Page 46 of If I Didn’t Have You

Deke walked back in, following his nose around the table, pausing as he eyed the Cornish Hens at the far side. “No way,” he murmured.

“Oh, I just love making Cornish Hens,” I gushed. “Now, the secret is that I use Rosemary and lemon, and then I—” I zipped my lips, eyeing him warily.

“What? What is it?” he asked eagerly.

“No, I’m sorry, but I can’t give it away. You’ll have to try them and see if you can pick out what I did to them.”

“And I get a whole one for myself?”

There were only four of them, but if he wanted the whole thing, I wouldn’t stop him. Besides, they were small, and there was plenty of other meat.

“Only for you, but you have to promise to give me your honest opinion.”

Chuckling, he snuck past me and grabbed the whole hen, sliding it onto his plate. The skin was golden and crispy, and with my secret ingredient, there was no way he’d kick us out of the gym. I had this in the bag.

And all it took was a Cornish Hen.

14

BEN

I sat in the corner of the room, glowering at the man who was flirting with my wife. Ever since he walked through the door and smelled my food, he was batting his eyes at her like a damn woman. It wouldn’t surprise me if the man asked her to run away with him.

“Something on your mind, Pop?” Michael asked, taking a seat beside me. “Why are you sitting over here in the dark?”

I nodded my head in the direction of my wayward wife and the man she was currently laughing with. “Look at her, flirting with him for a little gym time.”

“Yeah,” he chuckled. “Well, that’s what Ma does.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I snapped, not liking what he was suggesting.

“Oh, come on. It’s not like you don’t know it. Hell, anytime you need something, you invite whoever it is over and have Ma whip up something tasty for them. She flirts, and you get what you want.”

“I do not!”

“Right, so that time you needed a discount on new saddles, you didn’t invite the salesman over for a friendly dinner? Or how about when you had Larry from the lumberyard over to give you an estimate for the new barn, and then Ma just happened to walk out with a ham on a platter as she announced dinner was ready?”

“That was different,” I muttered. “And she wasn’t flirting with them.”

“Think what you want,” he chuckled. “Besides, this is for her. You should be glad that for once, she’s getting something out of all the cooking she’s doing.”

Everyone around me had been telling me how I should be grateful for this and that, how I should be doing more for her. And maybe they were right, but dammit, I was having a really hard time thinking about her needs after the last five years. We’d lost so much, and through it all, everyone pushed me to just move on, to get over the fact that I’d ruined my family’s legacy.

But it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t shove aside all the hurt and anger that accompanied the visual when I walked out my door each morning. There were no cattle, only a few horses left, and the ranch hands had all moved on to more productive work. I was reminded every time I walked around the property, every time some tourist showed up for their “experience in the west”.

This was no longer my home. It was an amusement park.

“It’s not the end of the world, Pop.”

I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I wasn’t even listening to him. Not when my wife was over there flirting instead of paying any attention to her husband.

“What’s not?”

“The ranch.”

I bristled at his flippant tone. “You didn’t lose it.”

“I lost something, too. I was in the military⁠—”