Chapter Five

Dinner did not make it to the table by six o’clock.

Instead, Zero found himself staring at the stitching that decorated the edge of Sheridan’s comforter as his sister buried herself inside the cream-colored ball of fabric. Since Rob had died, this vanishing act happened a lot, and he’d like to think he had some skill dealing with her grief.

“Hunter’s okay,” he told the lump, resisting the urge to lift the covers so he could talk to Sheridan’s face instead of the comforter. “I wish you could have seen him holding Elizabeth Swann’s leash. That dog trainer…I didn’t want to hope, but she may actually be the real deal.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.” The comforter muffled Sheridan’s voice, but Zero had enough experience with this scenario to note the ragged edge that meant she’d been crying. “It’s just not okay to keep my son at the barn for so long without letting someone know. He could have been hurt or could have fallen into the pond.”

“I know. I told her,” he said soothingly or as close to it as an ex-Army Captain could get. How he’d wound up being the chief consoler in this house, he’d never know. “She said she was sorry. Trust me to keep Hunter safe, Sher.”

Her lack of response hooked him in the gut. Yeah, his track record on that wasn’t so great. If he’d done his job and kept Rob alive, none of this would be happening.

Time for a subject change. “I told Delilah to join us for dinner,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d…”

Well, there was no good way to finish that sentence. Sheridan didn’t cut him any slack, either.

“You didn’t know I’d have a mini-breakdown at the thought of boiling water for spaghetti? That makes two of us.” With that, she swiped the comforter from her face and sat up, revealing splotches on her fair skin and a listing bun with long red hanks pulled free. “I’m sorry I messed up your schedule again.”

As always, she said the word schedule as if naming a particularly vile disease.

“It’s okay,” he muttered and tamped down the urge to remind her schedules never hurt anyone. Adhering to his got him through the day. They were all dealing with things in their own way. “I would have made dinner. I don’t expect you to do it every night. You just have to tell me if you’re not up to it.”

“I’ll text you next time,” she said, straight faced, so he didn’t know if she meant that seriously or sarcastically.

When she was in a mood like this, the best thing to do would be to leave her to it. Besides, he now had make dinner for five people on his to-do list.

Zero slid off the bed and bolted for the exit. “You do that. If you get hungry later, come down. I can’t do your fancy sauce, but I can boil water.”

Clattering down the stairs, he tried not to think of it as escaping. Sheridan was his sister, his blood, and he loved her. He’d like it a lot better if she’d gotten further in dealing with her husband’s death, but since that would be like the pot calling the kettle black, he kept his mouth shut.

His grandmother’s kitchen hadn’t changed much since the days he’d wander in from running around all over the property with Tag, starving and desperate for something to fill the hole in his stomach. Usually she’d pull a homemade cookie from the bear on top of the refrigerator, hand it to him with a smile, and remind him dinner would be on the table soon.

Unnecessary. Gran had lived and died by the clock, too, an affinity they’d shared well past the time when he could reach the cookie jar himself. No one ever had to chase him down to eat or, for that matter, to do anything else. That and a healthy amount of discipline had served him well in the Army, a profession that fit him like a glove.

Until it didn’t.

Now he held the remnants of his family together with sheer will and chewing gum, only most days he ran out of gum by noon.

As Zero pulled his gran’s big pot from its spot under the counter and started filling it with water, Delilah breezed into the kitchen. Which immediately shrank with the addition of another person who had as big of a presence as she did. Not that the kitchen could be described as small under any circumstances. U-shaped with a large island in the center and an excess of windows that provided a view of the pond, it had always been a gathering place back when the house had been filled with people.

Now it served a purpose. To make food.

He’d done the food thing many times in the days since he and Sheridan had decided to make a go of the ranch, but the moment Delilah smiled at him, he forgot what he’d been about to do. There was too much of her in his space, and she was still wearing those long skirts that billowed around her legs, making her—and her legs—hard to ignore. He never noticed what a woman was wearing, for crying out loud.

“Oh, am I early?” she asked, making a big show of glancing at the empty table in the breakfast nook. “I thought you said dinner would be at six o’clock?”

The clock on the wall very clearly announced the time as six fifteen. Had she been late on purpose to make a point about how he’d gotten short with her earlier in the barn? If so, it was a moot point, since Sheridan had bailed on him.

“Change of plans,” he muttered, mindful he got grumpy when something upended his schedule.

Yet another reason he needed to stay far away from Delilah, thoughts he shouldn’t be thinking and her smile—she was chaos in a can, a surefire way to keep him in a perpetually grumpy state as she slashed and burned the order he tried so hard to maintain.

“That’s okay,” she responded with too much cheer for someone being told dinner would be late. “I was wondering how in the world someone got dinner ready on time every day, day in and day out, and it’s nice to find out there aren’t people with superpowers in your kitchen. I don’t know that I would measure up very well in comparison.”

“I cook a lot,” he informed her for who knew what reason, other than the one where he couldn’t stand that she thought she might come up short. “So the kitchen is usually filled with me.”

He had no chance at interpreting the look she shot him. “What can I do to help, then?”

Go away? He didn’t say it out loud. Then he’d have to explain why his skin had grown too tight the moment she’d taken up that spot near his elbow and he hadn’t quite figured that out himself. “I guess you can make a salad.”

“Sure.” She wandered to the refrigerator and pulled it open, rummaged through its contents, and then glanced at him over her shoulder. “I don’t see any salad. Is there another refrigerator?”

“What? It should be in there. I bought the stuff myself two days ago.” Zero set the pot full of water on the stove and actually remembered to turn it on before he crossed to peer into the refrigerator from behind Delilah, who smelled like cinnamon. “There’s the lettuce right there. Carrots are in the drawer, along with a bell pepper and radishes.”

She laughed, vibrations pinging through his rib cage, which was ridiculous. They weren’t even that close. But the cinnamon scent wafted through his brain, reminding him how very long it had been since he’d stood this close to a woman who wasn’t Sheridan.

And how much he’d missed the simple pleasure of it.

“Oh, you meant make the salad,” she said. “As in chop up the stuff. I was looking for a bag of premade salad.”

He scowled. “Waste of money. We get vegetables from the farmers’ market in town twice a week. All locally grown.”

Now he sounded like a granola-eating bohemian who cooked with nothing but organic food. Which, now that he thought about it, didn’t seem so far off the mark all at once. When had he turned into his grandmother?

He cleared his throat and jerked his chin toward the island. “The cutting board is in that cabinet and the knives are in the corner, stuck in the butcher block holder.”

Busying himself with the jar of Ragu, Zero tried to act like he didn’t have a fine awareness of Delilah’s exact location in the kitchen. But it was hard to ignore the swish of her legs or the sound of her low hum as she added the step of rinsing the vegetables in the colander she’d pulled from under the sink. As if she’d known that would be where Gran had kept it, so of course Zero did, too.

“You don’t have to help,” he told her gruffly. “But thanks.”

She shrugged, keeping her eyes on the knife gripped in her fingers as she sliced carrots. “I noticed the marked absence of Sheridan, so I figured you could use an extra pair of hands. I get it. I lost my mom when I was eleven, and my dad was never quite the same after.”

Her point settled heavily across his shoulders. What if things didn’t get better? What if this was the best they could do? The loss of Rob might well have left an indelible mark on them all, never to be removed. They would eventually find ways to adjust. Not heal.

No. He refused to believe the current state would be permanent.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a long enough pause that it was awkward. As he tended to do. “Then you probably have a better-than-average understanding of what Hunter’s going through.”

“You were singing a different tune this afternoon,” she reminded him, lifted brows softening her comeback. “I’ll remind you of that next time he and I end up in the same place at the same time.”

Yeah, okay, he probably deserved that. Just because Sheridan had freaked out over the absent kid didn’t mean he had to humor her panic. It had been in the back of his mind for a couple of weeks now that he might be considered an enabler. But what was he supposed to do?

“Noted. How did the training session go today?” he asked, kicking himself for not doing so sooner. It was the sole reason the woman had barged into his life. His brain seemed to evaporate around her.

“Oh, um…fine, I guess?”

Her downcast gaze did not give him a warm, fuzzy feeling. “It seemed pretty great to me. I’ve never seen Elizabeth Swann on a leash before.”

Delilah shrugged as she dumped the last bell pepper into the large wooden bowl already full of shredded lettuce, chopped carrots, and radishes. “One down, three to go. The others won’t take to it as easily, I’m afraid. But we’ll get there. Eventually. It just might take a little longer than I was hoping.”

He nodded, clinging to the upbeat note in her voice. She would train the dogs, he had no doubt. She’d already gotten further in one day than he’d have considered possible after two weeks. “I’m not worried about how fast you do it, but how well. I need to take my focus off the dogs.”

She cocked her head, all of her attention on him instead of her salad, which gave him an unexpected thrill deep down inside. If only circumstances were different…but they weren’t, and he had no right to be thinking how nice it would be if he had the liberty to sidle a lot closer to Delilah. Feather a thumb across her cheek and follow that with his lips to see if she tasted like she smelled, all full of cinnamon goodness.

Oh, man, he was in so much trouble.

He ducked his head, focusing on his own tasks, namely dumping a box of spaghetti noodles into the pot of boiling water on the stove.

“I’m curious,” she said. “Why you don’t just get rid of the dogs, if they’re so much trouble?”

Million-dollar question.

“They belonged to my grandpa,” he told her brusquely as he bustled by her to rinse out the colander for reuse with the spaghetti noodles when they finished cooking.

Under no circumstances did he want to have even the slightest temptation to accidentally on purpose brush up against her in these close quarters, though it would be easily explainable. That wasn’t how he operated. If he intended to date a woman, he wanted her to know about his interest up front, no shenanigans. Unfortunately, that kind of simplicity was blocked to him, at least until he got a whole lot further with the ranch.

“You and your grandpa were close?”

He nodded and shrugged. “I spent my summers here as a kid.”

That didn’t begin to encompass how he’d always thought of his grandpa as a hero. He’d fought in Korea and Vietnam, and Zero had never thought he’d do anything else but follow in his grandpa’s footsteps into the Army. Which he’d done.

And now he’d make his grandfather’s unrealized dream happen by turning the Flying Pig into a ranch that could sustain itself. As a tribute, a thank-you. More importantly, a way to care for his grandpa’s surviving family.

“You know Tag’s idea to lock the dogs in the barn isn’t a bad one,” she informed him as if he’d never thought of that. “That’s what I did while I was working with Elizabeth Swann. They didn’t give me too much trouble.”

“I could,” he countered. “But that doesn’t get them trained to help out around the ranch. Tag works hard and is loyal to a fault, but he forgets he can’t do everything around here. I need to use the resources I have.”

She laughed self-consciously. “I’m not trying to talk myself out of a job or anything. I’m happy to have a place to live and all. It was just a question.”

A shadow passed over her face, and he had the strongest urge to dig into what she was thinking. But he didn’t, despite the niggle in his gut that never fully went away.

Lately, he’d been chalking it up to the way her eyes sparkled in certain lights. Which he definitely shouldn’t be studying so hard, but felt powerless to stop.

There was definitely an undercurrent here, though. One he wished he could explore. Maybe one day. He didn’t hold out a lot of hope he’d ever feel truly free to do something selfish for once, like indulge in a woman. Sheridan slept by herself, thanks to him, and the guilt over that tampered everything else.

“You’re here to train the dogs,” he told her brusquely, forcing himself to come across as gruff and unapproachable—making her hate him still seemed like the best plan, though it was starting to pain him how hard it was to remember why. “If I didn’t need you to do that, you definitely wouldn’t be here.”

“Yep, I am the dog trainer,” she shot back immediately, as if trying extra hard to solidify herself as such.

She didn’t need to worry. He wouldn’t fire her over what had happened with Hunter. The progress he’d seen earlier today had convinced him that he’d made a good choice in Delilah. As long as she did her job. And he managed to scare up enough will to stop thinking about her in inappropriate ways.

In a shocking twist to the evening, Sheridan wandered into the kitchen, accompanied by Hunter. “Everything smells so good.”

“Hey,” he said, barely covering up his surprise to see her with her hair brushed and everything. “We’re just about to put it all on the table.”

“Let me just set it really quick,” Delilah offered with a smile and began putting out plates.

Without being asked, Hunter pulled silverware out of the drawer near the refrigerator and followed Delilah around the table like she’d gained a human devotee along with Elizabeth Swann earlier today. The boy actually had a small smile on his face as Delilah placed paper napkins by each plate and then turned them to make diamonds so the silverware would fit.

“He likes her,” Sheridan murmured as she drew up at Zero’s shoulder. “You didn’t tell me that part.”

“You didn’t ask.”

Nor had he really taken the time to note how easy Hunter was in Delilah’s company. Earlier, he’d been too focused on returning the kid to his mom after an eternity of searching, heart in his throat over the possibility of stumbling over a bad scene.

Sheridan’s gaze shifted to Zero’s face and lingered, her lips curving. “You like her, too.”

“What? No, I don’t.” What was his expression doing that gave her a ridiculous impression like that? He forced his features to relax, presenting her with his best stoneface. “I mean, yes, I do. To train dogs. She locked the Captains and Will Turner in barn stalls while she worked with Elizabeth Swann. What’s not to like?”

He busied himself with putting together the spaghetti noodles and sauce into a large bowl and sticking tongs into the middle. How had his life turned into an exercise in keeping busy so he didn’t have to think about things better left unexamined?

Tag waltzed through the door at the eleventh hour, at the exact moment Delilah set the wooden bowl full of salad on the table.

“Why are we eating so late?” he asked, squinting at his phone. “It’s nearly seven. I thought I’d be heating up leftovers.”

“Surprise,” Delilah told him with a warm smile. “We set you a place. Hunter insisted on it.”

Why did the sight of her smiling at his oldest friend set his teeth on edge? She could flirt with Tag twenty-four/seven for all he cared.

“Thanks, Buddy.” Tag ruffled the kid’s hair and got a grimace for his trouble.

Everyone slid into chairs, and for the first time in as long as Zero could remember, he could see the faces of his whole family at once as they ate dinner together. Well, and Delilah, too.

“Sheridan, I love the decor in my bedroom,” Delilah told his sister enthusiastically. “Do you know the history of the four-poster bed? The headboard carvings are so unique.”

And they were off to the races, chatting to each other about antiques, of all things, which Sheridan loved talking about. How had Delilah known that would be the one subject guaranteed to interest his sister? It was like the dog trainer had folded herself into the fabric of his life seamlessly. How?

He watched Delilah covertly until Tag elbowed him. “What?”

“I said, are we still on for tomorrow? You wanted to check out the steers MacGregor Farms is selling,” Tag reminded him.

“Yeah.”

That’s what he needed to be fixated on. Livestock. Now that Delilah had started making some excellent progress, he could finally make strides on his own endless list of stuff. Bonus—throwing himself headlong into cows would be a stellar distraction worthy of forcing his mind off the curve of his employee’s cheek.

Everything was coming together. For once.