Chapter Four
Bethany didn’t even stir when Eric pushed open the sticky front door to his house. She’d fallen asleep on the couch and pulled an afghan up over her shoulders.
Eric toed off his boots by the door and hung up his coat. He carried the plate to the kitchen, set it on the table and opened the fridge for a beer. Usually, he’d wait till the sun was down to have a beer, but today he’d look past the fact it was only two in the afternoon.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Bethany said from the other room.
She sat up on the couch and Eric watched her from the kitchen.
“I don’t know how you didn’t hear me. Between my old truck and that sticky door, I wasn’t exactly quiet,” he said shutting the door to the fridge.
She rolled her head from side to side. “L.A. is noisy. I suppose I’ve learned to ignore the noise.”
Eric picked up the plate he’d brought in from Susan and carried it out to her. “Here. Your future roommate sent you a plate of food.”
She chuckled as she took it. “She seemed nice, huh?”
“I knew her for all of an hour,” he said with a shrug as he sat down in the chair across from her. “But, yeah. She seemed nice. I mean, she didn’t run when everyone started yelling at each other down the hall.”
Bethany laughed as she sat back with her plate on her lap.
“I suppose I could just ask you to let me live here.”
Eric stopped drinking mid pull from his beer then swallowed down the amber liquid.
“You want to live—here?”
She set the plate on the coffee table in front of her. “No. Not after that reaction.”
Now he’d burned her too.
“I just live alone. I always have. I suppose…”
“Eric, stop. I don’t belong on the ranch and I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Like hell you don’t belong here. You belong here as much as I do.” He set his beer on the table next to him and leaned in, his arms on his knees. “I’m a tad touchy right now. I don’t even know how long I’ll get to live here.”
“My father was wrong to do that. He had no right.”
“Damn straight he had no right.” Eric let out a breath then sat back in his chair, picking up his beer.
Bethany picked up her plate and eased back on the couch, tucking her sock-clad feet under her. “Glenda knows how to get a hold of Susan, right?”
That was when he remembered the card in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at it again. “What kind of girl’s name starts with a Q?”
Bethany was mid bite of her sandwich when she looked up at him and just stared. She chewed and swallowed. “I have no idea. Do you have a woman looking for a second date and you forgot her name?”
“Funny.” He tossed the card toward her. “Susan wanted me to give that to you.”
She picked up the card and studied it. “Susan Q. Hayes?”
“See what I mean about the Q?”
She laughed and tucked the card into her shoe on the floor in front of the couch. “I’ll call her.” She looked up at him, her eyes dark as if the world of worries clouded them. “Can I stay here tonight, though? I just don’t want to be alone.”
Eric nodded. “Of course you can.”
He finished his beer and watched as she devoured the food on her plate.
“Where’s all your stuff?” he asked as he stood to throw his bottle into the recycle can his stepmother insisted he keep.
Eric turned when there wasn’t an answer and watched as she wiped tears from her cheek.
“I don’t have anything.”
“Nothing? Who has nothing?”
She raised her head and looked across the room at him. And even then he could see the sadness in her eyes.
“Me.”
He felt as though he needed another beer to get through this story. He pulled open the fridge and pulled out his last two beers and carried one over to her.
“Something tells me this isn’t strong enough.”
She smiled as she took it from him.
Eric sat back down in his chair across from her and waited until she was ready to talk.
“When mom died she had nothing. I mean nothing.” She pulled from her beer. “She’d worked all her life to have a modeling career and an acting career, but she was never very successful.”
“I thought Violet Waterbury was a big Hollywood name.”
She let out a snort. “Not in Hollywood. There were only four of us at her funeral.”
“Oh, Bethany, I’m so sorry.”
She wiped at her eyes again, and then drank her beer. There was a lot of pain in that small body, he thought as he watched her.
“Anyway, it took everything I had to set her affairs in order. I’d been living off a friend for a few weeks and had thought about coming out here. Then when I heard about grandpa, I thought it would be the right time. I thought perhaps he’d be more willing to let me in.”
He bit down on the inside of his cheek before he said, “You’re welcome here as long as you need.”
She burst into a laugh that had him staring at her. “Oh, you would die. I already saw your reaction when I asked to stay. There’s no way I’ll stay longer than tonight. In fact,” she bent and retrieved the card. “I’m going to call her right now.”
“I’m going to go check on things. I’ll be out for a while,” he said thankful for a job to be done. “I don’t have much in the way of food, but maybe we can go into town and get something later.”
“That sounds nice.”
Eric slipped on his boots, plucked his hat off the peg and rested it low on his brow. He swung on his coat before he hurried out the door not wanting to eavesdrop on any part of her conversation.
He liked his business to be his own, and he was sure others were the same. Well, most people were the same. His stepmother loved to meddle into his affairs and those of others. Christ, hadn’t she already asked him if Susan was single?
And wasn’t that thought weighing just a little too heavily on his mind?
He looked at the sky, which had cleared. Perhaps he’d walk toward the barn and saddle up Whiskey River for a ride. The mind-numbing task of saddling up a horse and letting him take him through the fields sounded like a better time than getting into his truck and wallowing in Hank’s music.
It would have been easier to drive over to the barn and it would have kept his boots dryer. The point wasn’t to make everything easy, he thought. The point was to do his work he’d neglected that morning and to keep away from the house as long as he could.
Bethany could make her phone call. She could finish that nap. She could wallow in her father’s neglect if she wanted to.
Eric just wasn’t sure how much conversation they could have if he stuck around much longer. If he calculated it right, he’d only ever been around Bethany about a dozen times in her twenty-four years. That wasn’t much to build a good family relationship on.
However, they had always seemed to have a flow. Again, it was probably the fact they were the lone bastards.
Eric opened the door to the barn and walked toward Whiskey River’s stall. The horse welcomed him with a hearty neigh and a grand nod of his head.
“Oh, you’re glad to see me are you?” He patted the horse’s nose. “Yeah, I’m glad to see you too. I’ve had a lousy couple of days.”
Whiskey River nudged him with his nose as if he understood. Perhaps he did. They seemed to have a better relationship than Eric had with anyone else.
Once he’d saddled the horse, they headed out. The ground was soft and a breeze nipped at Eric’s skin through his coat. The cattle grazed the field between his house and his parents’ house. He could see that there were still a few cars there. Glenda had hoped they’d all leave, but that hadn’t seemed to be the case.
He rode up through the pasture to the highest point of the property where he could oversee everything. The main house. His house. The original Walker land and the
land his grandfather had purchased. He could even see the Morgans’ land.
The main house on the Morgan land was far enough away it was but a small dot on the horizon, but it was there. There was a tightening in his chest when he thought about his mother growing up on that land and being buried on Walker land. They’d pushed her away when she’d fallen in love with his father. Could pride be so disgusting?
The people who lived in that house—that house which sat only miles away from his own—were family. His blood. They didn’t even know him.
In that house lived a grandfather he didn’t know. He had cousins he’d never met and yet they could see each other’s houses. It was gut wrenching.
Eric wondered how many times had they crossed paths and never known?
It hadn’t been anything he’d thought of until his grandfather died. They had never been a threat or much of a second thought.
He nudged Whiskey River off the point and back toward the furthest fence. There was always the need to check the fence and make sure everything was in order.
By the time he had ridden back to the barn, rubbed down the horse and fed him, he’d been gone nearly two hours.
Bethany’s car was still parked outside his house, but now so was his brother’s truck. He clucked his tongue. What did Dane need?
Eric was hungry and worn out. All he wanted was dinner and a good night’s sleep. But he had to admit to himself, he still wondered what the Q meant.
Had Susan and Bethany worked something out to meet? Was Susan Q. single, as Glenda had asked? If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t need a roommate.
What kind of restaurant did she want to have?
Why did she live in Colorado with the Subaru?
Indeed, these were more promising questions he’d like to get answered, which would also distract him from having to worry about where he was going to live in the next year.
He kicked the mud from his boots as he walked up the front steps. When he opened the door he could hear his brother’s voice echoing through the small house.
“Biggest sum-bitch I’ve ever seen!”
Bethany laughed and so did Dane. Eric didn’t have to ask. This was a hunting story from when Dane was fifteen. He’d heard it a million times and to him it was no longer a knee slapper.
Eric pulled off his boots and set them on the mat by the door.
“What are you doing here?”
“Being friendly,” he said. “I have a set of cousins I never get to see. I’m thinking I’m done not knowing them. So, I came to visit.”
Bethany smiled up at him from the couch. “He’s a hoot. Are all your brothers this funny?”
Eric looked at Dane. “No, he’s our comedian.”
“And the good looking one, he forgot to add,” Dane said.
“She’s related. You don’t have to impress her with your bit about being good looking,” Eric said as he hung up his hat and coat.
“Eric,” Bethany stood. “I talked to Susan and she invited me over to check out her place. I don’t know my way around that well, so will you drive me there? I’ll even spring for that dinner we talked about.”
“Dinner?” Dane’s brows lifted. “I want to tag along.”
“Of course you do. You’re like a puppy.”
“Am not. Besides you’ll miss me when I move away.”
“I’ll remember that,” Eric said on a snort. “Let me wash up.”
As he walked to the bathroom he smiled. It looked like he was headed into town to see Susan’s place. The thought of looking into those blue eyes again quickened his heart rate.
The last thing he needed in his life right now was the complications of a woman. But he sure could use the distraction of one.
And he was going to find out what that damn letter meant. Then there was the benefit from it all. He could pawn off Bethany too.
No matter what, Eric liked his privacy. One night with her on the couch was going to get to him. He’d offered more, and he’d have given it, but it looked as though Susan was going to earn his loyalty just by getting his family out of his way.
She was becoming a more attractive distraction by the minute.