Page 6 of Must Love Mistletoe

What remained of her breath left her body in a rush.

She knew where this was going now.

She’d spent three years not knowing. Wondering. Grieving. Hoping and praying.

Cursing.

“They found a body,” Mason’s voice seemed to come from far, far away. “It’s Red.”

*

Beth only rememberedpieces of the drive.

She remembered watching Mason put fuel in her truck and then thrusting hot coffee in her hand and telling her it was piss weak and barely hot, but it was caffeine and to drink up because she needed to stay awake.

She remembered watching fat snowflakes splatter against the windshield and being thankful she wasn’t the one wrestling the pickup up the mountain track.

A trio of emergency vehicles had gathered in the clearing, alongside a couple of pickups and a horse truck.

“Sam wouldn’t have ridden up this far on his own,” she muttered. “Hecouldn’thave done it so quickly.” A new thought occurred, a new focus for her pain. “Did Cal bring him up here? Sam’sten. He’s supposed to be in school.”

Mason slowed to a stop beside the horse truck and cut the engine. “You’re the one who should be making sure that happens. Not your neighbors. Not my brother.”

Fear was beginning to push aside reason. Her guilty relief at finally knowing what had happened to Red was giving way to the stark reality that Sam had been the one to find him.

Sam, and the big man cradling the boy in his arms as if Sam belonged there.

She flew out of the pickup and slammed the door behind her, awash with guilt and regret, high on adrenaline and stupid with lack of sleep, her emotions a swirl of terrible dark-hearted turmoil.

“Why are you here?” She stormed up to them and pointed to Sam. “You should be in school. Itoldyou to stop skipping school.” She turned her wrath on Cal next and let it build hotter, fiercer because he was older and bigger and any number of other things she’d never been brave enough to admit. “Andyou. Why on earth would you bring my son up here without permission? He’s my son. Mine. Not yours!”

“Mom—”

“Stay out of this, Sam.” Wild anger had to go somewhere and Cal was practically inviting it with his stoic, salt-of-the-earth silence. She wanted a fight. She wanted to yell. Somewhere deep down inside, she wanted to be held. “You’re never in the right place at the right time, are you? Missed Red’s wedding and you were supposed to be his best man. Took him out drinking six months later and made him miss Sam’s birth.”

“Not exactly how I remember it,” Mason muttered from somewhere beside them.

“Who asked you?”

But Mason was not built for stoic silence and stood his ground, his eyes narrowed and his jaw firm. “I was there for most of it, and I know you’re talking b—” His gaze slid to Sam. “You’re taking your temper out on the wrong man. I know it. He knows it. You ought to know it, too.”

“Mason, stop,” Cal rumbled.

The big man. The better man. She’d never hated her entire world more than she did at that moment. “Where were you, Cal, the day Red hightailed it up here hunting cougar? He called you. You were supposed to be up here with him, but no.”

“He was watching TJ ride bucking bulls two states away, Elizabeth.” Mason again, curter than ever. “Redknewthat. He lied to you when he said Cal was going with him. It was a bad choice to hunt alone, no one’s disagreeing with that, but it was Red’s decision. Plenty of other people he could have called for backup, but he didn’t. He lied to you. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you stand there and say his death was my brother’s fault.”

She loathed the eldest Casey in that moment, almost as much as she loathed having to face the truth. That her husband was dead because he’d been a fool. That he was never coming back—slim as that hope had been. That this wouldn’t be the first time he’d lied to her over the course of their marriage—starting on the very day it began. But that would mean admitting to herself that Red hadn’t been a particularly honest man or a smart one, and she had Sam to protect, and wasn’t it better all round to keep on pretending she’d married agoodman? “You dare discuss this in front of my son?”

“Your son will be a man one day. Men deal in truth.” Mason glared right back.

“Why is Sam even up here?” She turned again to Cal, the big, silent man responsible for all of her pain—and none of it. “Why is Sam seeing all this, feeling it, living it? What have you done? Why? Why is he here and not at school? You had no right!”

Everything was so very wrong.

“Mom.”

Sam reached her as her knees gave way, his thin arms wrapping around her as she buried her fists in the snow and hung her head low. She didn’t recognise the wail that came from her chest as her own.

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