Page 16 of Sweet Deal
“So.” Vicki took a step back. “How do you feel about the return of Jimmy Henderson?”
“It’s nice to see him again. The kid grew up well.”
“You mean filled out well.” Liz lifted her chin and flashed a toothy grin. She was in rare form today.
Alice waved her off, then shrugged. “It would be nice to see Rachel and Jillian find good partners.”
“Like their brothers,” Vicki added.
Liz shook her head. “Maybe we should bottle and sell the local water. Call it a love potion.”
The two remaining sisters whipped their head around to stare at the middle sibling.
“You know.” She flashed that grin again. “Call it a love potion.”
“Love potion?” the two echoed.
Dropping her hands on her hips, Liz sighed. “Well, you have to admit. None of us thought our boys were going to get married before they hit a midlife crisis, and yet here we are, all three of your sons married within a few months of each other.”
She and her sisters had always joked that when married men reached the middle of their lives, they’d try to recapture their youths with sports cars or younger women. On the other hand, men who were still single halfway through their life expectancy would want to start a family in order to leave behind a living legacy. Her sons had done that a few years sooner than any of them had thought. At least she’d have to thank her lucky stars that they all found the loves of their lives now and not later. Each son had donated their hefty trust payment to the ranch’s debt. She hadn’t objected very hard—after all, the Sweet Ranch was part of their legacy.
“You’re frowning.” Liz inched closer. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Just thinking I’d love to stay and visit longer but I should be getting over to the feed store.”
Liz nodded and smiled, apparently appeased with her reasoning. “Will we see you at the game tonight?”
Friday night lights. “Not sure.”
“But the alumni game tomorrow?”
All her sons were playing in the annual high school alumni game. The current baseball team would play against the alumni. This was the first year since Charlie died that her sons were going to play. “Definitely wouldn’t miss Saturday night.”
“Good.” Vicki returned her attention to the bin of new bags. “See you then.”
Giving them both a quick hug, Alice stepped outside the store, glanced up and down the Main Street that she loved so much, then turned her attention skyward. “I sure do miss you, Charlie, but it’s getting easier.” She continued to stare at the cloudless Texas sky. “What do you think? Do all these fast-track weddings seem a little coincidental to you? Or are the weddings like sneezes, they always come in three?” Glancing down the street again, she shook her head. “Or is your wife just losing her marbles?”
“What the heck are you doing?” Jim’s brother stood over his shoulder, staring at the same screen Jim was.
“Working. What do you think I’m doing?”
Mark shrugged. “I thought you came here to get away from work?”
“I came here to…” why did he come home? “Clear my head.”
“And staring at…what the heck is all that?”
“Market fluctuation charts.”
“Okay. Staring at whatever clears your head? Cause it strikes me you could have done that in California.”
There was no arguing that point, but if he’d learned one thing from his years building a very profitable company, it was that if you snooze you lose. The fact that what he really wanted was to find a way to help Rachel and her family with more than a single bank payment, might have had more to do with his scouring the market today. “If I’d stayed in California, then who would stand over me asking stupid questions?”
His brother smacked him across the back of his head the same way they’d done to each other growing up through the years. They both let out a small snort of laughter. “Seriously, man, what’s going on? Are you just taking a mental break, or is staying in Honeysuckle really on the radar?”
Was it? “I honestly don’t know.”
Mark bobbed his head. “For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen Mom this happy in a while. She likes having all her chicks in the roost.”
