All Jacked Up (Rough Riders #8)(59)

“Speaking of families. Last night Channing dropped the bomb she’s having a girl! No one tells me anything important these days.”


“Well, it’s important you don’t make plans for tomorrow night because we need to talk about the Milford trip.”


“But Thursday night is my night to—”


Jack held up his hand stopping her protest. “I don’t care if it’s your night to shoe horses or to craft quilts or to can pickled beets. I need you here.”


“Fine.” Keely brushed past him. In the doorway to the bathroom she turned. “Have fun with Carter.


But don’t wait up for me.”


Don’t wait up for me.


Jack ground his teeth together. Three hours had passed and her parting shot still rankled.


“Jack? Buddy? You’re gonna have an embolism if you keep scowling like that. So tell me what’s up.”


“Your sister drives me f*cking crazy.”


“And that’s news?” Carter laughed. “The fact you two haven’t killed each other by now is newsworthy. Never in a million years would I have predicted you two as a couple.”


“Join the club.”


“So tell me…what did my little sis do to piss you off? Earlier at the jobsite you guys were goin’ at it hot and heavy. I thought my dad was gonna get the hose out and spray you down.”


Jack scraped his hands over the razor stubble on his jaw. “I don’t understand why she has to be doing something all the time. Why can’t she just stay home? It’s like she can’t stand to be by herself.”


Carter didn’t say anything.


At first, Jack wondered if he’d overstepped his bounds. Then he worried Keely had kept something important from him. “What?”


“Keely didn’t tell you how she’s spent the last five years?”


Jack squirmed. He should’ve kept his mouth shut. He should know all about his fiancée’s past. If he showed his ignorance, Carter would get suspicious.


“Jack?”


He shook his head.


“It figures she didn’t fill you in.” Carter signaled the waitress for another round.


When Carter didn’t start talking, Jack got both worried and pissed off. “You can’t drop something like that into conversation and leave it there to fester, McKay.”


“It’s not festering, Donohue. I’m debating.”


“On what?”


That blue gaze identical to Keely’s pinned Jack in place. “On if I should keep my big mouth reputation in the family and just flat out tell you, or if I oughta let it fester so you’re forced to ask Keely about it. Part of me thinks if she would’ve wanted you to know, she would’ve told you herself. But part of me thinks it’s your right to know.”


When the waitress swung buy with more beer, Jack ordered two shots of Wild Turkey.


Carter leaned back in the booth. His posture wasn’t lazy, but challenging. “If you think getting me drunk will make me spill my guts, you’re barking up the wrong tree, pal.”


What was up with this family and the colorful colloquialisms? “The shots are for me, not you.”


The silence stretched between them until the waitress brought the whiskey shots. Jack drained one and set the other aside.


“You’re a lot like her, you know.”


Jack’s gaze shot to Carter’s. “Keely?” He snorted. “Right. Talk about oil and water. Fire and ice.


Concrete and glass.”


His comment must’ve alleviated Carter’s misgivings. He set his elbows on the table. “If I tell you this, Jack, I need your word that you will not tip off Keely that you know.”


“I won’t.”


“After Cam and Domini got married we were all together for some family holiday. The kids were watching a movie in the family room, the babies were asleep and it was just adults around the dining room table, which rarely happens. We’re bullshitting, teasing one another, like we always do, when someone, I don’t even remember who, tossed off a comment about Cam not pulling his weight with the ranch—a total joke, right? I mean, we’d just gotten Cam interested in being part of the family again and none of us wanted to f*ck that up. So they start picking on me and I volleyed it back, and the next thing we were all ragging on Keely.


“Even before she’d moved into Domini’s apartment she’d disappear for days—sometimes weeks on end. As far as we knew, she worked part time at the VA in Cheyenne a couple days a month and that was her only job. We wondered if she had a guy on a string keeping her away from home. So we teased her about being too busy chasing tail to get a real job, or to help out at the ranch. I’ll admit we were total dicks to her, bringing up stupid shit she’d done in the past. Treating her like she was a bratty preteen.


Questioning her work ethic after living in the big city. Normally Keely would fire insults right back, but she got quieter and quieter. We were so busy ribbing her we didn’t notice.”


Jack’s gut knotted—not from the shot of whiskey.