Looking for Trouble (11 page)

“I know you can.” But she rinsed one off and stuffed it with lemon and garlic all the same. Once she had it in the oven, she started sweeping the kitchen, ashamed to see the dust bunnies chasing across the floor ahead of her broom.

“You gonna stay for dinner?”

She glanced down the hall where her brother had disappeared. “No. I don’t think so.”

“It’s probably best. He’s not going to be pleasant.” As if on cue, the muted sound of loud music started up from the other side of the house. He was twenty-six years old and still handling stress like a teenager.

“God,” she muttered and got back to sweeping. When that was done, she bundled the tablecloth up and took it outside to shake out the crumbs.

“All right now,” her dad said when she got back in. “We’re fine. You don’t need to take care of everything.”

She ignored him and poured a cup of coffee, fixing it up with sugar and no cream just the way he liked. “Sit down and relax, Dad.”

“I can’t. I’ve got to drive over to the feed store.”

She reversed course and took the cup of coffee to the counter instead of the table and poured the contents into a travel mug. It was a thirty-five minute drive. She didn’t want him nodding off, and after that confrontation, he definitely looked tired.

“Dad,” she started, but then she didn’t know what she should say. She wanted to apologize again, for all of this, but none of it was her fault. Except the letter in her dresser. That was her fault. Her mother’s ashes were ready to be picked up, they’d been ready for six weeks, and for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to go get them. It felt shameful and wrong, and she didn’t want to tell him.

“I’m fine, Sophie,” he said, squeezing her shoulder. “We’ll all be fine.”

Yes. They would. He’d always promised her that, and he’d always been right. They’d gotten through those first few days and weeks and months. And they’d gotten through school-yard cruelty and every new person whose eyes went a little wide when they realized who you were. They’d get through this, too. This was nothing.

But as soon as she was back in her car, Sophie was crying again. She had no idea why. This lawsuit was stupid and untimely and just plain wrong, but it wasn’t the end of the world. So why did she have to pull her car over as soon as she was out of sight of the house?

She dug blindly through her purse for Kleenex, but as soon as she wiped her eyes tears spilled out again. She finally gave up and laid her forehead on her steering wheel to cry.

It couldn’t be that she was sexually involved with one of the Bishops. She wasn’t that shallow, or at least she didn’t think she was. This pain was deeper than that. It
hurt.
Her stomach ached with it. And she felt...terrified. Shaky.

That had nothing to do with Alex. How could it?

She just wanted this over. All of it. She wanted to have a normal family and a normal past.

And that was it, wasn’t it? She’d thought it was finally over. The Bishops were having their dedication and then people would finally forget.

The welcome truth was that the story wasn’t that interesting anymore. For so many years, the fates of Dorothy Heyer and Wyatt Bishop had been a mystery. Rumors had flown, every one of them pushed and plumped up by Rose. Where the pair had gone, what had happened, whether they were still together or ever had been, who had spotted someone fitting their descriptions.

No one had known what had happened, so
anything
could have happened. Any delicious, scandalous, awful thing.

But in the end...it had been almost boring. They’d been in Wyatt Bishop’s truck together, hauling a camper up an ancient road to a campsite on Bishop land, and the dirt had given way. All those years their bodies had been lost in a narrow canyon near an abandoned town, and that was the end of it.

The story was finally done. Everyone could move on.

But not anymore. Thanks to her immature, thoughtless, aimless little brother, the story was delicious again. Scandal tinged with bad behavior. This was a small town. Everyone knew the players. There were sides and they would be taken. Rose Bishop might not be sympathetic, but she was good at propaganda. People didn’t like Rose, but they sure loved her stories.

Sophie took a deep breath and then let the sobs fall from her throat. She was so sick of dealing with what her mother had done when Sophie was only five years old. She was so damn sick of that being her life. Maybe she should dye her hair. Maybe she could change her name. Alex’s brother had done that. Shane had gotten so sick of being Shane Bishop that he’d changed his name to his mother’s maiden name. Of course, that itself had been a scandal. There was no way to get away from it. Except to leave.

Sophie found another tissue and mopped up again. She had to stop crying; the tissue packet was empty.

Anyway, there was no point crying. She couldn’t leave. Her dad needed her, and as tough as it was to be Dorothy Heyer’s child, it was a blessing to be Greg Heyer’s daughter. He hadn’t turned his back on her all those years ago. She wouldn’t turn her back on him now.

And the truth was they’d all be fine. Just like her dad always promised.

“It’ll be all right,” she whispered to herself. “It will go away.” It would. Eventually. She just had to keep her chin up and pretend it didn’t matter and keep her thoughts to herself.

She nodded and wiped one last stray tear away. The long drive back to town was a good thing today. She needed time for her swollen eyes and stuffed nose to recover. If she pulled up and found Rose Bishop waiting on her doorstep, Sophie didn’t want to look like she was falling apart. If that woman sensed weakness, she’d go for Sophie’s soft spots.

Unfortunately all of Sophie’s spots were soft today, but she couldn’t let people see that. She never could.

CHAPTER NINE

“W
HAT THE HELL
do I care?” Alex snapped, irritated that he even had to think about this.

“Because a lawsuit might affect the inheritance,” Shane countered calmly.

“You got the inheritance, brother.”

Shane winced and ran a hand through his hair. Sawdust filtered out and drifted past the sunlight that shone behind him.

Alex had driven out to see Shane’s new place. It wasn’t much, just a trailer set up on the land he’d inherited from their grandfather, but Shane was steadily making it into his. He was almost done with a small stable and had graded a spot for a house he planned to build next summer. He’d always been good with his hands. Alex wasn’t surprised that he’d become a carpenter.

“I want to do something about that,” Shane finally said. “This land belongs to you as much as it does to me. Which is to say not much at all.” He winked. “But old man Bishop left it to me because Dad was his only kid. He should have split it between you and me.”

“You’re the oldest and I wasn’t around.”

“It doesn’t matter. You should have half.”

Alex shook his head at his brother’s sentimentality. “And what would I do with land in a place I come visit once every twenty years? It’s yours, Shane.” He turned in a small circle, taking in the dried grass and sagebrush and the high slopes of the Tetons in the distance. “You belong here. You always have.”

“Then I’ll sell some off and send you the money.”

“You might need that money to fight this lawsuit.”

Shane shook his head and set down the two-by-four he’d been sizing. “If there’s any settlement, it’ll likely come out of the trust or be paid by insurance.”

“You can’t be sure of that. How much is he asking for?”

“A million dollars.”

Alex sucked in a breath. “Wow.”

Shane shrugged. “It’s a lawsuit related to a car accident. My lawyer says if it goes any further, the insurance company will probably settle for a smaller amount. There’s not a lot of evidence to prove anything either way.”

“Yeah.” Alex folded his arms and stared out at the mountains. The sight was beautiful, but it reminded him of too much. “Why’s he doing it?”

“I don’t know. Money hungry, I guess. He hasn’t made much of himself.”

“Do you know him?”

“Not really.”

Alex glanced at Shane. “His sister seems nice.”

“Yeah, they’re not a lot alike as far as I can tell. She’s always been a hard worker. Quiet type. Polite.”

“Right,” Alex muttered, then cleared his throat against a memory of her very politely saying
please, please.
“Anyway, you seem calm about it.” Shane had been hot-tempered in his youth, quiet until you pissed him off.

“I let it all go last year.”

“What do you mean? The money?”

“The money,” Shane murmured, his eyes turning toward the jagged Tetons. “Yeah. But not really the money. When Gideon Bishop left me this little plot of land and gave everything else to that damn ghost town... Fuck, it was just another slap in the face. You remember how cold he was after Dad disappeared?”

“Well, he was right about Mom being unstable,” Alex said.

“He was. But that should’ve been more reason to reach out to us. To help.”

Alex grunted in agreement. One day they’d been a stable, nuclear family. Mom and dad and two rowdy boys. The next day they’d been free-falling. A dad who’d run off, a mom who could barely take care of herself, and grandparents who considered her nothing more than trash with two brats to support.

“When our grandfather died and thumbed his nose at us in the will... Shit. I thought I’d moved past a lot of it, but it came rushing back, and all my anger came down to that damn will. I wanted to make him pay. Maybe because I couldn’t make Dad pay. Or Mom. Or this whole fucking town. I don’t know.”

Now instead of watching the mountains, Alex watched his brother. They’d been close in their early years, and less close as teenagers, but as adults? As an adult, Shane was a complete stranger to him. His face looked different, of course, harder and older and a little sadder. But it wasn’t just that. Alex didn’t know anything about who he’d loved and lost and what his struggles had been.

“So you sued them,” he pressed.

“Yes. I didn’t really care about the money, it was just the idea that that asshole would rather give it all to a tourist trap than leave it to you and me. I guess he felt closer to ancestors who’d been dead for a hundred years than he did to us.”

That sounded about right. His grandfather had been a hard, intimidating man. He’d considered his own son a weak failure for marrying the woman he did and then getting mixed up with someone even worse. No doubt he thought Shane and Alex would end up just like their father. Or worse, turn out like their mom.

“But I figured it out,” Shane finally said. “I got to know Merry, and suddenly all that anger felt as wrong as it was.”

“That’s good,” Alex said, though he didn’t understand it. He’d loved a woman, too, but he’d never felt any better about his family.

“I hope you can accept that I gave up the fight for the money.”

Alex shot him a confused look.

“The money that went to the historical trust. If I’d kept fighting the will and won the lawsuit, part of it would’ve gone to you.”

Alex shook his head. “I don’t want that old man’s money. I don’t want any of this.”

“Still,” Shane murmured, his eyes roaming over the landscape. “It’s a good place.”

“It is.” He’d meant what he’d said. His brother belonged here. Alex couldn’t begrudge him that, even if he did feel a twinge of longing. Not for the place, but for the feeling of being home. He’d never had that anywhere. It was something missing in him, and it always would be.

Even in his earliest childhood, when things had been good, he’d had little in common with his dad. Ranching and handyman work hadn’t held Alex’s attention at all.

Shane cleared his throat and shifted, warning Alex that things were about to get awkward. “I hope it doesn’t bother you that Merry is the curator for Providence.”

Alex raised his eyebrows in question.

“I don’t want you thinking I dropped the lawsuit just to support her work.”

Alex finally realized what he was saying. Their grandfather’s money had gone to the Providence Historical Trust, and Merry had her job thanks to that. Alex kept his mouth shut for a few heartbeats just to make his brother squirm, but then he finally grinned. “Brother, if you’d pay millions of dollars to win her over, then I’d say that must be some awful sweet loving, and congratulations.”

“Ha!” Shane slapped him on the back.

“Are you blushing?” Alex asked.

“Fuck you,” Shane shot back, but he was definitely blushing. Not to mention grinning like a fool. “Speak of the devil,” he said.

Alex turned to see a car driving up the long road. The brunette behind the wheel waved, and they both waved back. He’d only met Merry briefly at their mom’s house yesterday, but her enthusiasm for life was contagious.

As soon as she’d skidded to a stop on the gravel drive, Merry jumped from her car and held up a bag. “I brought Chinese food!”

“Wow,” Alex murmured. “She is pretty awesome.”

“I know.” Shane stepped forward to take the bag and give her a kiss.

“You’ll stay for dinner, right?” she asked Alex, her eyes wide with encouragement.

He hadn’t planned on it. He’d planned to talk to his brother and make a quick escape, just as he had in every interaction with his family since he’d returned. But he couldn’t say no to Merry’s hope. “How can I resist?” he asked, gesturing toward the picture on her bright pink T-shirt. “I love a girl who knows her
Dr. Who
references.”

“You know
Dr. Who?
”

“I spend a lot of time in hotel rooms streaming old TV shows.”

Merry squealed and jumped forward to give him a big hug. “You’re awesome.”

“You’re easy.”

She gave him a little shove and headed up the stairs of the trailer while Shane held the door open for her. “Uh-oh. Shane’s been telling tales.”

Alex followed her laughter up the stairs to Shane’s temporary home. He was surprised to see that the place actually looked livable. The rust eating up the siding on the outside hadn’t promised much, but the small living room was softened by a blue shag rug and a black leather couch piled high with gray and blue pillows. Merry had obviously helped him decorate. Alex might not know his brother well anymore, but he was damn sure Shane hadn’t picked out the hip-looking lamp with the blue streaks in the glass.

Merry grabbed plates and napkins and set them on the coffee table along with a few beers. The Chinese food was surprisingly good. Alex had been spoiled by time spent in California and this was, after all, Wyoming, but even chefs liked to ski. Good food had made it to Jackson along with tourism money.

“You look funny,” Merry suddenly said.

Alex looked up from his kung pao in surprise. “What?”

“You look like some kind of biker felon with your tattoos and your shaved head, but you use chopsticks like a pro.”

“You’ve obviously never met any Chinese felons. Scary motherfuckers.”

Merry burst into laughter and Shane looked at her with a smile of delight. Like just her happiness was enough to make his day. Jesus. Alex looked away, letting them have that moment to themselves.

“Have you been to China, Alex?” Merry asked.

“No, they’ve got damn good engineers there. No need to import me.”

“So...” She glanced at Shane before continuing. “Where have you been?”

He thought about Alaska and all the stuff he’d told Sophie. For some reason, he didn’t want to share that.

Shane leaned back into the couch with his beer. “Yeah, where’d you disappear to, brother?”

Alex grabbed his own beer and settled into the chair. “I went to Colorado first, meaning to go to Colorado State, but I couldn’t afford the tuition.”

Shane looked shocked. “You got in? You never told me.”

“We weren’t talking much by high school. Anyway, I knew I couldn’t afford it, so I moved out there to work for a year. They held my spot and I went on in-state tuition for two years. Then I transferred to the School of Mines.”

“Wow.” Shane blinked a few times. “That’s impressive.”

Alex shrugged. “I did well there. I really liked my hydrology professor, so that’s what I went with. He was a real mentor to me. Took an interest. He died last year.”

Shane nodded, and Alex meant to keep talking, but for a moment he couldn’t. Oz Thompson had been an amazing engineer with forty years of fieldwork under his belt, and for some reason, he’d singled Alex out. Maybe because Oz had been tattooed and scary-looking, too. For whatever reason, they’d clicked. He’d looked out for Alex, pushing him when he needed pushing. But now he was dead.

Maybe that was how Alex had ended up back here, looking for...something.

Alex cleared his throat. “Anyway, I worked with some natural gas companies while I was going for my master’s, and now I’m a contractor. It keeps me from getting stuck in one place too long.”

“Where have you worked?” Merry asked.

“Alaska, Canada, all over the continental U.S. A little bit in South America. The Netherlands.”

“Whoa! The Netherlands! That’s so cool.”

“It was pretty damn cool.”

They all settled in to talk about Texas, where Alex had worked and Merry had grown up. By the time he realized it was full dark outside, Alex had spent two hours catching up with his brother. It had been surprisingly good. Shane hadn’t brought up their mother once, and when she’d called, Shane had let it go to voice mail.

Maybe Shane had been telling the truth. Maybe he really had distanced himself. Shane hadn’t been a mama’s boy or anything, but he’d let their mom get into his head when they were young. He’d let her give him hope and she’d poured her sickness in there with it. Shane had been desperate for their dad to return. Alex had only hated the man. Hated him for leaving. And hated him for being a decent dad before he’d left. If he’d been awful, it would have been so much easier to live without him.

“I’d better get going,” Alex finally said.

“You can stay here if you want. The couch is damn comfortable.”

“No, thanks.” He wanted to be alone. He always did.

“Listen, I hate to ask, but could you do me a favor if you’re headed back to town? I’ve got the paper samples for the program. Can you drop them at Mom’s?”

“Shit,” he cursed, but even he could see it wasn’t a big favor to ask. He held out his hand for the samples and smiled at Shane. He wasn’t too immature to stop by his mom’s house for five minutes.

Plus, a trip to his mom’s would get him close to Sophie again. He considered the idea as he drove toward town.

It wasn’t a good idea to see her after what her brother had done today, but he couldn’t exactly blame her for it. And good idea or not, he wanted to see her.

Alex tried to let the wind take his thoughts away, but he couldn’t shake them. Sophie Heyer inspired thoughts with some staying power, after all. He’d be remembering her for a long time. Especially when he jerked off like he had first thing this morning. He’d woken up thinking of her coming for him, nails biting into his skull while the taste of her wet his throat. God. That’d been fucking amazing. Almost as amazing as lifting her up and making her ride his cock.

Yeah. Fuck it. He was gonna see her.

Alex pulled into the lot of his motel and got out his phone. She hadn’t gotten in touch, but he wasn’t surprised. Things were even weirder than they had been before. But Alex liked weird just fine.

He pulled up her number and sent a text.
Hey. I thought I might stop by. Are you decent?

I’m not sure how to answer that after last night.

He grinned from ear to ear before her next text came through.

But after today... I’m really sorry.

Did she mean she was sorry about her brother or sorry because she didn’t want to see Alex?
Wanna talk?
he asked hopefully.

Maybe.

He let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
Gimme 30?