6

That evening, a lengthy, spirited, completely internal debate waged in Evangeline’s head throughout supper and continued into the clearing of the dishes. She never kept secrets from her brothers. It was a family rule. Hamiltons watched each others’ backs. Always. A tradition that required openness and honesty so that nothing could sneak up on them without warning.

On the other hand, Zach and Seth’s protective natures tended to overreact where she was concerned. To the point where watching her back meant restricting her movements so that her back was always within sight. Such confinement was stifling. And rather inconvenient if she planned to continue visiting Logan. Which she did.

She nibbled her lower lip as she made the rounds, filling a coffee cup first for Zach, then for Seth, before fetching the teakettle for herself.

“Sorghum’s growing a little slow. Probably ought to rotate it with oats next year,” Zach said as he lifted his cup to his mouth and leaned back in the wooden kitchen chair.

“Cotton’s a better cash crop,” Seth ventured.

Zach’s jaw clenched, and tension immediately filled the room.

Evangeline shot Seth a sharp look. If she were closer, she’d smack the back of his head. Not that it would make much difference. He’d just ignore it, like he was currently ignoring her glare. Her grip on the kettle handle tightened. Of all the nights to bring up this old argument. She already had one minefield to maneuver. She didn’t need a second.

“Everyone around here already grows cotton.” Evangeline purposely kept her voice light as she slid back into her seat at the table and poured steaming water from the kettle through the tea strainer and into her cup. “When have we ever followed the crowd? We Hamiltons forge our own path. Besides, with everyone else planting cotton, there will be more local demand for oats.”

Her cup filled, she set the kettle on the metal trivet in the center of the table, then looked at her eldest brother and smiled. “I trust your instincts, Zach. If you think oats are the way to go, then we’ll plant oats. You haven’t steered us wrong yet. Just recall that remarkable yield of syrup we had last year. We sold nearly a thousand gallons of molasses! Even if the yield is smaller this time, we’ll still have enough to get by, thanks to your capable management.”

“Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you, Evie?” Zach smiled around the brim of his coffee cup, and the tension gripping the room eased a fraction. “You don’t have to play peacemaker. We’re big boys. We can handle a little disagreement now and again.”

“Of course you can.” If one counted icy silence and grumpy stomping for the next two days as handling things. She needed them in a good mood right now. She winked at Zach, then turned to smile at Seth as well, adding a silent plea to her expression, begging him to let the matter drop. At least for tonight.

Seth managed the family funds—kept the books, studied the agriculture market, researched trends and innovations, monitored the accounts. He was the brains behind Zach’s brawn. Seth’s well-timed investments had slowly padded their income over the years, taking what Zach had scraped together through odd jobs and back-breaking toil and growing it into something substantial. Having gone to bed hungry more nights than not during the lean years after the train wreck, security was something they all craved. Yet lines still existed that could not be crossed.

Cotton was one of those lines.

Evangeline didn’t know all the details. Zach never spoke about his past, but she knew he despised farming. Cotton in particular. The fact that he had purchased a farm seven years ago and started raising sorghum and corn of his own free will testified to his love for his siblings. She was convinced that nothing else would have ever compelled him to work the land again. He’d proven countless times over the years that he’d do whatever it took to provide for her and Seth. And if farming was what it took, that was what he’d do. Even if he hated every minute of it.

Seth used to be content to let Zach make all the decisions, but the older he got, the more driven he seemed to assert himself. And judging by the stubborn tilt of his chin, this was fixing to be one of those times.

“Cotton fetches twice the price of oats, and you know it,” Seth challenged. “I don’t understand why we can’t plant a few acres just to try it out.”

Zach slowly set his coffee cup on the table, his whitening knuckles the only outward show of strain. “Be my guest,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You want to plant cotton, plant cotton. But I ain’t working it.”

Seth leaned forward, eyes narrowing. “Why not? You work the sorghum, the corn, the oats when they’re rotated in. Why not cotton?”

“I got my reasons.”

“You got your reasons.” Seth’s voice rose, his temper slipping. He scraped his chair back and pushed to his feet.

“Please, Seth. Leave it alone.” Evangeline reached a hand toward her brother, but he pulled away from her.

“I’m not going to leave it alone. Not this time.” He stormed around the table to face Zach without a barrier between them. “All these years, he’s been the one deciding what’s right for us. What’s best. But we aren’t kids anymore. And this is not a dictatorship.”

Zach lifted his coffee cup and sipped, ignoring the rant, which only angered Seth more. Evangeline’s stomach cramped. She hated when her brothers fought. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it brought long-buried fears surging back to the surface. Fears of being abandoned again. Fears that they’d decide this little patchwork family of theirs wasn’t worth the effort any longer and leave.

Evangeline hurried around the table and placed herself between the two men she loved more than anything on this earth. She placed one hand on Zach’s shoulder, the other on Seth’s elbow.

“Zach provided for us when we couldn’t provide for ourselves. He kept us together. Kept us alive. He’s always put us first. Always.” She squeezed Seth’s arm, praying he would relent. “If he doesn’t want to work cotton, we don’t work cotton. We owe him that much.”

Seth turned hard eyes on her, eyes that shone with . . . hurt? “And what about what he owes us?”

That got Zach’s attention. He turned toward his brother, his face a blank mask that reminded Evangeline of another man she’d gone toe-to-toe with earlier in the day. “And what exactly do I owe you, little brother?”

Seth jerked his arm away from Evangeline’s hold. “Respect.”

Zach blinked. Twice. Then hardened the line of his mouth.

Seth continued, undaunted. “I’m a man, same as you, Zach. Not a boy. Just because I can’t work the same as you doesn’t mean my opinions hold no weight.”

Zach twisted in his seat and rested an arm on the chair back. “And here I thought you were the smart one of the family. I heed your opinions all the time. You have full control over the family finances. Wherever you say to invest, we invest. I hand my money over to you every time we bring in a harvest or butcher a hog. I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t respect you, Seth.”

“Yet you don’t respect me enough to treat me like an equal. I’m not your little brother. I’m your partner. Yet you still keep secrets as if we’re children who can’t handle a few rocks in our road.”

Evangeline looked from one to the other, sensing they weren’t talking about cotton any longer. If they ever had been.

Zach slowly rose to his feet, taking full advantage of his greater height as he looked down at Seth. “Some things are better left hidden.”

“Better for who?” Seth pressed closer, nearly squishing Evangeline between the two men.

Why wouldn’t he just let it go? But in her heart, she knew. Those secrets were poisoning Zach’s soul. She could feel it, and apparently Seth could, too. Zach had been closing himself off from them a little more each year. Withdrawing emotionally. Not that he’d ever been the demonstrative sort to begin with, but it was almost as if he was trying to protect them from himself. Though that didn’t make any sense. He was their protector. Always had been.

“You really want that cotton fluff growing around here, Seth? Might stir up your asthma.”

“Still sidestepping the real issue, aren’t you, Zach?”

Fists began to clench. Chins jutted. Good heavens! They might actually come to blows.

Evangeline thrust herself more forcefully between the two, planting one hand on each brother’s chest. Then she blurted the first thing that came to mind.

“I met a man in the woods today.”

Both faces bent toward her, redirecting their antagonism squarely in her direction. “What?”

Well, at least she’d managed to unite them, even if it was at her own expense. They had chorused their demand in perfect synchronicity.

Evangeline smiled. Now she just had to find a way to extricate herself without giving away too many details about her secret project. “I met a man,” she repeated, “in the woods.”

Zach’s eyebrows arched sharply. “What man?” He was in full-on protective mode now. Big brother impulses trumped personal issues every time. He really was a sweetheart under that lone wolf exterior. “Evangeline . . .” he growled.

All right, so he also had fangs, but she could deal with those.

“Don’t get your dander up, Zach. It was all perfectly innocent.”

Seth glowered, taking a stance beside Zach, his arms crossed. “Nothing is ever perfectly innocent with you, Evie.”

Really? That was just uncalled for. She cast a glare at her middle brother. Just because in this instance it wasn’t perfectly innocent—she’d been rummaging through Logan’s camp, after all, and he was probably involved in some sort of clandestine, better-if-you-don’t-know-my-full-name kind of activities of his own—didn’t mean she always behaved in a such a manner.

“How’d you meet him?” Zach, of course, was still focused on the man.

“He rescued me,” Evangeline said, hoping to reassure her brother that Logan meant her no harm. Yet instead of soothing him, her remark seemed to increase his agitation. He grabbed her upper arms in a controlled grip. It wasn’t painful, but it demanded answers.

“Was someone threatening you?” He looked her up and down, frowning at the small bruise she knew was forming over her right cheek where she’d collided with the ground when Logan tackled her. It hadn’t darkened much yet, so she’d hoped it would escape their notice, but apparently that was no longer an option. At least they couldn’t see the other sore places along her hip and ribs. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. And truly I was never in any danger. It was just a silly misunderstanding.”

Zach eyed her skeptically. “A misunderstanding that led a man you’d never met to believe you in need of rescue?”

Evangeline shrugged, a rather neat trick, considering Zach still had hold of her arms. “He might have reached the erroneous conclusion that I was in the path of a wild boar’s charge.”

“Hezzy.” There was that synchronicity again, as both her brothers chorused her pet’s name with equal levels of exasperation. But at least they were no longer glowering at her. Zach even released her arms, freeing her to punch his shoulder lightly.

“Don’t say his name like he’s the bane of your existence,” she scolded. “Hezekiah is a fine hog and a faithful companion.”

“He’s a nuisance and a plague.”

Evangeline would have been offended had all the heat not drained from Zach’s voice and his lips not curved into a hint of a smile.

She threw her arms around her brother’s neck and kissed his cheek. “You love him and you know it.”

His arms came around her back for a light squeeze before he disengaged himself. “I tolerate him.”

She grinned up at him. “Because you love me.”

He never actually said the words, but his actions and countless sacrifices proved them true. So a few years ago, she’d decided to start saying them for him.

Zach rolled his eyes. “Brat.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Tyrant.”

They shared a smile, and Evangeline’s heart filled with the warmth of family. She headed to the washtub to start cleaning the dishes, her step light and bouncing until Seth’s determined voice echoed from behind her.

“I think you left a few details out of your story, Evie. Time to tell us more about this man in the woods.”