Page 39 of Mustang Summer

Not that Brock wasn’t alpha.He just didn’t have to prove it.

He carried in the burgers and they sat to eat, side by side at the island.The dining room at their backs was ordered and untouched.He must never use it.

“These burgers are excellent,” she said after a particularly juicy mouthful.“Are they…did you…are they from your ranch?”

“Yeah, we never have to buy meat.”He grimaced.“Except pork.None of us want to raise pigs.But we buy a pig locally and split it.”

“For real?”

He stopped chewing and stared at his plate.He must not understand her question.

“Do you guys literally do the splitting?Like, butcher it and all?”

Understanding lightened his features.“No.We use the butcher in town who does our beef and chickens.His prices are reasonable and it saves the mess when we have other stuff to do.The couple we buy the pork from have it all taken care of and we just split the packages among the five of us.”

“Are there just the five of you?”

“Ten grandkids total.Dillon and I don’t have any siblings.”

“So five additional cousins split among…” she used her fingers to tick off the names, “Cash, Aaron, and Travis.Did I get their names right?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t elaborate, but she sensed no hidden emotion.He just answered the question and she’d have to ask more for more info.

“What’d you go to Fargo all the time for?Shopping?”

His burger stalled on the way to his mouth and he set it back down.“No.”His forehead creased.“Yes.Mom shopped.But we had to go for appointments for me.”

“What kind of appointments?”She was pushing their personal boundaries, but this man fascinated her.

“Doctor stuff.”He went back to eating and didn’t answer her question.She waited a few more moments and when he didn’t say anything, she let it go.

Did he just not like talking to her about it, or didn’t he talk to anyone about his “doctor stuff”?

He finished eating and carried his plate to the sink and immediately washed it.She hurried to add hers to his pile.

“You said your dad—Bill—wasn’t Jesse’s dad?”he asked.

She leaned against the counter and delighted in the bunch of his muscles as he washed the dishes.That image right there could make a calendar.Her hot farm boys calendar would have to include men doing normal chores.February would be vacuuming.

“My dad never adopted him, so he kept his last name.Jesse was a few years old when Mom married Bill, and he still remembered his dad and wouldn’t let Bill replace him.”

The familiar sadness welled when she thought of her brother.His fate was sealed, but maybe if the Walkers knew where his misplaced anger had come from, they wouldn’t hold as much of a grudge.

“His dad died in a boating accident.”She didn’t have to keep adding details, but it was nice to talk to someone about Jesse.Surprising that it was a Walker.

He didn’t miss a beat rinsing the dishes and then locating a towel to dry them.

“It was his mom that Jesse would’ve inherited the property through,” she said quietly and cursed herself.Why’d she go and bring that up?They’d had a good day.

Again, when she’d expected an angry outburst, all he said was, “It happened a long time ago.Nothing any of us can do to change it.”

“I know.I don’t know what made him think…” No, she knew!The garage.

Gage had said that Bill wasn’t going to leave the garage to Jesse.And after losing his own dad, then hearing the stories of Nana and how she’d been jilted out of family land, her brother must’ve snapped.

“The land was left to Gram.”Brock was scrubbing the counters.

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