Page 25 of Bride for Keeps

Or maybe it was just the talking. The thinking about things instead of trying to ignore them. Maybe that’s what Carter meant with all this five minutes business. Sure, he wanted to keep their marriage alive, but maybe instead of shying away Sierra needed to be strong enough to have those conversations. To create closure. For both of them.

Surely if she could find some closure she’d be able to picture a different future for herself than lonely nights.

Surely.

*

Carter didn’t understandthe point of suffering through dinner with his siblings. But then again, he didn’t see much point in suffering through dinner alone.

He wasn’t ready to suffer through dinner with his parents. He couldn’t face them until he had some hope he and Sierra could work things out. No doubt they’d both heard the hospital rumors and he couldn’t stand to think about their reactions.

The thought of listening to what his mother or father had to say about it was… No. He just couldn’t do it. He’d fix things first. That was all there was to it.

So, here he was. Pulling up to where his brother lived, their grandfather’s old house. Going to have dinner with the brother he’d pretty much only ever fought with.

His jaw practically dropped when he realized Lina’s car was already parked there. Not just his brother, but the sister who currently thought he was a self-centered jackass.

Was he sure this was better than being alone?

Well, he was here anyway. He pushed his car into park and then stepped into the quickly falling dusk. It was bitterly cold, the wind whipping against his face making him wish he’d thought to put on a stocking cap even for the short walk to the door.

Still, he moved forward, knocking on the door and stepping inside when Cole opened it. The front door opened right up into the kitchen, the dining table right off the edge.

The room was warm if Lina’s expression was not. She sat at the table, glaring at him.

“Almost ready if you want to sit down,” Cole offered somewhat stiffly.

“Sure,” Carter said, regretting this decision wholly as he walked toward the table. “Hi,” he offered to Lina.

“Hi,” she replied, and he braced himself for something snide as he settled himself into the chair across from her, but she didn’t say anything else.

“First rule of family dinner,” Cole announced, settling a bottle of cheap whiskey at the center of the table. “You say something asshole-ish, you take a shot.”

“I don’t drink,” Lina retorted, her expression mulish.

“Then don’t say something asshole-ish,” Cole replied easily.

Carter could only stare at Cole. Carter still had this image of Cole as a young, angry teenager, even though he’d been back in Marietta these past few months. But Carter hadn’t spent much time with him.

To see him, tall and broad and scarred from a decade of rodeo life, to hear him talk with the kind of assurance and candor Carter wasn’t used to from anyone, it was disorienting. Now he was ordering Carter and Lina about and…

Well, Carter didn’t know how to respond. There were so many things about the past few months that felt like he’d woken up from some decades-long coma. Everything around him foreign and different. His parentage. His siblings. His wife.

Cole shoved a large bowl of some muddy-looking chili in front of him, and then an identical bowl in front of Lina. He went back and got one for himself. “Drinks are on your own.”

Lina rolled her eyes and got back up from the table. “Let me guess. Milk. Beer,” she said pointing to Carter then Cole.

“Water,” Cole said about the same time Carter said, “beer.”

“Don’t tell me things are actually changing around here just when I’m getting close to leaving,” Lina muttered, rummaging through Cole’s kitchen—well, Jess’s kitchen. Cole and Jess’s kitchen.

Yes, things were changing, and for the first time in his life Carter envied Lina a little bit. He should have gone away for his residency. He should have put his foot down. Done Doctors Without Borders or something—anything—forhim, not Dad.

Who was not his father.

That still didn’t make any sense to Carter, but it didn’t cut him to the quick quite as painfully as it had at first. In fact, after the events of the past week it almost felt like relief. Any failures he made didn’t reflect on the man who couldn’t abide failure.

Lina placed the drinks on the table and resettled herself. “So, what’s the point of all this, Cole? I don’t really think it’s for fun.”

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