Cowgirls Don't Cry(93)

“Mom. Stop.” Brandt tugged her into his arms. “Just stop.” She was absolutely breaking his heart.

“No,” Tell said from behind him, “Let her talk if she wants to.”


“We’ll listen to anything she has to say,” Dalton added. “She needs to know that.”


Brandt hadn’t heard his brothers come up behind them, but he was damn happy they were here.

She pushed back from Brandt and wiped her tears. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last month and wanted to talk to you boys yesterday. On Thanksgiving. To let you know how thankful I am for each of you, but…well. You were there. Wasn’t exactly a Norman Rockwell painting, was it?”


None of them could look at each other, which was just weird.

“Sorry.” She used a lace hankie to wipe her nose. “I didn’t mean to blather like a fool and get so weepy.”


A moment of silence passed as they all struggled.

“It’s okay, Mom. Tell cries all the damn time. It’s sort of embarrassin’ if you wanna know the truth,”


Dalton mock-whispered.

Tell probably would’ve shoved him, but Dalton was holding a wide-eyed Landon.

She smiled wanly, shaking her head with that “boys will be boys” look of resignation Brandt recognized. “How long have you been here?”


“An hour.”


“You’ve been sitting in your car in the cold for an hour? Why?”


“Because I didn’t want to go in there by myself.” She sniffed and laughed at the same time. “Stupid, huh?”


“Not stupid. You were just waiting for us, right?”


She nodded and wiped her cheeks.

Brandt was afraid she’d start crying again, and he knew how much that’d embarrass her in front of their McKay relatives. He looked at Dalton. “How about if you let Mom carry Landon inside?”


If he thought his mother was done with tears, he was mistaken. Because for some reason, that made her cry harder.

A few hours later, the noise level in Cord and AJ’s house still rivaled the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Kids and dogs running everywhere, inside and out. Men gathered in the den shouting at a football game on TV. Pregnant women in the kitchen. Nursing mothers and babies in the living room. Still more kids racing up and down the stairs. It was pure chaos.

Brandt loved every second of it. He wished Jessie were here because he knew she’d love it too.

“Kane?” Ginger shouted from the living room.

“I’ll get him,” Brandt said. He wandered to the den where his uncles were sacked out in the easy chairs, snoring, while his cousins were crouched on the floor, surrounded by kids, trying to watch the game.

“Kane? Ginger’s lookin’ for you.”


“I’m there.” Immediately Kane pushed to his feet and brushed past Brandt as he lingered in the doorway.

A collective groan arose at a play on the football field.

Colby shifted his youngest son, Austin, asleep on his lap, and pointed at the TV. “That’s gotta be a personal foul.”


“Give it up, Colby,” Cam said. “They’re gonna get their butts handed to them today.”


“And no * ref call is gonna make a damn bit of difference,” Ben said. “Shit, I mean shoot, I’m not supposed to say the ‘p’ word in front of the kiddos, am I?”


“Nope,” Quinn said. “Ditto for the ‘d’ word and the ‘s’ word.”