Page 8 of Charming the Cowboy
But he’d known then they had to carry on the Langdon family legacy in a way that made their dad proud. He’d known that he had to take care of his mother. But it was up to them to make sure their sister was raised right.
To protect her.
Yeah. He’d known all that even at eight. It was even more true now.
He put his phone in his pocket and turned around to see his brother riding toward him. He had just been about to grab his horse out of the barn.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Good news. I got the city council to agree to serve our beer at these fall festivities they’re doing.”
Hank actually looked impressed, which was a rarity. “Really?”
“Really. Well, thanks to Eliana.”
“Did you have to sell her your soul?”
“She’s not that kind of witch.”
Hank’s expression was overly amused. “Oh really?”
“I agreed to drive the wagon for the haunted hayride. Which means I’m going to need to borrow a wagon. And some hay. And a couple of horses.”
“Hey. If it gets the beer circulating around town… You can have whatever you want.”
“That’s essentially what I said to her. And is how I got into this mess.”
“Well, better you than me.”
“They’re counting on my sunnier demeanor, I’m sure.”
That was funny, because neither of them were particularly sunny.
“It is a haunted hayride, though,” Hank pointed out.
“True. So maybe I should be a little more offended than I am.”
“Definitely.”
“I’ve got to go meet her for lunch, to talk about the logistics.”
“Are you going to come home loaded down with crystals again?”
That had only happened once. Hank made it sound like it was a regular occurrence.
In high school, when he’d been a senior and Eliana must’ve been a freshman, she had slipped some crystals into his pockets before the biggest football game of the season. When he had gotten undressed in the locker room, they’d all fallen out, and he’d had to explain the presence of a whole bunch of glittery rocks to his team.
He had known immediately who was responsible for it. Because there was only one person who would be eccentric enough to do something like that.
She had always been… herself. That was for sure.
The drive down to town was a quick enough one, and he didn’t hit any traffic coming in. Sometimes, the highway was packed with cars coming in from Portland for the weekend. As soon as he found a place to park, his phone lit up. It was a text from Eliana telling him to meet her at the store.
He had only been in the store a handful of times, it wasn’t exactly the kind of place he would ever patronize if he didn’t know the owner. And even then, he only ever went if his friend was in town, or if his sister really wanted to go.
Lindsay thought Eliana was fascinating. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to get dragged to town, and then dragged into The Water Witch so his sister could buy yet another deck of tarot cards. He didn’t know anything about that stuff, but he didn’t understand why one person could possibly need so many. Lindsay liked to proudly proclaim that anything she bought in Wild Rose Point didn’t count because she was supporting local business, and it all went back into the economy, which would eventually feed them too.
He had a hard time arguing with that, actually.
