HE WAS A nervous wreck. A lot was riding on how today went. Picking through the list of preparations in his head, Calder ticked them off one by one to be sure he’d covered all his bases.
All around him as far as the eye could see were the trappings of an old-school rodeo. There was even a new pony in the barn’s smaller corral. A special early birthday gift for Dylan because Calder knew the best present he could give his beauty queen was something for her precious grandbaby.
He had no doubt about her shitting out a Georgia peach when she saw the gorgeous pony. Teaching Dylan to ride and appreciate horses was pretty damn high on Stephanie’s priority list. After all, it was in her family’s history. She wasn’t just a ladylike former beauty queen. She was also a kickass cowgirl with an impressive array of championship buckles and trophies from her younger days as a regular on the Junior Rodeo circuit around her hometown in Montana.
“Hey! Calder,” a voice boomed behind him. He turned in time to see Drae bringing one of the new two-row Polaris utility vehicles to a halt about twenty feet away. Grabbing an armload of cowboy hats from the vacant passenger seat, he hurried toward Calder.
“Got a bunch of extras from the last Justice get-together,” he exclaimed excitedly. “Since the construction crew is invited and not all of ‘em have western gear, Victoria thought we should put these to good use.”
What a great idea. With a wide grin, he told Drae, “Probably shoulda’ let your wife plan and execute this whole thing, huh?”
“Nah. She’s just real good with details. Besides, this birthday hoedown throw down you’re putting on is like the bow on a box of rare chocolates for Victoria. Seeing your only parent lose her shit over an old fuck like you gives my spitfire a lot of happiness. I know her mouth doesn’t always say what her heart is thinking, but believe me, dude. She’s over the moon about the fuss you’re making.”
Good. He was glad to hear it. Keeping Tori on his good side hadn’t been easy. Every day between when he and her mother reappeared as a couple after a separation of stupidity and this very second when he hadn’t, as everyone kept saying, ‘put a ring on it,’ had been torture. Some days, he wasn’t sure if his lady’s daughter was going to remove his balls or have him knighted.
A jarring thump of worry detoured that thought. Part of Tori’s wild mood swings had more than a little to do with the mysterious state of the St. John marriage. All outward appearances showed a family in harmony. No one doubted Drae’s unwavering devotion to his wife and son. In public, he was the perfect husband and father. It wasn’t fake. Calder had known the man far too long for any sort of smoke and mirrors to work.
But still. Something was going on, and whatever that something was, it worried the fuck out of Stephanie as well. He was no expert on these things—far from it—but he wondered if maybe Tori didn’t have a touch of postpartum funk clinging to her. After all, Daniel’s birth hadn’t been a party. She’d been a mess physically and emotionally afterward.
Didn’t help Tori any when her mother took off and left her holding the postpartum bag by herself. He cringed at the memory. Stephanie’s leaving had been his fault. His damn fault for being a fucking butthead. The uncomfortable admission that his messy handling of his and Stephanie’s relationship might be a contributing factor to Tori’s postpartum struggle didn’t sit well with him.
Not for the first or last time, he wished Alex would get the fuck back to Arizona. The complexities of life at the Villa ended up being a shit-ton of responsibility and required a finesse Calder did not feel confident wielding.
“Oh, hey,” he muttered as the pile of hats Drae brought was dumped. He’d wisely had a tent placed on the wide lawn area separating the Villa from the out buildings. “We good to go with the video Alex sent? Tori said it was N-B-D and not to worry.”
Drae snickered. “You joking? My geek princess loves a tech challenge. Since I know nothing about this shit, I’ll just say a few words I picked up, and you can decipher, okay?”
Calder laughed. The nerd head-nods and eye rolls had always been directed just at him and Alex. He’d taught his nephew well. But holy god. Victoria Bennett St. John? That girl gave them a real run for their money.
“Go for it.”
“Right.” Drae chuckled as his face screwed up until he looked like a kid failing a foreign language quiz. “Yeah. Uh, projection. Hi-def. Wireless something—maybe sound?”
Smacking his soon-to-be son-in-law on the back, he made a wry face and used his professorial voice. “All right, St. John. Don’t have a meltdown just because your wife is way fucking smarter than you are.”
“Oh, suck my balls, Dane. I know you, ya old pervert. Aren’t you the guy who goes in costume to Comic Con every year trolling for Princess Leia types and anyone dressed up like an Anime slut? Don’t you try and rub my nose in my woman’s I.Q.”
Now see? Their kidding around was classic St. John. His tone and the way his steely blue eyes sparkled when he spoke about his wife didn’t suggest anything out of the ordinary. Yet, still.
“Which reminds me,” the other man said as he checked out his watch. “Better get my ass in gear. Got Lacey and Dylan to deal with too.”
They both nodded. In a voice heavy with concern, Calder asked, “Any news about Cam? I’m pretty sure I’ll be talking to Alex later. What should I tell him?”
“Fuck if I know,” Drae muttered irritably. “He’s been sucked into the damn matrix, and short of Victoria hacking into a government mainframe to find out and spending the rest of her life in jail for it, those government guys have all info on lockdown. And for real, man, they do not leave a trail.”
Their combined worry cast a pall over what two minutes before had been a happy conversation.
“How’s Lacey? You do know I have to tell him now, right? My nephew is super protective of Ponytail. You were right about not telling him at first, but he’s going to figure out Cam wasn’t here today.”
Drae squinted into the sun, pulled his sunglasses from a shirt pocket, and slid them on. “He knows something’s going on. Tried cockblocking when we did our weekly text.” He snorted and shook his head. “The Major saw right through my lame attempts to divert his attention away from why Cam wasn’t in on the exchange.”
Calder’s wrist tech dinged. He picked up his hand and angled the face of the Hermes Apple watch he wore. Might seem a bit swish for a guy like him, but after Stephanie read the watch’s description and saw the phrase, ‘designed to recall the straps of a horse’s girth,’ well, she’d insisted he have one. Fortunately, it fit in with the day’s theme.
“The band is here to set up.”
The way Drae started laughing you’d think he was front row at a stand-up comedy festival.
“Oh, my god! That’s right. Victoria told me you pressured the Chixie Dicks to be today’s house band. Dude!” He chortled as his hand went up for a high five. “Epic!”
Calder slapped the mother fuck out of that high five because yep, he’d negotiated with the band for two weeks to nail down the arrangements. The Dicks were Desert Thunder’s main rivals in a half-assed and totally comical way. Like Thunder, the band was comprised of professional guys—a plumber, a hardware store owner, a lawyer, and a doctor.
Thunder and Dick’s rivalry went back years and spawned a never-ending series of hijinks and practical jokes that were becoming legend. It would annoy the piss out of Parker that the Chixie Dicks were playing, and that alone was worth whatever the day cost him in dollars. It was no surprise at all that Drae thought the situation amusing. He and Parker had been jockeying for Alex’s number one girlfriend spot for decades. Anything that was gonna rub Parker Sullivan the wrong way was shits and giggles for Draegyn St. John.
Damn. Alex was really missing out on some textbook Justice brothers fuckery.
“Victoria! Oh, my god! Get over here,” Lacey squealed as she excitedly scrolled through the long text.
From the other side of the massive living room, Tori’s head popped up. Lacey saw her flushed face and messed up hair and knew she’d probably been blowing raspberries on Daniel’s tummy.
“What is it?”
“It’s Heather! Oh, my god! They’re gonna be here next week. Squee!”
Continuing to read, she looked up and added, “Looks like they decided against driving. Brody thinks a week in the car with an emotionally fragile five-year-old and a dog would be too much.”
“They’re flying?” Tori asked as she came to where she and Dylan were camped with Daniel perched on her hip.
“Yeah, yeah. Sawyer’s going to get them.”
“When?”
“Hold on. Still reading.”
Dylan suddenly yelled, “Ma!” and smacked her on the leg with a beat-up plush dinosaur he liked to swing by the tail. Raven also took a whack or two as her playful son crawled closer to the poor dog and had a go.
“Yikes,” Lacey groaned. “Next Wednesday. Everything that’s left to ship will be here Monday. Including Brody’s car.”
“I’d pass that info on to Remy. Let her handle the vehicle.”
“Better make myself a note. Call Beverly Two Clouds on Monday and make sure Mia’s registration for school is a go.”
“Did you hear that?” Tori cooed excitedly to Daniel, who was smiling at her with such love, Lacey’s heart clutched at the sight. “Your cousin is coming, Big D!”
Crouching to her son’s level, Lacey traded his favorite board book for the weaponized dinosaur and then patted Raven on the head for being such a good dog around the babies.
“Beverly’s going to sign off on my teaching hours at her school. That way I can keep an eye on the little girl without it seeming weird.”
“Speaking of,” Tori replied. “Thank you so much for the electronic drum toy. He loves it. Anything Daniel can beat on is a good thing!”
“I feel like a walking encyclopedia of developmental baby toys.”
”You are!” Her friend chuckled. “I can’t believe you’ve almost finished your degree. Way to go, sister!”
Some part of Lacey couldn’t believe it either. By Christmas, she’d have enough credits to earn an associate’s degree in early childhood education. The accomplishment was another reminder of how far she’d come from being homeless and desperate to her life today.
“Cameron’s so proud.” Her words were little more than a murmur.
Thinking about her husband and the fact that she didn’t know where he was immediately deflated her mood.
But he needed her to be strong and not wimp out when he was counting on her. Tori’s hand stroked her shoulder, then squeezed.
“Sweetie?”
Quickly wiping away some tears that sprang from nowhere, she smiled at her friend and offered a weak smile.
“Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
Tori’s terse snort said a lot. “Ponytail, you are far from fine, but I’ll let it slide since that’s how you wanna play this.”
Lacey’s curiosity piqued at the woeful quality of Tori’s voice and at how she delivered the statement. She’d been thinking about something from one of her classes—something she thought rang a certain bell where her best friend was concerned.
She went with her instinct. No preamble. No setup. Just go straight to the point, good or bad. The Justice brothers taught her this. Sometimes, it was better to meet a challenge head-on than to dance around the maypole.
“I want you to make an appointment to see my doctor.”
“What?” Tori wasn’t surprised so much as she was stunned. At least, that was how her reaction read. “Doctor? What the hell for?”
Catching Dylan before he scooted away—the boy moved fast as lightning now that he figured out crawling was simply baby jogging—she scooped him up into a mighty hug.
With the baby propped on her hip, she and Tori looked like mirror images. One was blonde and the other brunette.
Softening how she delivered this message, she spoke calmly and softly but very direct. “Has it ever occurred to you that considering the circumstances of Daniel’s birth and how long it took you to get back on your feet that perhaps you’re dealing with some postpartum blues?”
They were standing close enough that she saw her friend swallow and heard an almost silent gasp. At first, she thought maybe Tori was going to engage, but all of a sudden, her mood swung wildly in the other direction. With a nasty bite, she snapped, “The problem isn’t me. It’s him. He’s not attracted to me now that I’ve popped out a kid. Your doctor got a cure for that?”
Holy, um … Hannah. What the heck was she stumbling into?
“Victoria. My god. What are you talking about? Drae loves you. I don’t understand. Are you two having”—she took a deep breath and jumped, saying the words she knew were overstepping the TMI line—“bedroom problems?”
Sweet, loving Victoria vanished in the blink of an eye. Snotty, unhappy Victoria took her place.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lacey. Bedroom problems?” Her eyebrows shot heavenward, and her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Don’t you mean fucking? Are we having fuck problems? Yeah”—she shrugged—“we are.”
She didn’t understand. Why was she insisting her husband no longer desired her when Lacey knew they slept in the same bed and, on occasion, had sex?
“What does that mean, Tori? Of course, Drae still finds you attractive. He’s your husband. I thought everything was okay in the intimacy department.”
And then the mood swing pendulum whooshed in the other direction.
“Never mind. Forget it. I’m just being a whiny bitch.”
Good grief! Talk about not knowing what to say. And then the light bulb went on over her head.
“What you two need is a weekend in Sin City. Deluxe suite. Room service. See a show. Maybe get a couple’s massage. You should just do it, Tori. Don’t think it through,” she added hurriedly when her friend’s pragmatism made an appearance on her face.
“Daniel can come stay with me. I know Dylan would love it, and I think having two boys to look after would be fun! Help keep my mind off worrying about Cameron.”
She felt pretty darn clever for injecting some well-placed sympathy over her missing husband. Took the argumentative wind right out of Tori’s sails.
As her friend hesitated, she picked up the ball and started running for the goal posts. “You should stay at the M. It’s off the Strip and has lovely amenities. I’ll even make the reservation so you guys get all the cool upgrades! We stay in a loft suite with incredible views of downtown and the mountains. Oh! And Tori. The spa there is to die for. Best bikini wax ever. And if you feel like stepping into the downtown craziness, just Über back and forth.”
Lacey was so excited. Cameron loves the M. One time, they even took Dylan for a weekend getaway.
“Don’t say no, sweetie. Come on,” she urged with a happy shoulder shove. “You know you want to,” Lacey teased.
“What happens in Vegas …” Tori chanted.
“Stays in Vegas,” Lacey finished with a hopeful smile.
“I think you might be on to something, Mrs. Cameron.”
“Hot diggity!” Lacey squealed as she whirled around with a giggling Dylan plastered to her side.
When she stopped twirling and faced a smirking Tori, her friend just looked at her and shook her head.
“Seriously? Hot diggity?”
When they cracked up with laughter, so did the boys, and a weight lifted off Lacey’s troubled shoulders. Maybe all Tori and Drae needed was some alone time and a chance to reset their relationship.
Vowing to keep a close eye on things, Lacey silently added her hope that Meghan got back to Arizona soon. She’d know what to do, but until then, all she could do was be there for her friend.