Page 13 of Call Me Yours (Lodestar Ranch #4)

CHLOE

Mom

Good news, your brothers will all be home after all. It’s been too long since we were all together.

Chloe

Great, can’t wait to see them. Six?

Mom

Could you come at five? We have company coming. Terry invited his new partner. I could use an extra hand.

Chloe

Sure, no problem. Are you feeling okay?

Mom

Don’t worry about me. It’s a good day. :)

“She’s here!” Ellis, my oldest brother but still younger than me by four years, bellowed over his shoulder before engulfing me in a bear hug. “How’s my favorite sister?”

“I’m your only sister, jackass,” I said, my voice muffled by his flannel shirt as I returned the hug.

“Good thing. I’m not sure you could earn the title fair and square.”

I swatted his shoulder and he laughed, releasing me. Immediately, I was pounced on by the rest of the pack, lifted off the ground, and passed around from one brother to the next while I laughed and hollered.

“Where’s Mom?” I asked when they finally set me back on solid ground.

“In the kitchen,” Cole said, which is about what I expected, so I was already heading in that direction. “Grams is, too,” he added apologetically. “Dad is setting the table.”

The second I walked into the kitchen I knew Mom had stretched the truth. It was not a good day. She was rubbing her hands, a telltale sign that they ached, and a ruddy butterfly bloomed across her nose and cheeks.

“Mom,” I admonished.

She turned, beaming when she saw me. “Hi, honey. Mom, Chloe is here,” she added before pulling me into a gentle hug.

“We need more carrots,” Grams said, eyeballing the pile of vegetables on the cutting board.

Mom gave me a look somewhere between amusement and annoyance. “We have plenty of carrots.”

“What are we making?” I asked, surveying the kitchen.

From the smell of it, I was sure there was a chicken in the oven.

Grams was chopping vegetables—carrots, onions, and small red potatoes—to throw in with it.

Mom, paring knife in hand, was overseeing another pile of potatoes.

I took the knife from her and ushered her to the breakfast table. “Go sit down, Mom.”

She sat with a relieved sigh that made my chest pull tight. “It started as a good day.”

“How is it now?” I asked.

“Manageable.” When I gave her a suspicious look, she smiled. “Really and truly, Chloe. I’m not playing the martyr here, I promise. I know that the best way to have more good days is to take care of myself on the bad days. My joints ache a bit, that’s all.”

I studied at her closely, wanting to verify that for myself.

Since she had been diagnosed with lupus several years ago, I had learned all the symptoms and what to look for.

I didn’t see a rash other than the one on her face.

On good days, Mom could do almost anything.

On bad days, exhaustion and headaches kept her in bed with the lights out.

“Tell her, Grams,” Mom said with exasperated fondness. Grams didn’t tell me anything, but I never expected her to. Apparently, Mom didn’t either, because she barely paused before continuing, “My hands and knees are swollen, which makes cooking hard. That’s all.”

“All right,” I relented. “What are we having?” I asked again.

“Nothing fancy. The chickens are in the oven. I made dinner rolls last night, thankfully. I was starting in on the scalloped potatoes when you got here. Think you can finish up for me?”

Only my mother would describe a full roast chicken dinner for nearly a dozen people as nothing fancy . I shook my head, smiling.

“Of course I can do the potatoes,” I said. I knew how to cook. I didn’t like it, but I could get it done.

I got to work slicing the potatoes paper-thin. Scalloped potatoes was one of my favorite dishes, and I suspected Mom had planned them just for me. It was one of those foods that was too labor intensive for me to ever make for myself—although now, of course, that was exactly what I was doing.

“Tell me about work,” Mom said. “I want to hear everything. How’s work going?”

“It’s great,” I said. “Hard, but rewarding, you know? I’m starting to research options for opening my own telehealth clinic next summer after I’m fully certified.

One of the issues with mental health services in rural communities is that we all know each other.

There’s already a stigma around going to therapy and convincing someone to share their problems and secrets with a person who knows everyone in your life is a hard sell. I?—”

Grams turned on the radio. “You don’t mind if I listen to my program, do you, Angie? It’s nice to have it on in the background while we’re cooking.”

Mom blinked. Her gaze darted briefly to me before faltering. “Sure, Mom.”

The doorbell rang and Grams set down her knife. “I’ll get that.”

Mom’s gaze followed her out, then she turned to me. “Don’t mind her, Chloe. She’ll come around.”

I snorted. Mom had been saying that for eight years now.

Bracing on the table, Mom rose slowly to her feet. “Let’s go greet your father’s guests, all right?”

I nodded, rinsed my hands of at the sink, and dried them on my jeans before following her into the hallway.

Where I stopped dead in my tracks.

Because there, standing in my childhood home, a pie box balanced on each hand, was Steven Fucking McAllister, dressed for dinner.

His short dark hair was neatly combed, his jaw sharp from a fresh shave, and his crisp white button-down shirt was tucked into dark jeans that hugged his thighs.

All of which meant it wasn’t the pies that made my mouth water.

My stomach swooped like a rollercoaster.

It was easy to forget he looked like that when he was texting me silly animal videos at 3 a.m.

His pupils flared as he took me in. He didn’t look quite as surprised to see me as I was to see him.

“The pies look delicious, Steven,” Mom said. “They’re from Sweetie Pies, aren’t they? I haven’t had one of Cat’s masterpieces in ages. Let’s put them in the kitchen.”

Steven nodded, following my mom out of the knot of people. As he passed me, he paused just long enough to murmur, “Please don’t.”

I didn’t know what he meant by that. But I was going to find out.

And then I was going to do it even harder.

Even serial killers had mothers, so I shouldn’t have been so surprised that Steven had a sister.

But Amy was so sweet and had an air of innocent na?veté about her.

She was tall and gangly, with chin-length dark hair and big brown eyes that always looked a little bit surprised, and she was clearly several years younger than Steven.

I vaguely remembered his family was all back in the Midwest somewhere, and maybe he had mentioned a sister at one point, but she looked fresh out of high school. Did she live with him?

I had questions. I didn’t like having questions about Steven. There was no reason for me to be curious about him.

I excused myself from the crowded room to go finish getting dinner together. Amy volunteered to help and followed me into the kitchen.

“There’s not much left to do, really,” I said. The chickens had just been pulled from the oven. I opened the door to check on the scalloped potatoes and found them lightly browned but not crisp enough. Five more minutes under the broiler.

I glanced at Amy over my shoulder and found her eyeballing me in the most unnerving way. “So, um, Steven says you’re from the Midwest?” I prodded.

“Oklahoma.” Her head tilted. “Sorry if you weren’t planning to cook for two extra people.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, opening a cabinet and pulling glasses down.

“You looked surprised to see us,” she said.

“Oh…not exactly. My dad said his new guy—that’s all he ever called him, the new guy”—I did air quotes around the phrase—“and his sister were coming. I just didn’t know the new guy was Steven.

” I inclined my head toward the ice maker on the refrigerator door.

“If you do the ice and water, I’ll put them on the table. ”

Amy nodded, reached for the first glass, and shoved it under the ice maker. “So, if you don’t know Steven through your dad, how did you meet? Because the way you looked at him, it was clearly not the first time you two had clapped eyes on each other.”

I paused. Maybe she knew about James, but maybe not.

Or if she did, she’d probably heard a different version than the story I’d tell.

“We met at Lodestar Ranch. One of my friends is a trainer there. James.” I watched her closely for any signs of recognition, but she just nodded.

“And Aspen Springs is a small town, so of course we’ve run into each other now and again.

Oh!” I slapped my palm on the counter. “That night his battery died in the thunderstorm? I gave him a jump and helped rescue Junior. Did he tell you about that?”

“Junior?” She scrunched her nose. “Do you mean Stevie?”

“Right. Stevie Nicks. The pig.”

Amy chortled with delight. “That was you? Oh, my god. I kind of thought he made most of it up. Not the part about Stevie because she’s obviously real, but all the stuff about a woman coming to his aid and crawling through the mud.

” She gave me a quizzical look, her head tilting.

“It’s funny, he didn’t mention that he actually knew you. ”

My forehead puckered. I couldn’t think of a good reason why he would leave that out. I shrugged. “Maybe he thought it made for a funnier story if I was a stranger?”

“Maybe.” But she looked like she had doubts.

So did I. Then she shrugged and reached for another glass.

“Anyway, I was surprised when Steven first told me he was enrolling in a farrier program, but now I get it. It makes sense. Bronc riding on the rodeo circuit and then training show horses…I don’t know.

He was good at it, but his heart wasn’t really in competition.

That’s our dad’s thing. He didn’t care what we did as long as we were the best at it.

That was all that mattered. But Steven…he wanted to be outside, and he wanted to be with horses.

That was what mattered to him. Honestly, he’s too sweet for competition. ”

I nearly fell over. “Too… sweet ? Steven is too sweet?”

Amy handed me the glass with a laugh. “I mean, yes, he’s also grumpy and can be kind of a jerk sometimes. But I wouldn’t be here going to college without him. My scholarship doesn’t cover room and board or books. He’s giving me a place to stay and covering the books I need. He saved me.”

That startled me. He sounded like a great big brother, but he saved her? From what? Student loans? That seemed a little dramatic. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I—” Her voice faltered, and she glanced over her shoulder nervously, like she expected to find someone lurking. “I needed a change, that’s all, and he made it happen. I was miserable in Oklahoma, and you know Steven. He can’t stand to see any living creature suffer, animal or human.”

“Hm,” I murmured, hoping she might say more, but Amy was clearly regretting that she had said anything.

We gathered in the living room for iced tea while Dad carved the roast chickens, with Steven and Amy sitting next to each other on the sofa across from me.

All the wonderful things Amy had said about him kept bumping up against the awful things I knew about him.

And muddying the image further were the 3 a.m. text messages.

You know Steven , she’d said. And I thought I had.

But I really didn’t know Steven McAlister at all.