Met scrubbed at the black marks left on the concrete stoop of his brother’s home. The work wasn’t particularly hard, but it consumed enough of his mind that he wasn’t stuck thinking about his father’s earlier outburst. Soon enough, he spotted the familiar slightly dented front end of Laredo’s company truck pulling into the driveway. Met wasn’t sure if he was glad to see it or not. It was almost impossible to say. He had a bad feeling that Joe had contacted Laredo and asked him to handle his youngest brother. That tended to be the way of things in the Hernandez household. At least it had been for a good number of years.
“I didn’t necessarily think you were aiming to become my cleaning lady,” Laredo drawled with obvious amusement. “Although the place does need a new housekeeper now that Ms. Naranjo has moved out to Clouds End Farm with us.”
Met did not look up at his brother as he continued to scrub. The acid cleaner was just beginning to cut through the scorch marks. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ll be applying for that position anytime soon.”
“We can hire someone to take care of this.” Laredo squatted down and rubbed at the marks with one finger. “They seem pretty locked on there.”
“No. I’ll take care of it. It will keep me occupied.” Met didn’t say anything else. He was hoping Laredo would just leave.
Unfortunately, the vandalism was apparently not the only reason Laredo had come to visit. “So, Dad called me.”
“Lucky you,” Met grunted. He flung out a bucket of water to rinse the acid and stood up to stretch. His back and shoulders were sore, but it was a good kind of sore. The kind that tells a man that he has been doing something other than sitting on his ass all day.
“You guys actually fought?” Laredo did not sound like he actually believed what he’d heard from Joe. “And apparently you had some hooker upstairs?”
Met clenched his fists at his sides. “She’s not a hooker. Is that what he actually said? Did that bastard call Daphne a hooker? I’ll rip his throat out for that! I swear I will.”
“Easy,” Laredo murmured. “Did you say Daphne? Like Daphne Evans? Are you sleeping with the public relations lady?”
“It’s not that simple.” Met made a frustrated noise and threw his scrub brush down on the cement. It clattered away, and he realized that he might have really messed things up for Daphne without realizing it. “I’m not sleeping with her.”
“Okay?” Laredo narrowed his gaze and folded his arms over his chest. “Let me tell you that I don’t think that’s going to matter to Dad. He’s set on going to the PR firm and demanding the woman be fired. I didn’t realize he was blabbering on about Daphne though. That seems really out of character for her.”
“It is,” Met agreed. Then he backtracked. “Or it would be. If we were sleeping together. But we’re not. I’m trying to make you understand that Daphne isn’t doing anything wrong here. She isn’t being unethical or anything else. We can’t let Dad punish her just because she made him admit something he isn’t happy about.”
“Which is?” Laredo prompted. “As you might imagine, Dad left out any part of that conversation that would make him look bad.”
“You mean like the part where he admitted that he was sleeping with Amelia Collins?” Met said dully. “Yeah, I bet.” He put his hands on top of his head and sucked in a deep breath. He felt like shit. He felt as though his entire life had just been turned upside down and now his father was so worried about saving face—hypothetically, of course—that he was going to make things worse just for spite.
“Dad was sleeping with Amelia Collins?” Laredo stumbled back a step. Then he frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense, Met. You saw Dad with some woman when you were seventeen. Amelia died when you were maybe eleven or twelve like Jesse.”
“I caught him in the barn with her just a few days before the accident,” Met said quietly. He had always wondered why he was the only one who seemed to have the knack for walking in on super-awkward situations involving their parents. The rest of his brothers hadn’t had to worry about that so much. Met was the one who knew all the dirty secrets.
Laredo was silent for a moment. That was when Met noticed that his brother wasn’t wearing a suit. He was dressed in jeans and a very plain button-down. He was also wearing boots. It was almost like seeing Laredo naked or something equally disturbing. Laredo did not walk around in jeans. He wore those atrocious suits that he had filled his closet with. Surely he didn’t go to work dressed like that. It would have been absolutely insupportable. The whole world would have ended. The company stock would have hit rock bottom, and the employees would have quit. It would be a bit like announcing Armageddon was coming.
“You’re in jeans,” Met observed. “Why?”
“I always wear jeans.” Laredo sounded nonplussed. He also sounded distracted. Apparently, he hadn’t suspected that his father had been sleeping with Amelia Collins. At least that was one person in the family who hadn’t thought the worst.
“Well, he was,” Met growled. “I saw him. He just admitted it this morning. And I honestly believe he was more in love with Amelia than anyone could give him credit for. I know it sounds crazy, but he kept raving about his Amelia.”
“No shit.” Laredo pursed his lips. “Do you—how far back do you think this goes?”
“That’s the scariest part,” Met admitted. He rubbed a hand down his face and wished he could stop wondering that himself. “I don’t know what I believe about that.”
“Hell.” Laredo clapped Met on the shoulder—thankfully the good one. “You’ve had quite the morning. Hmm?”
“Yeah. It’s been grand,” Met agreed sarcastically.
He looked off across the front yard. The neighborhood was notoriously expensive. In fact, Laredo’s home was located in one of the most pretentious and expensive areas in Denver. It certainly wasn’t the largest house. It wasn’t even one of the most expensive. And yet there was no doubting that Laredo’s previous marital experience had left him struggling to make himself worthy enough for the woman’s taste.
“Why do you keep this place?” Met wondered out loud. It was a question he’d wondered since he had moved in. “What’s the point?”
“I suppose the money could be better used elsewhere,” Laredo agreed. He also looked off across the yard to the houses across the street with their grand porticoes and in-ground swimming pools. “Maybe someday I’ll find a need to sell this place and move on. I’m not sure. I suppose it’s possible. It isn’t like I could ever ask Aria to live here. It wouldn’t suit her.”
“It wouldn’t suit Aria to be away from her farm and her horses,” Met agreed. He had known Aria Callahan as long as he could remember, and he could not even begin to see her living in this neighborhood without putting up a serious fight. “But why not just sell it and be done?”
“Helena turned me inside out,” Laredo quietly admitted. He looked down at his boots and rubbed the toe of one against the other. “I listened to that woman and let her turn me inside out. She told me I looked bad on a horse. She told me I wasn’t fit enough or smart enough or competent enough to be a cowboy. She told me—God, I can’t even recall all of the things she told me.”
Met could not find the words to express his shock and horror. It was almost impossible to imagine that some crazy bitch of a woman had the ability to convince Laredo Hernandez of that sort of nonsense. Laredo was infallible in Met’s eyes. He always had been.
Laredo snorted. He looked over at Met and nodded. “It’s true. I know now that Helena was playing a game. I think I thought that a long time before it ended, but I kept trying to make the woman happy. I tried to be what she wanted. I tried to be good enough, smart enough, successful enough, and just—enough. So, this house was an extension of that.” Laredo scratched his cheek and turned to stare at the front door now streaked with soot. “I think hanging onto this house for now is my way of acknowledging that all of that happened. I don’t want to forget. That would mean that I didn’t learn anything from it.”
“Women make fools of us all,” Met grumbled. “I think we should hunt Helena down and string her up.”
“Actually, she had the nerve to show up at Bella’s first horseshow. We suspect that her sister told her that Bella had started riding.” Laredo paused for a moment. Met could not interpret his brother’s expression. Then Laredo sighed. “The sickest part of that whole incident was that Bella didn’t really know who Helena was. It had been so long since she had seen her mother that she couldn’t even remember her face.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Laredo shook his head. “Aria is a much better mother to Bella than Helena ever was or would have been.”
“Kind of like Cal was a better father to us than Dad ever was.” Met thought that over for a moment. “Do you think that’s why he was so insistent on adopting Jesse officially? That never made any sense to me. Not legally anyway. It didn’t make a difference. It didn’t mean that her inheritance or her land actually belonged to Dad. It just meant that Jesse was tied to his family. Do you think it was because he had a genuine”—what could you call that kind of devotion—“thing for her mother?”
“I hate to think that this is true, but yeah.” Laredo sighed. “I do think that’s why Dad insisted on the adoption.”
“Did you know about Dad and Amelia?” Met suddenly turned to stare at his brother. “Tell me you didn’t know all these years!”
“No. I didn’t know.” Laredo pressed his lips into a thin line. “It isn’t that simple. I didn’t know, and yet knowing means that there are a whole lot of things that now make more sense.”
A police car pulled up at the curb. Both brothers sighed in what could only be considered a negative response. To say that their experience with law enforcement had been bad ever since they were old enough for Captain Paul Weatherby to think of them as Hernandez men was an understatement. But Met did not recognize the officer that got out of the vehicle and headed up the driveway toward the front door.
“Good afternoon!” The officer raised his hand in greeting. “I’m Officer Keene. I’ve known Daphne Evans for almost a year now. I wanted to talk with you a little bit about what happened here last night, if that would be okay?”
Met stepped out in front of Laredo. “I’m Met Hernandez. Daphne is a good friend of mine. How can I help you?”
“Daphne was telling me that you might have actually spoken with Justin Sorenson last night.” Keene pulled a pad of paper and a pencil from the breast pocket of his uniform. “Is that true?”
“I’ve only spoken with Sorenson a few times.” Met wished he could have positively identified the man from the previous night, but there really wasn’t much to go on. “I’m not entirely certain it was Justin. It’s more of a gut feeling, and a good bit of logic, if you know what I mean?”
“I do.” Keene looked disappointed. “I was really hoping for a positive ID. I’ve been trying to actually pin something on this guy for what seems like forever. He’s a slippery little bastard.”
“He had a camera,” Met offered. “He took a photograph. That was what drew him to my attention in the first place. The flash of the Polaroid camera made it kind of impossible to miss him behind the bushes.”
“The photography is new,” Keene admitted.
The officer took a few steps toward Met and Laredo, and Met noticed that he was a tall, good-looking guy. This did not make Met feel better. What was this guy’s deal? Was he trying to somehow insert himself into Daphne’s life? Was this a rival for her affections? Did she like Keene more than just a police officer? Even the possibility was going to drive Met nuts with speculation.
“You’ll have to excuse my brother and me,” Laredo told Keene. “We don’t tend to trust law enforcement officers very easily.”
“I get that.” Keene sighed. “I suppose we’re all a little guilty of believing one of our own. I probably would be the first to admit that I’ve had some pretty unkind and unfair thoughts about your family thanks to my captain’s comments and beliefs.”
Met was surprised. It took a lot of guts to say something like that. It was a gesture that deserved acknowledgement. “I appreciate that, Officer Keene. You’d be surprised how often over the years we’ve gotten harassed for one thing or another just because a younger officer is trying to make himself look good for Weatherby.”
Keene scratched his head and looked uncomfortable. “From our perspective, it’s hard to believe that a captain in the force would just blatantly lie or try to harass someone like that. Let alone that he would do it to an entire family.”
“Remember that your captain is a Weatherby of the Flying W first,” Laredo growled. “He’s only a cop because that helps pay the bills. If he gets this new stock contract for the rodeo livestock, he’ll retire from the police force pretty quickly.”
“No.” Keene shook his head. “Why would someone do that when they’ve made it all the way to captain?”
“Because being a police captain is just a way to further the interests of his ranch,” Laredo supplied. “He’ll have to quit, Keene. There’s no way he would be able to run the size of operation it would take to fulfill that contract and still pay any attention to a job with the police department. It’s going to take all of us to keep this thing afloat too. And there are five of us,” Laredo reminded Keene.
Met nodded to the man. “I don’t have anything that will help you with a case against Justin Sorenson, but you’re welcome to look around. I don’t know if anyone checked the bushes out back. They were too busy trying to put the fire out, if you know what I mean.”
“Then, I’ll have a look,” Keene said eagerly. “I’d like to nail this guy to the wall and get him away from poor Ms. Evans for good.”
Laredo glanced at Met as if he were wondering how long Met was going to pretend he wasn’t hearing what Keene seemed to be insinuating. Met sighed. He couldn’t very well attack a cop no matter what he might think about Daphne Evans. Sometimes being civilized carried a high emotional and psychological price.