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“Yes, ma’am,” he said dutifully. “I’ve got an alarm set.”

She nodded and kept going. Kaitlyn looked at him curiously. He shrugged and said wryly, “Friday’s my day to start the coffee.”

It only took her a split second. “And if you’re deep into something you sometimes forget?”

“Exactly.”

He pulled his jacket off once they were inside and he’d closed the door. Kaitlyn began to do the same with hers, a classic denim, lined with a blue plaid flannel. It looked well worn, and even mended in a spot or two. And he found himself wondering just how much that rehab was costing her.

“That’s a really nice belt Lucas is wearing,” she said. “A Rafferty original, I’m guessing?”

He took her jacket and hung them both up on the rack inside the door. “Yeah.”

“Not every kid his age has something worth that much to wear.” He grimaced. Personally he thought what Yippee Ki Yay charged for the things almost obscene, but the fact that they sold them as fast as he finished them indicated otherwise. “The image on the front beside the horse is this house, isn’t it?” she asked. He nodded. “And I noticed his name on the back. Brock.”

“Yeah.”

“And two smaller names on either side of the bigger last name.”

Did the woman miss nothing? “His parents’ names.” She just looked at him, and something in her gaze made him add, “They were good people. They loved him, and he knew it.”

“And he loved them.” She said it with certainty.

“Yes. And still does.”

“Birthday present?”

“Yes. Everybody else in the family has one, so it seemed right.”

She was quiet for a moment, and he thought she blinked rather rapidly a couple of times. “I was right,” she said softly. “He landed in clover.”

He watched her walk over and ask his mother if she could help and wondered just how bad her own foster experience had been. And on some other, deeper level, he was aware he was having to work to focus on that rather than the way she moved, the long-legged grace and the sweet curve of her backside.

“Go back to that cave of Cody’s, will you?” his mother called out. “Let him know dinner will be ready in an hour. As long as he’s here he might as well eat, too.”

“Even Cody isn’t crazy enough to say no if you’re doing the fixing,” Ry said to his mother with a grin, and turned to do as she’d asked.

Kaitlyn was already chatting easily with his mother and he was headed back to Cody’s lair when he heard the sound of a car approaching. A quick glance told him it was the expensive rental, with Jillian at the wheel. He kept going.

Cody was, as usual, intent on the array of three monitors before him. Ry noticed one of them was showing what had to be a drone feed, because it was moving. The north boundary, he thought, then quickly amended the thought. The north boundary and Britt Roth, who was rocketing along the trail that ran parallel to the fence, aboard a powerful sorrel that gleamed red in the winter sun. Remembering the last blow-up between the two, he considered asking his brother if he really wanted to risk her fury again if she saw or heard that drone but decided not to prod that particular rattlesnake nest.

“Mom says dinner in an hour. And she’s cooking, so you’ll want to be there.”

“What?” Cody said, almost absently, his gaze still fixed on the galloping horse and the woman astride it, riding as if born to it. As she had been.

Amused, Ry asked, “Is that what did I say, or what is she cooking?”

It still took a moment for him to disengage; his little brother had a tremendous ability to focus. Probably came with the brain. But finally he looked up at him.

“Mom says dinner in an hour,” he repeated.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“The maybe-not-so-intrepid reporter is back,” he added. “She seemed pretty interested. And she’s almost as pretty as you.”

His brother flipped him a rude gesture.

Ry contemplated leaving Jillian to his mother for a bit. Maggie Rafferty had quite the knack for cutting people down to size, and if she felt someone had a seriously too high opinion of themselves, she didn’t hesitate to do it. That she did it in the kindest and yet most unarguable way—and that she held herself to the same standard—was what had earned her the respect of most of Last Stand. It was a strange feeling, being the child of a town legend. And probably why they got along so well with the Highwaters, who were in the same position.