Page 17 of The Hardest Part

“Keep going.”

He stood and pointed in the opposite direction. “Plenty of room for a small barn over there for the horses. A workshop. Whatever we want.”

“A little greenhouse for Emily so she can have her flowers all year long.” Joining him, Jake smiled.

“You’re seein’ it, ain’t ya?”

“I think I do.” With a grin, his brother slung an arm over his shoulder. “You’re a fuckin’ genius, you know that?”

“Nah.” Billy paused to chew on his lip. “I mean, we don’t even know if it can be done.”

“I’m no structural engineer, but I think it can.” With a nod, his grin widened. “They build bridges, don’t they?”

“Sure they do, but can we?”

Framing. Drywall. That stuff was easy. He’d worked on lots of projects for folks around town—even helped Mr. Mathers put up a new barn this past summer—but something like this was beyond their skill set.

“Heh. We’re gonna need some help.”

No shit.

A puff of white billowed from his lips as warm breath made contact with the chill December air. “Yeah, I reckon so.”

The two of them stood in silence for a moment, listening to the murmur of the creek. The rustling of the pine. His shining gaze taking in the peaceful, snow-covered landscape, Jake parted his lips to speak, and softening his baritone voice, it took on a wistful timbre. “Emily’s going to love it here.”

No doubt, brother.

All three of them would.

“She’s gonna freak when she sees it,” Billy said, bouncing in his boots. With a lightness in his chest, he bumped shoulders with his brother. “Don’t know how we’re gonna keep her from findin’ out, though. I ain’t no good at lyin’.”

“Me, neither,” Jake said with a chuckle. “We’ll just have to be creative with the truth, then, yeah?”

Truthful, almost to a fault, is what they were. It’s how they’d been raised. Lying simply wasn’t in them.

Billy looked up at the cloudless blue sky. “S’pose so.”

“C’mon.” Jake tugged on his arm. “Betcha Justin’s got supper ready by now. You can tell him all about your ideas.”

“Why would you want me to do that?”

“Because they’re good, and he can put ‘em on paper,” Jake said, giving him a good-natured shove. “If the architect can see what you see, then maybe he won’t think we’re plumb fuckin’ crazy.”

Justin didn’t say a word. As soon as Billy described the house, his father put down his fork and got up to snag his sketchpad and a charcoal pencil. A sought-after artist, his paintings hung in galleries from New York to San Francisco. Fingers flying over the paper, he drew, erased, and smudged until a most incredible rendering of the vision in his head appeared.

Stunned by the likeness, the crusty bread in Billy’s hand fell onto his plate of chicken cacciatore. “How in the hell did you do that?”

The natural stonework, the placement of the timber wood trusses—every detail was exactly as he’d seen it.

His chest puffing out, Justin gave his head a little shimmy, and he chuckled. “I got it right then, I take it?”

“You sure enough did, Daddy J.” Billy grinned, sopping up the gravy with his fallen piece of bread. “Unfuckinreal.”

“William Gantry, you better watch that mouth of yours.” With a lift of her brows and a tilt of her head, his mother tried to look stern. But Carrie couldn’t quite pull it off. It was the upward twitch of her lips that gave her away.

Billy leaned across the table to kiss her cheek. “Sorry, Ma.”

“I must say, the concept is brilliant.” She released a smile then, her exquisite features softening. “You should go into home design instead of hanging around them smelly, old barns.”

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