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Chapter Four
Porter murmured low under his breath to comfort the cow as Hudson worked on her bleeding side where the bear had clawed at her.
The lights in the barn glowed warmly over the brothers. Cole watched carefully, an eager pupil wanting to learn everything that their oldest brother did. Hudson had his own land and cattle to tend, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t take some responsibility for the family. That was how Hudson was—the complete opposite of West.
Hudson had numbed the affected area and was engrossed in the difficult process of stitching up the cow’s side. “A black bear?” he asked. “Nina really took on a black bear? I’m surprised this didn’t end up worse for our girl.”
“Nobody was going to take her little Nino away from her,” Porter said. He glanced over at the calf, still lingering nearby. Nina was calmer when her baby was in eyesight. “Mommas got to momma.”
“Lucky for Nino.” Hudson finished up the stitch with a careful knot. “Lucky for me. Just finished in time to make it home for dinner.” He glanced up at Porter and broke into a grin. “Mimi has chocolate cake waiting for me.”
Porter and Cole groaned at how twitterpated their older brother had become. Mimi was their beautiful redheaded neighbor growing up… and she just happened to be sisters with the man that West had divorced. Talk about Romeo and Juliet. Hudson and Mimi had a lot of challenges to overcome, but now the two were newlyweds. It was difficult prying the man loose to do anything besides emergencies.
“You can’t wait to get home to the chocolate cake, huh?” Porter teased. “Nothing else?”
Hudson didn’t even fight it. He raised his hands. “I’m not going to lie—Mimi makes everything taste sweeter.”
Something about his cheerful tone turned Porter wistful. He definitely wanted the happy marriage that Hudson had. He ran his mind through the possibilities of women in his acquaintance. There was Kylee. He almost laughed aloud at the joke. Besides how absolutely wrong she was for him, she was so into his twin Nash that it wasn’t funny.
Barbie was single… for a reason. She was stunningly beautiful and super aggressive—uncomfortably so. There was no holding a conversation with her, even talking about the weather turned “sexy” when she was around. Cecilia and Maggie May were a little much, especially when they joined forces. They reminded him of raptors the way they surrounded their prey. Clever girls. Scary ones. Audrey Capulet was an ex-cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers with peppy giggles and perfect posture, and she didn’t have one sensible thought going through that shiny blonde head of hers.
Ugh. Porter might as well be setting his sights on the gossipy “aunts” of the town for how ridiculous it would be to get together with any of these women. Harvest Ranch was seriously lacking in people that he could possibly date, and Rielle, the only girl in town that he’d ever been interested in, was long married. The problem was that he grew up with all these people, and he knew them far too well.
That had never stopped his twin.
Porter just wasn’t his twin.
Hudson threw the twine into his pack, peering up at Porter. “How are you and Cole holding up here at the ranch with just the two of you?”
“We’re managing,” Porter said tightly. He didn’t want to talk about how Nash had disappointed him, but the brothers all guessed how he was taking it anyway. They’d been inseparable since birth. “Some predator keeps getting into the chickens.”
“I meant socially,” Hudson said. Porter squirmed with discomfort. Since their momma’s sickness, they’d had a harder time of it, and Hudson was more sensitive to their plight than any of their brothers. “Are you getting out?”
“I still have Funches around so…”
Hudson snorted out a laugh. Never in a million years would anyone have imagined that Porter would connect with the grumpiest old man in the territory, but… the man was a hermit that did what he wanted with his life. He’d served in every war that he’d been alive for—some that he wasn’t old enough to fight for, even. He was a prepper and a crackshot, and he loved NASCAR. What wasn’t to love about that?
“Are you meeting any girls?” Hudson asked. Porter groaned as he realized his brother was trying to pull an intervention. “Go to those dances in Charleston, and…” Hudson startled with a muffled shout and dropped his bag flat against the hay. “What is that?”
Turning, Porter saw that Hudson had caught sight of the old Halloween skull that he’d been leaving around the barn, so that he could scare Cole. The ghoulish skull used to be attached to a bride skeleton, and clinging to the scraggly brown hair was a beaten up veil. Their old man had forced Nash to get rid of a few boxes of junk before he’d left for Nashville, and Cole had shown so much distaste in keeping the creepy thing when Nash had offered to leave it behind that Porter immediately claimed it as his own.
It had come in handy more times than he could count.
“What?” Cole asked. “What is it?” Swinging around, he let out a startled cry that echoed Hudson’s in its horror. He shot an angry glare Porter’s way.
Porter grinned. Though Cole was the youngest brother, he was muscular, broad shouldered, and built like a boxer, so to see him screaming like a child was immensely satisfying. So what if Porter ended up like Old Man Funches and became a bachelor for life? At least he could still experience the simple pleasures of life.
Hudson shook his head at Porter. “Never mind. Maybe you should keep away from polite company for a while.”
The Halloween skull had gotten Hudson off his back. Not bad for a night’s work. “I’m just building up your fight or flight reflexes,” Porter said.
Cole herded the calf back to its mother when it came over to investigate the noise. “Don’t think I won’t get you back, Porter. Let’s see… what scares you… bees, delivering baskets of momma’s fruit, Kylee? I think I can manage to blend all those things into one.”
Porter grimaced. Maybe he should pull back on the pranks. That sounded awful.
Chuckling, Hudson headed outside. “Call me if you need my help, Cole. I’m in.” His eyes swerved to Porter. “Jerk. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a beautiful woman to kiss at home. You should try it sometime.”
The brothers groaned again. Cole went after the skull and threw it across the barn while Porter followed Hudson out to his pickup. The night had a cool breeze. Little sparks of light danced in the sky—there weren’t too many fireflies this time of year. The last of them were disappearing after mating season.
