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SAOIRSE RENEE RED EAGLE, known as Renee, looked out over the wild beauty surrounding her home near Spearfish and wondered how she could grow up in such untamed vastness and yet have not one free moment when someone wasn’t watching over her shoulder, figuratively speaking. Being the youngest child and the only daughter in a home filled to overflowing with testosterone was not helping her realize her autonomy. She couldn’t reach her potential, or more to the point, keep boyfriends with so many eyes trained on her.
Renee had complained to her mother about two things during her childhood, without pause: no one could pronounce her first name and her overbearing brothers. Kayleigh Red Eagle would smile and shake her head with sad commiseration.
“I know, my darlin’. I just wanted to hear a bit of my homeland every day, and giving you all family names helps me deal with my occasional homesickness. Your name situation may get better if others don’t see it spelled before they learn it. As far as your siblings? It feels like a blight to have brothers when you are a young woman and a joy after marriage.” Kayleigh grinned and side hugged her daughter. “Mostly after theirs. Rest assured, you’ll like them again after they have been tamed by the love of their life. And when all your lives get busy, you’ll miss them.”
“I don’t think so, mama.”
“You’ll see I’m right one of these days.”
Her mother had been so confident of her answer. Kayleigh would then remind Renee of the argument between a young Kayleigh and her own two brothers just a week before she’d left for Cambridge University over thirty-five years ago. Kayleigh tried to mimic their voices to lighten the mood.
“You’re nae going out with Kegan O’Malley, lass,” said Kayleigh’s eldest brother Michael.
“I most certainly will,” Kayleigh had proclaimed.
“I saw you sneaking out with Connor,” Michael announced.
Brother number two, Kiernan asked. “Laird?”
“No, the other one. Walsh,” said Michael.
“Aye, that one won’t make anything of himself. Laird, though...” Kiernan shrugged as though it might be a possibility.
“I wasn’t sneaking. I was walking out the front door, bold as you please. I’m twenty-two years old, and I’ll not be having you telling me who to date and who to step out with.”
“We’re responsible for you,” Michael tried to reason.
“No, I’m responsible for myself. You’re not Da, and I’m not a child.”
“Well, we would’na be so hard after you if we could believe you would nae go out with just anyone,” Kiernan said with his arms folded over his chest.
“It’s my choice, and how am I supposed to know who I want to spend time with if you don’t let me date?”
“No, you can date, but it’s a waste of time to give the wrong sort of man the idea you might fancy him,” Kiernan said.
“But maybe I do,” reasoned young Kayleigh.
“You obviously have bad taste then, lass, and need us to watch out for you,” declared Michael.
Kayleigh finished by saying she had flounced out and gone to Cambridge to discover her true love lived across the Atlantic. Renee had laughed at the thick Irish brogue and her mother’s exaggerated mimicking of Renee’s uncles. When she had finally met her maternal uncles, Renee could imagine them saying just those things to her mother.
“We laugh about it now, but then, oh, it was serious business,” declared Kayleigh. Renee giggled then, but she wasn’t laughing now.
Renee’s parents met at RAF Lakenheath near Cambridge when her mother was going to the university and her father, Richard Red Eagle, was a pilot in the USAF stationed at the base. After the young lovers had married and the babies started coming, the couple had been happy with only boys but always wanted a girl for a little balance. When, on the last try for a girl, Saoirse Renee had been born, and her whole family had celebrated. Renee believed that the womb was the last time she had been alone. Not really, but it seemed like it sometimes.
Now, after more than thirty-five years of marriage and only three trips to Ireland during that time, the couple had decided to retire and spend a year with Kayleigh’s family in Ireland. They left the ranch with their five adult children to run, and by extension, left Renee to the mercy of her brothers.
“Mom, you have to tell them to leave me alone. I’m an adult. I have a business degree and run half of the ranch business. They have to treat me as the woman I am.”
Kayleigh kissed her daughter’s cheek and smoothed her hair back from her face. “You are so beautiful and too trusting, my sheltered sweetheart. I will tell them to let you be your own woman, but your brothers are like your father, protective. I’m sorry, but your father will have said the exact opposite. No matter what I tell them, he will charge them to watch over you.” Kayleigh’s sigh blended with her daughter’s disheartened one. “You could always come with us.”
Renee shook her head with conviction. “No, I have the ranch. And I mean no disrespect to my relatives in Ireland, but a year there is a no-go. I loved spending a month in the summers while growing up, but I have a life and responsibilities to consider.”
“All right. But remember, this will pass one day. You’ll like your brothers again once they find their true love. Their women will tame them for you.”
“One can only hope,” said Renee, with little confidence.
Her name, Saoirse, meant freedom, but it might as well have meant prisoner because she was never going to be allowed to find a boyfriend she wanted to keep. She’d never get away from four big, overbearing, smothering brothers. Oh, and Carson, Stryker’s best friend, might as well be part of the family. He was just as demanding.
There had to be a way to level the playing field.