River's End (River's End Series, #1)(71)

Kailynn was cutting up vegetables and Erin had been talking to Charlie. Erin got up and came closer to Kailynn. “Do you need any help?”

Kailynn glanced up and her gray eyes had a strange hue to them, an almost a whitish cast. They were incredibly beautiful. Usually, however, Kailynn kept her eyes downcast and focused on whatever she was doing with her hands. “No.”

Erin picked up a carrot and took a bite from it, not missing the frown Kailynn gave her. “I would like to help.”

“They pay me to do this. I don’t need your help.”

Erin shrugged. “Well, I owe them for letting me live here. I could help cook since you usually try to leave about now, I could take over for you sometimes.”

“Can you cook?”

“Well, no. But I could learn.”

Kailynn lifted her eyes, piercing Erin with their laser-like glow. “You can’t read a recipe.”

Erin flinched and set the carrot down. “And here you act so nice to the Rydells. I know I can’t read. I thought people learned to cook by ‘know-how’.”

“Yeah, if you have any ‘know-how’.”

“What’s your problem with me?”

“No problem, Erin. I just have work to do.”

“Is it Joey? Because we’re nothing now.”

“I don’t care who you’re having sex with.”

“I’m not. Having sex with anyone, that is. So what? You hate me because I’m not a virgin?”

Kailynn turned as she mixed up dough in a bowl, which she spread over the vegetables and chicken she had in a pan. Erin guessed she had some kind of potpie concoction going on. “I don’t have any opinion on you.”

“So you’re just bitchy in general?”

Kailynn hesitated, but finally, looked Erin in the eye. “No one else thinks I’m a bitch.”

“Well, I’m thinking it right now.”

Kailynn tapped a finger on the counter. “Can you make a pie crust?”

“No.”

“Then can you slice apples?”

“Yeah. I can slice apples.”

“Good,” Kailynn said as she handed Erin a knife and pushed a bowl of apples towards her. “Start peeling and then cut them into slices.”

Erin looked at Kailynn and didn't react. Her face was a mask of disinterest. Erin smiled at her. Kailynn finally lifted the corners of her mouth as she turned and stuck the potpie into the warm oven.

“So how long have worked here?”

Kailynn took a long while before she talked to Erin. It took days to get the barest information out of her. Erin eventually learned Kailynn was twenty-two years old and lived with her father and two older brothers who were also good friends with Ian and Shane. Kailynn eventually showed Erin how to make spaghetti, tacos, Jack’s favorite beef stew, several chicken casseroles, and various homemade pies. Most of what she taught Erin were things she could reproduce without a cookbook. One asset Erin possessed was a faultless memory.

Erin liked the food prep and the aromas of the finished products as she set them on the table. She liked the few moments she and Kailynn talked alone about girl things. Or food, or the weather, and eventually, makeup, hair, and where to shop or get things done in the small businesses of River’s End.

Erin soon came to the house seeking Kailynn’s company much more than that of the men. Kailynn always left as they sat down to eat, and Erin always felt sorry to see her leave. She was quiet during the first few meals she shared with the Rydells. In no time, however, she was being talked to, and asked questions so she began to open up more towards them. She always sat at the far end, and opposite side of the table to Jack in her attempts to avoid him. That was back-asswards because it put her next to Joey, whom she didn’t give a damn about being near or not. She had nothing to say to him, and no residual tenderness towards him either.

Joey ignored her as much as she did him. He even brought his new date home with no skin off Erin’s nose.

One day in June, Joey announced with little warning and no apparent concern at the impact of his news that he was leaving for the summer. His brothers all stopped eating and stared at him in utter shock. No one knew what he had in mind. Erin did, however. She remembered hearing his doubts about working on the ranch because he didn’t know anything else, and had never known any other place. She just didn’t know what his latest plan entailed.

“I joined the Army.”

Jack stared at him for a full thirty seconds before setting his fork down with a pronounced “clink!” Then he laughed. “You don’t just up and join the Army, Joe.”

“Well, I did. I can’t spend my life hanging around here, shoveling shit.”

Jack stared at Joey, and Joey stared back, his anger palpable. Jack suddenly stood up and left the room, with everyone staring open-mouthed after him. Joey let out a breath and hunched his shoulders, not quite as sure about standing up to Jack as he originally tried to portray.

No one spoke after that. Joey got up and followed Jack to the porch.

Erin stared after them, absorbing the silence from the rest of the family deeply in her gut. She wondered if they blamed her. She also was impressed by the depths to which these men loved each other, though usually unspoken. They had lived together rather successfully well into their adult lives, something most siblings could never do without killing each other. But the Rydell brothers made it work. And now one of them was leaving.