a cowboy right there. If she ignored the cranky and the fact that she didn’t like him one bit. He’d taken off his boots and wore really dorky slippers.

Then again, the floor was a little cold. She still had her sneakers on. For that very reason.

“So…what exactly do you do ?” Dylan finally couldn’t take the silence. What was she going to do, stare at him all night? The low lamps and candles he’d lit gave his far-too-handsome face a slightly evil glow and everything. Freaky.

Then again, she’d been going to bed around midnight most nights, only to toss and turn and everything until she got back up at six and went to help in the diner her father’s mother had started forty-something years ago or the dining room at the inn his father’s family had built one hundred years ago. She was tired. She could curl up there on that couch, with its blankets and soft-looking pillows and sleep.

But what if she cried in her sleep or something? Or had nightmares again? She had stopped having those nightmares about getting eaten by chupacabras years ago, but this was a time of stress. Anything could happen. She really hadn’t stopped having nightmares since the whole Surprise!-You-are-a-Talley! thing—and they’d just gotten worse since.

What had happened with Meyra, where her cousin could have died. And with the dead guys in the snow not even a week ago. Dylan hadn’t been able to get the sight of them out of her head. She just hadn’t.

Dylan had found those men dead. Buried in the snow behind the inn.

She would never forget.

She wasn’t so sure about sleeping in the same room with Cowboy “Truckie” Tyler, though. Not for a moment.

Still, she was sleeping in the dude’s house. She was going to just have to get used to him. Not like he would do anything he shouldn’t—he was her sister’s almost brother-in-law. And, well, she knew he wasn’t attracted to her or anything. Nothing real woman about her, after all. He had made that abundantly clear.

“What do you mean? I run this ranch.”

“Okay, well, unlike Nikki or Dusty, I do not really know what that means. We always lived inside city limits, even in little bitty towns. So Mom could get to help if she needed it.” Her mom would panic if they were too far from medical help. They’d always rented houses near hospitals. It was just one of those things Dylan had long accepted.

“I handle calving and repair the damned tractors. I keep snow off the damned drive. I fix fences, keep water available. I don’t know. I just do what needs to be done. Not like I make a list. I have three hands that come help. And I am working on something with a guy out of Texas to increase soil yield and better herd management. I just work.”

Okay, so getting a conversation started was going to take some effort. “Did you ever want to do anything different? I mean, did you just sort of hatch knowing you would be a rancher and everything?”

“Hardly. Figured I’d just grow up to be a hand somewhere. Gil did. Or thought I would work this one with my dad. Before he died.”

“Yeah, I think we have all heard the story of Gil. ” His older brother had been a ranch foreman. His boss had died—and left Gil Tyler millions. It was the stuff legends were made out of. And Fletcher’s other brother had successfully published a bunch of mystery novels that Dylan had been reading for years. Wealthy and successful, both of them.

Their sister Nikki had married Hunter Louis Clark, hottest guy in the universe, and was helping him build a movie production company in Masterson now.

And then there was the youngest brother right in front of her, Fletcher Truckboy Tyler. The man whose truck Dylan had stolen during a daring rescue of her sister Devaney during that whole Surprise!-You-Are-A-Talley! thing and all. She hadn’t had much choice, but Fletcher had hated her ever since. “So, Gil is the businessman, Ben is the author, Nikki is all about movies and books, and you…cows?”

He stiffened. Like she’d touched a nerve. Which…Dylan hadn’t meant to. “Something like that.”

“Hey, not saying it’s a bad thing. This is yours. Something you are doing yourself. No one can take that away.” She pulled the old quilt he had given her up. “How long has this been in your family?”

“This one was my parents’. They bought it right after Gil was born. I have lived here my whole life. The other half of my property—it has a house I’m going to rent out as soon as there is a tenant—was my uncle’s. His last name was Fletcher. He left it to me a few years ago. It was in his family for over one hundred and fifty years. My parents bought this place right next to his because it had been a part of the original homestead. My mother’s great-grandparents built this place, a bit at a time. Living area burned once—this part was rebuilt in the sixties.”

“So it’s back with whom it belongs.” Dylan squirmed again. “So…that’s like the inn. All of those real Talleys have had it since the very beginning, I guess.”

“Why do you do that?” he asked abruptly.

“Do what?”

“Every once in a while, you’ll slip. Refer to the Talleys as a separate group. One you aren’t a part of. Call them real. Like you aren’t. They are your family.”

Well, she supposed she deserved that. She might have been a bit insulting earlier. “Because I’ll let you in on a little secret—I don’t feel like a real Talley at all. I don’t know that I really want to be one, either. Not really. I mean, I like them all, and they are awesome, and I love them because they are my family, but…I don’t belong there. At the inn or the diner, I mean. We both know that. I know it. You know it. Queen Sister Darcey knows it. Charlotte definitely knows it. They all probably know it, but they just don’t want to say it out loud.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. Flo wouldn’t?—”

“No. She won’t say it, but I know it’s the truth.” She’d had four months to figure this out, after all. She just didn’t feel like Dylan at the inn with the rest of them.

She just didn’t.

But that was a secret she would never share—at least, not with her family. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt them.

Her grandmother, her uncle, her older sisters, her cousins—even her Poophead Dad—were all so proud of being Talleys, of the inn, it would hurt them to know she just didn’t feel like she belonged there. Like she didn’t feel she was one of them at all.

So Dylan would keep her mouth shut and just brazen her way through. Somehow.

“Why?”

“Because…I don’t…really…the inn, the diner, they are okay, but…they just don’t really feel like me, you know? Like where I am supposed to be right now or where I want my life goals to be. My younger sisters, they are okay with doing college classes online while working as Talleys. It seems easier for Devaney and Dorie, for some reason. And Dahlia can hide there too. Work when she’s supposed to, with a very clear routine and people to protect her when needed. Then she can curl up with a book about the past when she’s not working or studying. She’ll be safe and protected and secure there, so I am really good with that aspect of things, at least. Big time—Dahlia will have a safe place. Don’t get me wrong. I am eternally grateful for Grandma and for Uncle Gerald not throwing us out on our ears, especially Dahlia and Dorie. Devvie and I would be okay on our own. We’re pretty resourceful. But the other two, they need a safe place. I guess the inn is going to be it forever now.”

“And it won’t be for you?”

“Dude, the first time I was at the Talley Inn, someone shot me in the dining room. Just last week , I tripped over two murdered guys in the backyard. Kind of struggling to forget that part, you know. But…I do what I gotta do. This is what my sisters thought we should do. Where they thought we should be. So, now I work for the inn and the diner. Just like a real Talley is supposed to. My dad says that’s my heritage. And he wants me to know what it is. He insists on it. A little too late, I think. But, well, what does what I think factor in, I ask?” She snuggled into his chair again. It kind of smelled like him, she decided. Piney and spicy. She liked it. Even though it was a really ugly chair. He should reupholster it or something. She could do it for him. She’d done that kind of stuff before. “The dark is remarkably freeing, conversationally, Truckie.”

“Don’t call me that, brat. So, if you had your way, what exactly would you do with your life?”

There was a taunt in there. She just knew it. She didn’t trust the man one bit. “I don’t know, really. Something with plants. I like plants.”

“Like flowers? Like Marin?”

“Of course. If something has been done, one of the real Talleys have done it already, right?” Dylan asked. Nothing she had done was original in the Talley family. She completely got that. “No. Not like Marin. Different. I like gardening. Vegetables and fruits. Not just flowers. Flowers are pretty, but I always grew stuff with purpose. A lot. I used to have lots of veggies. At our last place. I had a big garden. I was experimenting—trying to figure out which strains I liked best of each veggie. I had really nice fruits planted too. But…we moved. And I had to leave them all behind. So no more. I want my own place someday. Hopefully, this whole business degree I will get…someday…will get me a good job so I can pay for my own place. My own house. Where I don’t have to leave it every year or so. Where I can plant fruit bushes and trees and a really big garden. That’s all. I took a few classes, you know. My science electives. Dad wanted me to do something like chemistry, but I waited until the last minute and switched to plant sciences and agronomy every single time.”

“Tell me something, kid,” he said.

Kid. Yep. She knew exactly what he saw her as. Just like her father. He thought she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. Just like Arthur Talley. “Yes, Truckie, darling?”

“Has your whole life been in spite of that man?”

* * *

Fletcher honestly wanted to know. He was getting a picture here, and he definitely wasn’t liking it. Dusty had let a few things slip. About her father. About what he was like. Dusty hadn’t known her parents until recently.

It was a wild story to begin with. Dusty and three of her sisters had been literally left on the doorstep of the inn by Arthur Talley and his wife while they had been running for their lives from Morris Preston. Morris Preston had been a local wealthy businessman who had been involved in everything from drug running to multiple murders. Going back decades.

Geena, Arthur’s wife, still had horrific scars from Preston’s attack. They had left their four daughters for Arthur’s mother to raise. And then had four more daughters over the next five years. Geena had been pregnant with Dylan at the time they’d fled.

Morris Preston had been arrested when he’d nearly killed Fletcher’s brother Gil and sister-in-law Sage. Dylan and her younger sisters had shown up a few months later—in search of answers about their family.

Dylan and her three younger sisters had run into Preston’s deranged sociopathic son. Who had shot Dylan—while holding the people in the dining room at the Talley Inn hostage. Including Fletcher’s sister and brother-in-law, and his brother Ben and Ben’s now fiancée, Nikki’s best friend, Dusty.

But Fletcher had thought Dusty might be exaggerating a little. Dusty was becoming ridiculously protective over her four little found sisters. Especially when it came to Arthur Talley. Fletcher had just thought it stemmed from that.

Now, he wasn’t so certain.

“Well, I suppose it has. So what? That part of my life is over. As soon as I figure out what I want, I’m going to go for it. Life is too short not to take a few risks, Cowboy Truckie. You have to go for it, right?”

“You have a reckless streak a mile wide.” She had taken off in the middle of a snowstorm at night with three younger sisters in search of answers—after being told they’d grown up in witness protection. Then, she’d chased a man holding her sister hostage after he’d run them all off the road. She’d stolen Fletcher’s truck right out of his driveway to track that sister.

Just three days ago, she’d gone on a rescue mission to save her cousin Meyra from crazy drug runners tied to Morris Preston somehow.

Dylan drew trouble. Period.

“Now, actually, I really don’t. Only when it is absolutely necessary for the people I love,” she said around a yawn. “I am so tired. I’m sorry. I haven’t been sleeping all that well, you know. Not since we came here, anyway.”

He wondered if she knew what she was revealing.

Probably the damned trauma. He’d gotten a more detailed account from Ben of what had happened that day. Dylan had been right in the middle of it. She could have been killed. Devaney certainly could have been. But Dylan? She had taken a lot of risks that day to get her sister back. Just like she’d almost blindly rode in with Meyra when her cousin needed rescuing.

Well, Fletcher could understand that, at least. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for the ones he loved.

They had that in common. She’d still stolen his truck, though—and there had been a dent on it when he’d finally gotten it back. It hadn’t exactly been a great way for him and this woman to meet at all.

“Why?”

“Who knows? Maybe because the inn’s attic is haunted?”

“Why did you end up in the attic?” He had been up there before. It was a typical attic, but he’d heard that Gerald had hired Fletcher’s cousin Martin to finish it out into a small room fast, once Dylan had been found. “Why not downstairs with the rest of your family?”

The Talleys lived in a private wing of the inn—all except Dylan. And now Dusty, who was living across the road with Ben.

She shrugged again. “It just sort of felt right. And Dahlia couldn’t be put in the attic. She needs to be near Devaney. Devaney could have been put up there, but she tends to keep a close eye on Dahlia. And, well, Dorie would have been too scared and lonely up there so far away from everyone else. So it made the most sense for me to be up there. There wasn’t room in the rest of the family wing for me. Not really.”

“Even with Dusty moving out?”

“No. We put Dorie in Dusty’s room. Don’t worry. I was okay up there. I had a bat up there once, but Uncle Gerald got it out for me. So no biggie. Besides, I’m here now—I’m sure they won’t even miss me that much. I seriously doubt I will be bonking my noggin on the ceiling here.”

“Hardly. Not unless you grow ten feet.” His place had fifteen-foot ceilings with hand-hewn wooden beams running through it. It was plenty big enough for him and her.

Fletcher planned to raise his kids in this house someday. Once he was more financially stable, once his new partnership to develop better ranching technologies worked, once the house was remodeled the way he wanted, once he found the woman he wanted to have those kids with…

That was the big one there—he hadn’t found a woman he wanted that with. Period. He definitely wanted that. Tylers were family men, after all. He just hadn’t found her yet.

Dylan yawned again, pulling the blanket tighter around her. “You are really lucky, Fletchie. I used to dream…”

“About what?”

“About…having a place that is mine. Not one that can be taken away…with a garden space, all my own. Maybe even a room to start seeds in the winter. With lots of sunlight. A sunroom. Even if it’s just a little one. I love being in the sunlight, you know. I want my kids to play outside far more than we got to. I want lots of kids and lots of sunshine. Well, maybe someday, when I finally figure things out.”

He waited for her to say something else. But she didn’t. He tilted his flashlight in her direction. Dylan was sound asleep. In his favorite chair. A quilt his mother had made years ago covered her.

Hell, this was not what he had expected to happen tonight.

Fletcher threw another log into the stove. It would keep them warm all night.

He just stayed where he was for a long while as he tried to imagine what her life being controlled by Arthur Talley would have been like. What it would have felt like to have just been uprooted so many times. To never feel settled…

Hell, Dusty was right. Dylan had deserved far better than what she had gotten. So had Devaney, Dahlia, and little Dorie. And Dusty, Daisy, Dixie, and Darcey, for that matter.

All of them had deserved better.

Arthur Talley had a long way to go to make it right.

All Dylan dreamed about was a home of her own where she belonged and didn’t have to leave?

Hell.

It was obvious.

She didn’t feel like she’d had even that.

It made him appreciate the walls surrounding him just that much more.