Chapter Eight
TREAT’S CELL PHONE rang at eight o’clock the next morning. He fumbled with it and answered without looking at the number. “Hello?”
“Since when do you leave your little sister at a party?”
Savannah. She was trying to sound annoyed, but Treat knew her better than that. She was really fishing for information. “Hugh was there to drive you home.”
“Hugh? He was too busy with Supernova to even think about me. Lucky for you, Connor’s driver was free.”
“I’m sorry, but you dragged me there hoping I’d get together with Max, remember? Listen, Vanny, I just went to sleep a few hours ago. Can I call you later?” He hadn’t liked the idea of Max arriving home late at night alone, so after taking her to get her car, he’d followed her home and walked her to her door. She’d still been embarrassed by their putting on the brakes, but it only endeared her to him even more. She was more real than any woman he’d ever met, and for a man who had been chased by gold-digging women forever, he loved how different Max was.
“A few hours ago? Should I assume you two hit it off? I saw you guys leave, looking at each other like you couldn’t wait to eat each other alive.”
“Nice talk from my baby sister,” Treat said with a smile. He draped his arm over his eyes and sighed. “I gotta go, Vanny. Love you.” As always, he waited for her to say goodbye. No matter what mood he was in, he never hung up on his siblings. His mother’s death had been a painful lesson about not taking his loved ones for granted. He never knew just when he’d see or talk to them for the last time.
His bedroom door swung open and Rex stepped in. “Hey. You gonna get up and help Dad today or what?”
“What the…?” Had he made a promise he’d forgotten?
“Just sayin’.” Rex left the door open, his obnoxious way of telling him, If I’m not resting, neither are you.
Treat pulled his exhausted body from bed and trudged into the bathroom. He leaned over the sink and took a good, hard look at himself in the mirror. His looks had served him well over the years, and he appreciated the genes he’d been blessed with. He also acknowledged the fact that he’d abused that gift for a very long time, enjoying the comfort of women’s arms based on nothing more than physical attraction. But all that had changed when, after weeks of talking on the phone with Max while she was coordinating the wedding, wondering what the sweet, professional woman on the other end of the line looked like, he’d finally met her. He’d been an idiot to think he could ever forget her.
He turned on the shower, stripped down, and stepped under the warm spray, letting it rain down on his shoulders. He could still feel Max trembling in his arms, and he wondered what the jerk she’d gone out with had done to her to have such lingering effects. As he washed up, he had a fleeting thought about the look that had come between them in Nassau and wondered if that had added to her discomfort last night. Even though she’d said it didn’t, he wanted to be sure. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He knew better than to do things that might hurt a person’s feelings. He was going to have to prove to her that his momentary digression was just that, and not who he was at his core.
Even though they’d reconnected and appeared to be on the same page and being with Max felt righter than anything ever had, he shouldn’t have let things go so far last night. He always led with his mind, not his emotions. It figured that the one time he got it wrong was the one time that it mattered.
He dried himself off and looked down at his groin. Troublemaker.
From that moment forward, he was going to do everything he could to make Max realize she could trust him to keep her safe.
TREAT FOUND REX at the stables, looking over Hope, the horse his father had bought for his mother when she’d first found out she was sick.
“The prince wakes,” Rex teased. He pushed his Stetson down low, accentuating the sharp angles of his jaw and Grecian nose.
“Good morning to you, too.” Treat ran his hand along Hope’s back. She neighed, nuzzling her nose into Rex’s chest. Her red coat had faded in recent years, and patches of white had begun to sprout. “How is the old girl?”
“She’s holding up okay,” his father said.
Treat hadn’t seen his father bending down by a bucket in the stall.
“I’m keeping an eye on her. She’s got plenty of good years left. I never like our animals to suffer, and Hope here…” His father didn’t have to finish the sentence—was your mother’s.
Treat and Rex exchanged a sorrowful glance.
“You’ve done well by her, Dad. Mom would be proud.” Treat laid a hand on his father’s shoulder.
“I know she is,” his father said. His father swore he still felt their mother’s presence around the ranch, and though Treat had never felt her—not for a lack of trying—he believed his father did.
He remembered sitting in his room as a child after she’d passed away, night after night, praying he’d feel whatever his father had felt, hoping against all hope and making promises with whatever almighty powers would listen. I’ll be good. I’ll never fight with my brothers again. I’ll help Dad more. I’ll do whatever you want, just please, please let me feel Mom one more time. His prayers had gone unanswered, and now, as he thought of how painful those early years without his mother had been—and how much he missed Max after just a few hours—he was beginning to better understand the depth of his father’s devastation.
“Dad, would you mind telling me about when you and Mom met?” Treat watched his father’s eyes light up, and he caught that light and held on to it.
“Here we go,” Rex said. “I’m gonna take Johnny Boy out for a quick ride while you two relive the good old days.” He headed for Johnny Boy’s stall.
Rex always escaped when they talked about their mother. Selfishly, Treat was glad to have his father to himself. If anyone understood matters of the heart, it was his father. He never hid his feelings for his children, or his late wife, which kept their family close.
“Your mother was so beautiful, sitting on her daddy’s fence watching the horses when my father and I drove up. I swear, Treat, when she turned and looked at me, something inside me fell into place. Even at fourteen, I knew she was the woman I was going to marry. I just didn’t know how to convince her of it.” He continued reliving the story that Treat would never tire of. His father liked to remind him that his mother had gotten all her mother’s beauty and her father’s stubbornness. Her mother was Brazilian, and her father, a Colorado rancher.
Treat had heard this story dozens of times, but not until now did he understand the depth of his father’s feelings of something inside him falling into place. That’s how he’d felt when he’d finally met Max.
“But her heart…” His father looked up and away, as though he could see his wife standing in the distance. “Her heart was as sensitive as a newborn bird. The wrong word, the wrong look, and that bullheadedness that had angered you a minute before would wash away as quick as rain. And just like that, you’d crush her spirit.”
Just like Max. “What did you do when that happened?”
His father looked at him for a long moment before responding. “Son, I did everything I could, that’s what I did. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for her. My ego did not exist when it came to your mother, and heaven knows she knew it, too.” He laughed under his breath. “I swear that woman used it to her advantage.”
Treat was too busy mulling over what his father said to respond.
His father stood and set a hand on Treat’s shoulder. “You want to talk about her?”
“Mom?”
He shook his head. “The woman who’s got my son so tied up in knots that he’s coming to his daddy for relationship advice.”
“Dad,” he scoffed.
“Don’t deny it, son. I’ve been there. Ain’t no use pretending that noose around your heart doesn’t tighten every time you see whoever this woman is.”
Family knows no boundaries was their family creed, and while it played into taking care of one another, it also meant they would push their noses into each other’s business when they felt one of them was hurting. But Treat was already formulating his plan, and he didn’t need his father’s advice. Every time he thought of Max, he had that feeling—the same one his father described—and there was no way he was going to ignore it.