Page 44 of A Sunny Sweetheart for the Cowboy

“But I’m no longer responsible for keeping them alive.”

“Oh… were there problems?”

He shrugged. “Only one mouthy kid, but it wasn’t too bad. I think they all had fun.”

“Oh, that’s good. I’m glad you got the chance to do what you always wanted to do when you were their age.”

Weston did a double take. “I what?”

“You know, getting other people to see the beauty in nature. You figured if people only got away from all the technology and busyness of life, they’d all be nicer. Treat each other better.”

“Huh. I don’t remember that being my dream.” Although… maybe? Somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain that memory might exist. What had happened to it? Bitterness had twisted its gnarly thorns around the dreams of a young boy. Had he done the same thing to Matthew? Weston sighed.

Mom squeezed him from the side. “Well, you’re there now.”

“What are your dreams, Mom?” He searched her face.

She bit her lip in thought. “The biggest one has come true: finding my father. I know that sort of situation doesn’t always work out well. I was shaking in my boots the day I marched into his office in Chicago with all the proof I thought I’d need to establish paternity, but I had no idea how he’d react. I’d looked him up, of course, and mostly saw a stern man with a reputation of taking no prisoners. Either his sons and grandsons feared for their lives if they left the family business, or he was a different man outside the public eye.”

“You were brave.” Weston had offered to go with her but been thankful when she declined. Good thing. He had no desire to get in a flying tin box. Jude could have planes all to himself.

“Determined, more than brave.”

“And Nana still hasn’t forgiven you.”

Mom shook her head. “I know she’s talked to Dad a couple of times since she came to the resort that time last summer. He’d be open to seeing more of her, but she’s still resisting.”

Maybe there was more of his grandmother in Weston than he’d noticed previously.

“Now she thinks I love Dad more than I love her, and that I’ve abandoned her.” Mom swiped a tear. “It’s more that she’s abandoned me.”

“She figures the past should stay in the past,” Weston guessed.

“Something like that. She’s not the one who didn’t know who her father was until she was 52 years old. I needed to know, even if he was a drug addict on the streets of Chicago. Even if he was a doctor in Boston. Even if he was deceased. I just needed to know.”

“I get it.” Weston had felt the missing branch of the family as a kid, too. Probably Mom’s doing. Kids tended to simply accept the way things were… although that didn’t seem to be true for his mother. Hmm.

“I never dreamed finding my father would turn out this well. Now if only James and Theodore…” She pinched her lips tight.

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Weston knew that his Sullivan uncles did their best to pretend their half-sister didn’t exist. Theodore’s wife, Bridget — Graham’s mom — had been the one to stick the DNA tests in everyone’s Christmas stockings. Weston didn’t much like Bridget — Aunt Bridget, he supposed — because she was an attorney and treated the Kline branch like they were under suspicion. James and Maribel had been divorced for years, though Maribel still worked for Sullivan Enterprises from her home in Kansas. Maribel was the only one of that group who’d even tried to get to know Mom, and it was probably because it was one more way to stick it to her ex and his family.

Money complicated the Sullivan clan. None of them strayed too far because they needed, or at least wanted, the income stream to keep flowing, but that didn’t mean they got along.

Grandfather might have been brilliant to keep his sons busy in the Chicago office and summoning the grandsons to Montana, where he was pushing them together. From what Weston could see, it was working. Graham was an only child, and it seemed he was getting along better with his cousins than he had been before. Jude and Max had hit it off.

And Weston? He hadn’t made friends. He’d been waiting for the day they decided the DNA results had been falsified and he was out on his ear. But the conclusion had been made that it was all legit. Grandfather admitted it. Nana did, too. So, what was still holding Weston back?

He didn’t know how to trust. Didn’t know what his dreams were.

“I should get back to work.” Mom stretched and pressed a kiss to Weston’s scruffy cheek. “It’s good to see you back. Anything you want to tell me about a pretty blonde who was on the same trip?”

Weston shook his head. “You never give up, huh? There’s nothing to tell.”

But he wasn’t as vehement as he’d been the last time she brought it up.

Paisley stuffed her clean clothes into drawers and on hangers. The dinner bell had gone ten minutes ago. Of course, she was late. Some things never changed.

“Are you coming?” Cadence called from the other room.

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