Family. It was a sweet word, but one Hope didn’t really understand the way Rachel obviously did. “Well, I’m glad Max sees him that way. In my family, it was always fighting. My mom had two sisters, and she didn’t talk to either one. She didn’t talk to her parents either.”
Rachel’s eyes went soft. “My mom and dad were great. I miss them every day. I wish…I wish things had been different. I can only imagine my dad taking on Max. Let me tell you, my father would have both of those boys in line.”
“Come on, Rachel. You really think your parents wouldn’t have a problem with the whole ménage thing?” It worked in Bliss, but the outside world was different.
“They loved me. They would have accepted it. And after a while, they wouldn’t be able to help but love my guys. They’re thoroughly lovable. And they would have adored Paige. Come to think of it, my parents would have probably loved Bliss. You never mention your folks. Are they alive?”
This was where a helpful lie usually worked, and yet Hope found herself wanting to talk for the first time in a long time. “I ran away when I was sixteen.”
“I ran away when I was twenty-eight,” Rachel said softly. “It’s nice we both found our way here.”
Hope shook her head. “Not the same. Well, maybe a little.” She knew the story. Rachel had run from a stalker. She’d had a date go bad, and the man had obsessed about her. She certainly hadn’t been as stupid as Hope. She hadn’t decided she was in love with a man who turned out to be a killer. Rachel hadn’t facilitated her stalker’s crimes. She certainly hadn’t brought in girls for her stalker to torment. It didn’t matter to Hope that she hadn’t known it at the time. It only mattered that it had happened. “But you didn’t have anyone to help you. I left my mom’s apartment with nothing but the clothes on my back.”
Rachel leaned forward, the sandwich forgotten. “Why did you leave?”
“My mom had a new boyfriend. He was very interested in me.” And very brutal and rough looking. Christian had been the utter opposite. Christian had been gentle with her and polite. Christian had been gorgeous. And his masculine beauty had been a perfectly laid trap. She shook it off. “So I left and I stayed with friends, and I wound up here. It’s a boring story.”
“Ten years explained away in a sentence. Nice. You’re good.”
Hope felt like Rachel’s green eyes were staring right through her. “Sometimes these things are boring.”
“I sincerely doubt that. We all have secrets. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to find a family who can handle our secrets.”
A little bitterness welled up in Hope. She hadn’t drawn the high card when it came to families. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t lucky. Like I said, I had my mom, and she was happy to see the back of me.”
Rachel sighed as though Hope had missed the whole point of this conversation. “I wasn’t talking about your mom, Hope. I was talking about Bliss. Look, you’re not that much younger than me, but I’m wiser than you in this. Family isn’t just blood. Blood is a crapshoot of biology. I love my daughter, but I expect to have to earn her affection. A child isn’t something that a mom can shoot out and ignore and then expect that child to adore her. But family, real family, is something we make ourselves. It’s this weird, amazing fusion of people we share our lives with. I loved my parents, but I’ve told Callie and Jen things I would never have shared with them. Never. But I can tell those two women anything and they accept it. I can tell my husbands anything. Oh, I’m not stupid enough to do that, but I could.”
Good for Rachel. “I think it’s nice that you have such good friends.”
“Family,” Rachel insisted. “It goes beyond friends. I’m not terrifically close to Marie or Teeny or Mel, but I love them. I’ve learned more in the time I’ve been in Bliss than in all the years before. I would never have given someone like Mel a second glance back in Dallas. But living here forces a person to be tolerant, and once you’re tolerant, you can see past a person’s oddities and get to know how truly amazing they are. But you can only do that if they’re honest with you.”
Hope didn’t like where this was going. She felt restless again. “Don’t play around, Rachel. Say what you mean to say.”
Rachel sighed. “See, I told Jen that was the way to go, but no, she said I should be gentle. Fine. You’re in trouble. I can see it plainly. Whatever you’re running from is starting to catch up to you, and it’s eating you alive. You can tell us because there’s nothing you can say that will make us turn away from you.”
But Hope knew the truth. Rachel was being naïve. “You would be surprised what I can say.”
“No, I wouldn’t. But I’m willing to wait. I just want you to know that you have a family here, and we’re all sitting and waiting for the time that you trust us enough to come out of whatever closet you’re hiding in.”
A lovely thought. Maybe. But she had to think about it. And she would have to talk to Noah and James first. God, she didn’t know if she could do that. “I’ll consider it.”
Rachel picked up her sandwich again. “See that you do. Now, what are we going to do about Noah and Max because we have a horse with a lame leg, and Max can’t figure out what’s wrong.”
That was a much easier task than dealing with her past.
“Tell Max we’ll give him twenty percent off house calls,” Hope said. “But he has to pay full price on all meds.”
Noah was going to kick her ass. And he’d give Max the discount, too.
Rachel’s brows went up in surprise. “Rumors are true then. Well, Noah worked fast. Excellent. It’s so much easier to work with the woman. You have no idea how much the people of this town celebrated after Caleb finally fell into Holly’s bed. Alexei is a damn town hero for making that happen. Now we don’t have to call Doc. We just call Holly. So much easier that way. So I’ll let everyone know to go through you. And let’s make it fifty percent.”
Rachel drove a hard bargain. But her husband was a hard case. “Nope. Dealing with Max comes with a price tag. Can you guarantee me that Noah will only have to deal with Rye?”
“Damn it, forty percent.”
“Thirty-five and Noah will personally apologize.”
Rachel sighed. “And I promise Max won’t throw him into the horse trough. Deal?”
They shook on it.
Hope sat back, a happy feeling overtaking her. She was going to get Noah on track, and if he didn’t like it, well, he could always spank her again.
“So what are you going to do about James?” Rachel asked.
Happy feeling gone. She had no idea. But she was going to come up with something because all of the sudden she knew this was one problem she couldn’t walk away from.
James slammed out of the truck and then remembered he hadn’t been alone. Damn dog. He took a deep breath. The dog wasn’t at fault here. His brother was. He turned and opened the door, and Butch bounded out.
The big ugly mutt scampered around like a puppy. He ran in a huge circle as fast as his legs could take him.
It was obvious the big guy had been cooped up in an apartment for way too long without a place to run.
Had it been that way for Noah, too?
Well, at least the dog handled it properly. The dog ran around chasing its own tail, not Hope’s.
Chase? Fuck. Noah had caught it. And he’d fucked it. James had stood there listening as his brother had screwed Hope against the wall of that tiny, piece-of-shit apartment. Hope’s skirt had been tossed up, and those shapely legs of hers had been wrapped around Noah’s waist as his brother pumped into her.