Dillon set a six-pack of beer on the counter, leaned a hip against it, and considered Hank with the unhurried attention he generally saved for animas that were contemplating biting him.“You really said yes?”
“I was outnumbered.”
Dillon laughed.“You were outnumbered by Tessa, alone.But there’s no shame in it.She outnumbers me all the time.It’s a little like being outnumbered by weather.”
Reno pulled three cans of beer loose and passed them out, saying, “So, Sully wants all of us to stand up with him at his wedding.Eight groomsmen.We’re going to look like a rodeo queen’s court.”
Hank winced and Dillon shrugged, commenting, “S’pose he needs all of us because Jenna wants to have all her WoWS friends stand up with her.”
“There are seven women in the WoWS besides Jenna,” Hank pointed out.“So one of us gets to sit out.I’m calling dibs on being that guy.”
“Why do you get to duck out of dressing up in an uncomfortable monkey suit and acting like a glorified waiter all day?”Dillon demanded.
“The rest of you guys are all married or about to be.You all need the practice standing in front of a church and not ducking because you think God’s going to strike you with lightning for being there.Me?I’m a confirmed bachelor,” Hank declared.“I’m the obvious choice to sit out.The rest of you will get paired with your fiancées to walk them down the aisle.”
Neither Reno nor Dillon had a smart-aleck comeback for that, which startled him.He glanced up at his brothers and caught the worried glance the two of them exchanged.
“I’m fine,” he declared.“Don’t the two of you go getting any ideas about setting me up with anybody.I’ve got Madison to take care of now, and my practice keeps me plenty busy.I don’t have the time or inclination to start dating again.”
That was the plain truth.
That, and he was forty-one.He’d spent the past four years telling himself he had enough in life and didn’t need any more.Now that he’d gotten Madi back, he really did have everything and everyone he needed.
“You’re doing the jaw thing,” Reno said with a smirk.
“I’m not doing any jaw thing.”
“Dillon.Do you see the jaw thing?”
“Yup.Definite jaw thing,” Dillon confirmed.
“There is no jaw thing,” Hank exclaimed.
“Yes, there is.It’s the Steele-men-do-not-feel-feelings jaw thing.”Reno settled into a kitchen chair, clearly relishing getting to needle his older brother for once, instead of the other way around.
Reno continued, “Youinventedit.Hank.You taught it to the two of us.And here you are, clenching away over a bridal magazine like it insulted your mother.”
“I had a quiet house when I woke up this morning,” Hank said woefully.He took a pull of his beer and set it down.“I liked my quiet house.”
“No, you didn’t,” Dillon replied.It was said so gently, and so precisely, that it shut all three of them up for a second.
Then, because they were Steeles and silence with feelings loose in it constituted an emergency requiring immediate response, Reno clapped his hands and demanded to know what was for supper.
Hank told him tartly he wasn’t running a diner, and Reno said that was a genuine shame because the diner was closed now and he liked to support local businesses.
The dangerous moment slid past, and the three brothers set to work making hamburgers and firing up the cheap charcoal grill on the back patio.
Saturday came in gray and soft, a low sky resting on the mountains across the lake and the smell of rain that hadn’t yet made up its mind to fall.Sunny had asked to walk through his house properly to see what she was working with.Hank had said sure.
He walked the downstairs before she came and headed for the dining room.He had to put his shoulder into pushing open the pair of tall pocket doors that he almost never opened.He stood in front of the water stain that started narrow up by the ceiling and widened as it ran down the wall until it did, in fact, look just like Idaho.
There were going to be strangers in his house.Lights and ladders and cameras.And between now and then there would be workmen and noise and dust, and most of all, chaos.All his hard-won quiet would be yanked up like floorboards and paraded on the pages of a magazine.
Alarm skittered down his spine.He knew the feeling.It came from the same place most alarms in him did: the one with Lorraine lurking in it.
He hadn’t watched her closely enough.He’d known she was drinking a lot.He should have anticipated that, when she didn’t find happiness at the bottom of a bottle, she would escalate her substance abuse.
Sheets from his prescription pad had gone missing now and then, one at a time, infrequently enough that he told himself he’d miscounted.
