CHAPTER SIX
THERE WERE FEW things more satisfying than looking across the breakfast table at his brothers at five in the morning and seeing just how miserable they were.
Cain was leaning back in his chair, his arm slung over the back like it was a brace that was keeping him from sliding right to the floor. Liam was scowling, one hand curved around a travel mug full of coffee, the other pushed into his dark hair, his elbow resting on the table, like it was propping his head up.
Alex was the only one who was upright, his cup held tightly in both hands, and placed down in his lap. Finn imagined the military ran on ranching time.
But the other two—they thought they wanted to be ranchers? They thought they wanted to live this life, this punishing, rewarding life that made you both master of and slave to the land around you? Yeah, he had a feeling that about now they were questioning that decision.
Their misery was balm for his soul.
And a much-needed distraction from all the tension that had wrapped itself around his spine and tied him up in knots over the past few days.
His grandfather. His family.
Lane.
Damned if he knew why he’d said what he had to her last night. Why he’d given in to that snarling, hot beast that was ravaging his gut and demanding he make her as uncomfortable as he was.
She had looked at him like—well, like he’d grown another head. Which should be all the reminder he needed as to why he didn’t go there with her. Ever.
He blamed his grandfather for dying. Blamed his brothers for being here. His whole damn life for being out of whack.
He needed to find his control again.
The ranch.
Once he got his brothers out there working, they would see how in over their heads they were. And how on top of things he was.
He took a sip of his coffee. “I get up this early every morning,” he commented. “Rain or shine. Can’t skip a day. Animals are needy like that.”
“You sound like Grandpa,” Liam said, his tone gravelly and terse.
“You hated it when you were sixteen, Liam. I don’t know what made you think you might like it now. Five o’clock is still very early in the morning.”
“Things change,” Liam returned.
“Not getting up before sunrise,” Finn said.
He turned and headed back toward the coffeepot, frowning when he saw that it was empty. That was going to take some adjusting. He was going to need to get an industrial-sized coffeemaker. He might be an early rising convert, but he didn’t do it without caffeine.
“Let’s go,” he said, turning back to face his brothers.
He led the way through the house, grabbing his Stetson off the shelf on his way out and positioning it firmly on his head. He didn’t bother with the jacket, though mornings were cold, even at the end of June.
It would warm up soon enough and he didn’t need to be encumbered.
The rest of them—he noticed—were wearing coats and sweatshirts. Only Alex had a hat on.
“You think it’s cold?” he asked, smiling. An evil smile filled with more than a little enjoyment for their suffering.
“I’ve been living in Texas for almost twenty years,” Cain responded. “This coastal air is mean.”
“Are you admitting that Texas made you soft? Because I think I hear the sound of an entire state challenging you to a duel.”
Cain grumbled something about Texans preferring a bar brawl to a duel while zipping his jacket up all the way as they made their way down the stairs and headed toward the barn.
Finn made quick introductions to the facility, and set to getting the cows into their positions. He made quick work of explaining prep and milking—since none of them were completely unfamiliar with it—and then he put every single one of them to work.
He had to admit, it was nice to have extra hands.
Morning milking went quick, and from there it was time to deal with the other animals. Then they had to move the cows from one pasture to another.
“Saddle up,” Finn said, smiling as he presented his brothers with the horses they would be riding today.
“I didn’t know you still went in for this cowboy bullshit,” Liam said.
“Without the cowboy bullshit I wouldn’t bother,” Finn said, swinging himself up easily onto his horse. “Besides, at the end of the day, it’s much easier to do it this way. At least by my way of thinking. Don’t need half as many access roads.”
“I don’t remember Grandpa moving the cows around. From pasture to pasture I mean,” Cain said. “We had to bring them in to eat.”
“Well, that’s something else that’s changing,” Finn said. “Mostly we’re not doing grain anymore. Or corn. We’ve been working to get them on a primarily grass diet. A lot of people think it improves the flavor of the milk. Of course, now everything needs to be hormone free. And the more asterisks you can put on the label the better. Hormone free, antibiotic free, grass fed, vegetarian fed... Whatever. It doesn’t necessarily make a huge difference with the bigger dairies, but we were transitioning in order to keep our options open.”
While he made his grand explanation, the others had finished with their tack and had gotten on their horses.
“Does that mean you’re considering that thing your friend was talking about?” Liam asked.
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t. Just hedging our bets is all. Because you never know when some health guru is going to get pulled off the internet and onto a morning show, telling people about the supposed dangers of something everyone has eaten forever. It’s nice to be ahead.” He was being stubborn. Maybe he was even lying a little bit. “What I do,” he continued, urging his horse to go a little bit faster, “I do because I want to do it. And I’ll do it in my own time.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, and without even turning to look, Finn could tell his younger brother had a smart-ass grin on his face, “you have definitely turned into Grandpa.”
There were worse things, Finn thought privately as he maneuvered the horse closer to the cows that were happily grazing in the field. Callum Donnelly might’ve been a cranky son of a gun, but he had been constant. Steady. Nothing like that worthless son of his that had fathered four sons with three different women and hadn’t stuck around to raise a blessed one of them.
Their father had died because of hard living. And he’d left them absolutely nothing.
Yeah, he would much rather turn into his grandfather than his father. No doubt about that.
“Follow my lead,” Finn said. “You may remember something about this from your time here. Cain, Liam, I want you on the sides. Alex, bring up the rear. I’ll be with you.”
They brought the horses into formation, and after that, Finn turned everything else off. All he did was focus on the mountains that surrounded them, covered with evergreen trees and reaching toward the sky. The clouds were burning away, the summer sun pouring out onto the field, spilling drops of gold on the grass, making it look like the ends of each and every blade were glowing.
Yellow flowers mixed in with the green, joining in with the sunlight to make it look like a bit of that warm magic had touched the earth right here.
Finn wasn’t a man given to poetry, but out here, it was easy to veer that way.
Easier still when his brothers were quiet.
This place was his sanity. His soul. And he let that sunshine burn away as much of the tension inside of him as it possibly could.
He could think more clearly out here, on the back of his horse. The world was reduced to the hoofbeats all around him, to the mountains, to the trees.
And he didn’t think about what might happen to the ranch if all four Donnellys ended up living here and fighting over their piece of it. Didn’t think about that dumbass stuff he’d pulled with Lane last night.
If there was a perfect moment in his life, he knew it was going to happen on horseback, riding on his own property.
So whenever he saddled up he took care to live in the moment. Took care not to miss it.
By the time they finished driving the cattle from one place to the next and rode back again it was nearly lunchtime. They were all sweaty and dirty, and he could tell that they were all regretting their choice of outerwear and their lack of a hat to keep the sun off their faces.
“I may have a farmer tan,” Finn said, unable to resist the urge to needle them, “but at least I’m comfortable.”
“Beer,” Alex grunted when they walked into the house.
Liam went to the fridge and pulled out two bottles, handing one to Alex before taking a seat at the table. A very slow seat. “Fuuuuuuuck.” The word extended through the entire motion, until he was settled in the chair. “That is not like riding a bike,” he said.
“No,” Finn said, leaning against the wall and surveying the group. “Not even a little bit. And if you think it hurts now...just wait until tomorrow. I went easy on you guys today.”
“I don’t think my daughter is even awake yet,” Cain grumbled, getting his own beer out of the fridge and popping the top violently on the counter.
“Yeah, I’m going to leave the designation of chores for the teenager to you,” Finn said. “I’m her uncle. Not her dad. And I don’t particularly want to play the part of bad guy.”
He was feeling cheerful for the first time in days.
“You got fat in the off-season, Liam,” Alex said.
Liam shot him a deadly look. “Tell you what. I invite you to start a fight with me and see just how out of shape I am. I just haven’t ridden a horse in... Well, since I was last here.”
Alex shrugged, crossing his arms and lifting his beer to his lips. “I don’t need to fight you to know that twelve years in the army gives me the advantage. I haven’t ridden a horse recently either, but I’m fine.”
Alex hadn’t looked all that fine only a few moments ago, but it seemed as though he was redirecting his stance now that he saw how miserable Cain and Liam were. It was impossible not to like Alex sometimes. Even though he was an obnoxious son of a bitch.
“Yeah,” Liam grumbled, “well, some of us haven’t lived at boot camp for the past twelve years.”
“True. But then, neither have I. Boot camp looks friendly next to Afghanistan,” Alex said. “Trust me.” He took another sip of beer. “Come to that, cows look friendly next to Afghanistan too.”
Alex was going to be the toughest one to scare off, Finn realized. He seemed like the easygoing one. Like the one who would cut and run when things got difficult. But there was an intensity that went beneath the surface, a strength that the rest of them hadn’t really been around to witness but that Finn knew was there just the same.
“We’re going to have to milk the cows again in a couple of hours. Take a break. Eat. There’s food in the fridge from last night, or you can drive down to town if you’re in the mood. Just be back by two.”
Alex and Liam looked at each other, then left the room. Either to go grab some rest or a burger, Finn didn’t know. But he didn’t really care. Unless they were going to hightail it back to where they came from.
But that left him alone in the room with Cain. And he had never really known what kind of things he was supposed to talk about with his older brother. They had a lot in common in some ways. They were the ones that stood alone, isolated. No full-blood brother, and very little in the way of attention from their father.
Though it was a strange thing to have the common ground between yourself and your brother marked by all the things you didn’t have in common. Where you were raised. Who you were raised by.
But in his family those strange connections were all you had anyway.
“You don’t have to enjoy this so much.” Cain leaned back in his seat, resting his head on the back of the chair. “I’m thirty-seven, not seventeen. And I feel every year of it right about now.”
“You own a ranch, Cain,” Finn said, looking at his older brother. “Why are you acting like you haven’t been on the back of a horse since the dawn of time?”
“It’s probably been a couple of years,” he said. “I paid other people to manage the actual day-to-day stuff. At least, that’s how it’s been since my wife left.”
“So you just turned everything over to other people?” That was unfathomable to Finn. He liked to have his hand in every aspect of the ranch. Sure, he had people who worked at the Laughing Irish other than himself and his grandpa, but he was in charge, unquestionably. And he went out and rode the perimeter of the place almost every day. It was in his heart, in his blood. And he didn’t possess the ability to let go of even a piece of it.
“I had too much to hold on to in my personal life.” Cain swore, setting his beer down on the table. “I love being a father, but I can’t say that I ever thought I was the best one. But now I’m all Violet has. And I felt like... How could I possibly be out working on the ranch when there was more than enough money coming in if I never touched it? Someone had to make sure everything was all right at school. That all of her homework was getting done. And I could let the work go, so I did. Anyway, there was still paperwork. And I basically buried myself in that, plus doing the legal work of making sure I got sole custody. So that Kathleen could never just walk back into our lives and decide she wanted to try and take Violet from me. Not after she left the way she did.”
“Why did she leave?” They had never talked about this. But then, they had never talked about much of anything. Finn hadn’t even fully realized that Cain’s ex-wife had removed herself so completely from the picture.
“Probably for a million stupid reasons. And a couple of really good ones.” He paused, looking down at his hands. “But the worst part about somebody leaving you like that is you can’t shout it out. I mean, I know enough to know she wasn’t kidnapped or anything. Because trust me, that was my first thought. Your wife disappears on you and the first thing you want to do is call the police. Because there’s no way she’d leave her thirteen-year-old daughter, right? I mean, sure, maybe she’d leave the husband she could hardly say a civil word to. But Violet? That’s the part I don’t get.”
He stood, pacing the length of the kitchen before he paused at the window over the kitchen sink, just as Finn had done a few days ago. He looked out at the view, taking it all in, and Finn felt a strange mixture of irritation and pride as his older brother surveyed everything Finn had worked to make this ranch over the past nearly two decades.
“It’s the part I can’t forgive,” Cain said heavily. Then he turned back to Finn. “If you think a full day of work, day in day out, scares me, you don’t know what I’ve been through. I’m raising a teenage girl, Finn. I’m not scared of jack shit except all the ways I might fuck that up.” He took a weighted breath. “But I need something new. She needs something new. Otherwise, we’re just going to sit there mired in old memories and drown. I need your money even less than Alex does. My ranch was big, and when I sold it I got more than I’ll ever spend. I can invest it back into the Laughing Irish. I can invest in Violet’s future. That’s what I want. But this isn’t about needing property, or needing to earn a living. Not for me.”
Cain didn’t have to get into a deeper explanation than that. Mostly because Finn recognized exactly what Cain needed this place to be. It was the same thing Finn had needed when he’d showed up, angry and lost at sixteen.
He didn’t need money. He needed salvation.
“I’m warning you,” Finn said. “This ranch will drag a whole lot out of you before it starts putting anything back. And then, it’ll always be that way. Give and take. You and the land.”
“That’s all right,” Cain said. “I kind of want it to hurt.”
Finn didn’t want to understand Cain. Because that was perilously close to being on his brother’s side. To wanting to help him out in some way. He bristled against his growling conscience.
He should want to help his brother, he supposed. It was much easier to oppose his presence when he imagined that Cain wanted to be here for the wrong reasons. That it didn’t matter. That a payout would make things square.
This made it a whole lot more difficult. It made Finn feel a whole lot more petty.
“Violet doesn’t seem very happy to be here,” he pointed out. Which was maybe the lowest blow he’d tried to land yet.
Cain laughed, but there was no humor in it. “She’s not happy anywhere. I don’t know what to... I mean... It’s like she’s a different person now. She used to be this adorable, little bitty thing. And I can remember her with two missing front teeth and a big smile so clearly that half the time that’s still what I expect to see when I look at her. Instead she’s this sullen creature that will barely make eye contact with me. She was mad at me in Texas. I figure she can be mad at me here. But at least maybe with a little less baggage hanging around.” He shook his head. “I could never shake the feeling that she was waiting for her mother to come back. And the longer we stayed at the ranch, the more I felt like that was why. That it was why we were both still there. It had to stop.”
All of this, the emotion, the understanding, scraped against Finn like a particularly splintered board on bare skin.
“I don’t know what to say,” Finn responded finally. “Mostly because there’s nothing I can say that won’t make me sound like an ass.”
Cain lifted a shoulder. “Maybe because you are one.”
“Maybe,” Finn agreed.
“I’m not the easiest person to get along with,” Cain said. “Every woman who has ever passed through my life will attest to that. Particularly, at the moment, my daughter. I’m not one to promise that we are not going to butt heads here. But I can tell you that I’m not here to ruin your life. I’m just trying my damnedest to fix mine.”