Unexpected Family

“Staying out at Jeremiah’s place.”

“Jeremiah Stone?” Well, well, well, this night just keeps getting better. Playing chauffeur to a drunken Reese got a whole lot more appealing with Jeremiah Stone at the other end. “I didn’t know he was back in town.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, and then, shifting deeper into his bucket seat, he seemed to pass out.

Stone Hollow was the ranch next to the Rocky M, the ranch where she grew up and was currently calling home. It was currently her home while her life in Los Angeles fell to pieces.

Jeremiah, five years older than her and Reese, had been a local legend in Northern California. A rodeo stud, he left town to make it big in the arena when Lucy was a freshman. Last she saw Jeremiah, he was on the front page of a grocery store tabloid and on his arm was a gorgeous country music star.

The car’s engine roared to life when she turned the key, the reverberations rumbling up through her body, and she felt as if she were sitting on top of a wild creature. She put the car into Drive—not a stick shift, God had been listening for once—and a familiar reckless thrill flickered through her chest as the powerful vehicle rolled onto Main Street.

She opened the window, letting the mountain air comb fingers through her hair and blow kisses across her cheeks. The neck of her shirt gaped and the air slid down into more intimate places.

Glancing sideways at the sleeping man, she grinned and gunned the engine, racing through the night up into the mountains.

Twenty minutes later she pulled to a stop in the paved parking area in front of the sprawling, two-story ranch house that sat in a pretty pocket of land just west of Rocky M. Fields were made silver by the bright moonlight, horses took on a mystical look as they shook their manes, their breath fogging slightly in the cool night.

Funny how things worked out. When she was growing up here, all she wanted was out. Away. She wanted adventure and culture. Excitement. Not dust.

But in Los Angeles for the past five years she found herself missing the smell of sun-baked junipers. In a city where wearing a cowboy hat was an ironic statement, she’d longed for the real thing. And after dating a bunch of cynical men in skinny jeans, she’d nurtured a yen for the kind of cowboy who would squash a guy in skinny jeans like a bug.

The front door opened, a rectangle of golden lamplight spilling out into the darkness. It had to be Jeremiah who stood there, judging by the long lean size of him, blackened against all that light. She was glad to see those wide shoulders of his because she had a feeling Reese was going to have to be carried out of this car.

She got up out of the car and waved.

“I have Reese,” she said. “He was too drunk to drive home.”

Jeremiah didn’t say anything, just plugged his feet into his boots and stepped out onto the porch and down the steps to the car.

Once he cleared the shadows, the silvery moonlight highlighted his black curls, the icy blue of his eyes.

Jeremiah Stone hasn’t changed a bit, she thought, her body still humming from controlling that car. Or maybe it was Jeremiah. He was the sort of man to make a girl’s body hum.

The devil was in that man’s smile and she found herself smiling back. Honestly, Jeremiah could seduce a saint with that mouth of his. And remembering his reputation, he’d probably already given it a shot.

“Thanks for bringing him back,” Jeremiah said, opening the passenger door. Reese spilled out like all that whiskey he’d been drinking at the bar and Jeremiah grabbed him easily. He half marched, half dragged him toward the house. Reese’s hat tipped over into the dust and Jeremiah paused for a second, as if trying to figure out how he could pick it up.

“I got it,” she said, and grabbed the hat, following the men into the house.

She’d been in the house a couple of times growing up. The last time was when the husband of Jeremiah’s sister, Annie, died about five years ago. But the big open living room didn’t look anything like she remembered. It looked more like a Laundromat and sporting equipment store had a baby right there on the couch.

Jeremiah kicked a stack of laundry down to the floor and dropped Reese onto the long denim couch.

“That’s Lucy.” Reese pointed at her. “She showed me her boobs.”

Jeremiah’s dark eyebrows hit his hairline.

“Fifteen years ago. And it was for luck.”

As if that made it reasonable, she thought.

For lack of a better place, she hung the cowboy hat over a hockey stick that was jammed into the cushion of a chair.

“It was the state football game,” she added.

“It must have worked. He won that game, didn’t he?”

“Apparently my breasts have powers even I don’t understand.”

Huge points to Jeremiah, who didn’t glance down at her breasts, didn’t in any way ogle her or joke. In fact, he didn’t even look at her. He jerked a faded red, white and blue quilt off the back of the couch and draped it over his drunken houseguest, whose face was resting on a clean pair of little-boy superhero underwear.

“Thanks for bringing him back,” Jeremiah said.

“I couldn’t let him drive.”

“I shouldn’t have let him go.”

Lucy glanced around the house, waiting for his sister to come out, wrapped in a robe, to give them all hell for being too loud. “Where’s Annie?”

Jeremiah cleared his throat, bending down to pick up the laundry he shoved off the couch. His T-shirt slid up his back, revealing pale skin dotted with freckles over hard muscle. Just at the edge of his shirt she saw the snaky tail end of red scar tissue—a healed wound she didn’t want to think about. The faded denim of his jeans clung to that man like a faithful lover, and she had to wonder if the hallelujah chorus didn’t ring out every time he bent over.

“She died. Last spring.”

“What?” She tore her eyes away from his body, feeling like a degenerate. “Oh, my God, Jeremiah…what happened?”

He stood up with a stack of small blue jeans in his hands.

“Cancer.” He threw the jeans in the overflowing laundry basket. “It was fast.”

“I’m so sorry, Jeremiah. I didn’t know—”

“It’s all right, Lucy. I don’t expect the world to keep up with all the Stones’ tragedies.”

“Where are your nephews?” she asked.

“Sleeping,” he said with a wry smile. “It’s ten o’clock at night.”

“Are you…” It was just so weird to think of Jeremiah Stone as the guardian of three small boys. Jeremiah Stone was a cowboy sex symbol. He got interviewed on ESPN, and that footage of him getting trampled by a bull had been a YouTube sensation. He dated beautiful country music stars, and did not, definitely did not, fold superhero underwear.

He sighed and smiled as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “…in charge of the boys? Yep.”

Jeremiah ran a hand through those ebony curls and then set it on his hip, looking around the room as if it were the sight of a national disaster and he just didn’t know what to do next.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Lucy murmured, not sure what else to say.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

The silence pulsed for a moment and she opened her mouth to make her exit just as Beyoncé started singing in her bag.