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“See? He loves you as more than a friend if you were talking like that.”
“Maybe,” Tam said, refusing to hope her mother was right. She picked up her sandwich and took a bite, instantly getting transported back to when she was eight years old. Her mom used to make her come in from riding her bike or swimming in the watering holes around Tennessee for lunch, and she’d served sandwiches five days a week.
Sometimes bologna, sometimes peanut butter and peach jam, sometimes cheese and mayo. She smiled at the pure memory, the happiness she’d experienced as a child at the forefront of her mind. “Thank you, Momma.”
“You bet, Tam.” She hugged her arm. “I love having you here, but Tam, you’re too strong and too capable to hang around the porch with two old people.” She smiled, and Tam giggled before taking another bite of her sandwich.
“I’ll just say this, and then I’ll be done badgering you about Blaine.” She paused, though, and Tam finally gestured for her to go on. “You’ll always belong here. We love seeing you. You know what you want, and you just have to be brave enough to go get it. If that’s Blaine, that’s Blaine. If it’s to come spend a morning in a rocking chair with your parents, that’s fine too.”
Tam didn’t want to do that, and both of them knew it.
“You started your own business with a loan of five thousand dollars to buy rawhide,” Momma said as she got to her feet. “You worked in a garage without air conditioning until you could afford shop space. You traveled if you needed to. You learned to carve. You bought the tools with credit and paid them off.”
She pulled a carton of cream out of the fridge. “If you want that man, you can have him.” She set the cream next to the brownies, which were still far too hot to eat. Momma dished them up anyway and poured cold cream over them.
“You just have to ask yourself one question: What do you really want?”
21
“Yes, a week,” Blaine said, aware of his acidic tone. He honestly did not care about going back to Bluegrass Ranch. He had plenty of money, and someone else could step up and get the fields finished, monitor the horses for a few days, and worry about everyone in the family.
Blaine was done with all of it.
“Blaine,” Cayden said, and he also wished he wasn’t on speaker with the three brothers older than him. Spur had called, but they’d staged an intervention of sorts, and Blaine was glad he hadn’t told any of them where he’d gone.
He felt stuck in the middle of two extremely hard places, the same as he’d been his whole life. As the fourth son, he was constantly between the older brothers and the younger ones.
Right now, he was stuck between Kentucky and Georgia, in a tiny Tennessee town he’d forgotten the name of. He’d driven all night, found somewhere to sleep, done that, and then answered Spur’s texts with one about how he wasn’t coming back to the ranch for a while.
Spur’s first words out of his mouth when Blaine had answered the phone were, “Define a while, Blaine.”
“What?” Blaine asked.
“What’s goin’ on now?” Trey asked. “You left for a date last night, and you didn’t come home.”
“Didn’t have a date,” Blaine said, the sight of Tam’s angry face right there in his memory.I hate you, Blaine Chappell.
Get out.
Don’t call me.
We’re done.
I hate you, Blaine Chappell.
She’d said that to him before, but in a teasing, flirtatious voice. The one she’d used last night hadn’t held any of that. Not a single touch.
He deserved what she’d said to him. He shouldn’t have reacted to Hayes being in her shop the way he had. He shouldn’t have said he and Tam weren’t dating.
“I don’t like you out there alone,” Spur said.
“I’m fine,” Blaine said.
“What if your week becomes more?” Cayden asked.
“It won’t,” Blaine said, but he wouldn’t promise any such thing if they pressured him to.
“Go on,” Spur said. “I want to talk to him alone.” Scuffling came through the line, and then Spur’s voice didn’t echo quite so much when he asked, “Blaine, do you remember what you told me to do when I was having trouble with Olli?”
