Rocky Mountain Romance (Six Pack Ranch) (31 page)

He stepped back, tipping an imaginary cowboy hat in Melody’s direction before swinging on his heel and disappearing into the crowd.

Joel sighed, pressing a kiss to Vicki’s forehead. “Sorry about that.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” she insisted, laying her palm against his chest and looking intently up at him. “He was helpful
and
a jerk this time. I call that a win.”

It wasn’t the place to ask for more details, but Melody was curious what was going on. It seemed there were more changes to the Coleman family while she’d been away than she’d been aware of.

Once again, shouting broke out behind her, and they turned to see who was involved this time. Melody’s stomach dropped as she spotted Steve in the middle of the loud discussion, fists rising. “Oh, shit.”

“I swear I’m going to kill him. So much for my damn evening off,” Anna muttered as she left the table for a second time, beelining it for the fight building by the door.

Mitch laid his hand on Melody’s shoulder, holding her back. “I know it’s tempting to interrupt, but let Anna do her thing. And deal with Steve in private later. No use in giving everyone in the room more ammunition.”

The angry voices were getting louder, and Melody’s name was mentioned. Steve drove a fist forward, catching his opponent across the jaw. The other man cursed, swinging an arm wildly and knocking Steve’s head back with the sickening sound of skin on skin. For a moment they scuffled harder, Steve getting in a jab that sent the other man reeling into his friends.

Then Anna was there, her law-and-order expression sending both of them looking for cover. Melody made her way to where Anna was for the second time that evening, ordering one of her brothers to leave the bar.

The other man wearing signs of battle was familiar, and suddenly Melody knew
exactly
what Steve had been fighting about. She dodged around Barry Ragan and caught Steve by the hand, hauling him toward the exit.

She didn’t speak. Not then, not when they were inside his truck. She silently handed him a wad of Kleenex to deal with his bloody nose.

“Melody—”

She shot up a hand to stop him. “Take me home,” she ordered.

For a small town, the drive seemed endless. Silence stretched uncomfortably between them until he pulled into her driveway.

“Can I talk now?”

“Depends. Are you going to say something I want to hear, or are you just going to piss me off more?”

“Fine, I should have let it go. I would have, but he wasn’t talking about your work, he insulted
you
. Said the only way to get good service was to get between your legs. Bastard.”

The fire burning through her veins made it hard to speak without letting him know how upset she was. “So what?”

He frowned, his face twisting with emotion. He stared at her, his dark eyes filled with confusion, a bruise rising on his cheek. “What are you talking about?”

Really?
She was going to have to spell it out for him? “Do you think he’s right? Or do you think he’s like the rest of them, blowing wind up your ass?”

“Of course he’s not right.”

“They’re a bunch of jackasses, Steve. This is why I said we were going to ignore them.”

Steve damn near growled. “There’s no way you should have to put up with that kind of crap talk.”

“I agree, but you punching someone isn’t helping me. It’s a jerk move, I don’t want it, and I
told
you that.” From his lost expression, it appeared she could have been speaking Chinese and it would have registered as well. “Maybe not in those specific words. I mean, I didn’t say ‘Gee, Steve, don’t beat anyone up for my sake’, but I specifically said to ignore them.”

She shoved open her door and headed for the front stairs, Steve breathing down her back as he followed.

“Don’t tell me not to defend you,” he growled.

“That wasn’t defending me. That was you being macho and possessive, and along with that,
wrong
.”

“They can’t treat you like crap,” he insisted.

“You’re right, they can’t. But you know why?” She twirled, standing at the top of the stairs with him on the bottom step so their eyes were level. “The reason they should shut their yaps and stop complaining isn’t because they’re afraid you’ll punch their lights out. Or because they think they need to be more considerate of my frail womanly sensitivities. This isn’t about hormones and who has a dick. It’s about who is right and who is wrong, and
that’s
why they can’t treat me like anything but the competent vet that I am.”

“I’m just saying—”

“That’s the biggest trouble,” she snapped. “You’re talking when you should be listening, and I don’t know why either of us is bothering.”

He froze. “Melody? What are you telling me?”

“That I’m going to bed, and you’re not invited. Take your sister’s advice, Steve, and go home.”

Before she could get to the door, he caught her by the hand, turning her gently to face him. The expression in his eyes was one step away from terrified. “That’s it? Are you saying…
we’re
over?”

She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, fighting to keep from shouting something she would later regret. “I’m going to bed
alone
so I can get over being so mad at you that I want to scream. Am I calling us off? No, but that doesn’t mean I want to look at you right now.”

He stepped back, his feet stumbling on the porch decking. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to say anything else. “Me too.”

Then she let herself into the house and crawled into bed, staring at the ceiling for the longest time before she could relax enough to cry in frustration.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Steve stared at her door in utter shock.

He’d screwed up. This was what he’d attempted to avoid all summer. Yet he’d still upset her enough that here he was, standing on one side of the door while she was on the other, and damned if he didn’t want to bust it down so they could talk this out, and he could make it better.

Then again, he’d watched her do an autopsy once, and she had a mean hand with a knife blade. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get near her when she was this spitting mad.

Heading home didn’t seem like the solution, because all he’d do was look in the bottom of a bottle of Jack for answers, and that never solved anything.

He found himself cruising up his parents’ driveway and parking beside Lee’s truck—it appeared the Coleman boys were coming home for a dose of straight talk from their father.

He didn’t have to go inside to find Lee. His little brother stood at the railing of the porch, staring at the distant mountains, his expression unreadable.

Steve wandered up, leaning on the railing beside him. He wondered how long it would take before his brother acknowledged him, but for once Lee seem to be in a talkative mood.

“It’s Rachel.”

With those two words, all the dominoes fell into line. Replaying the fight at the bar, the woman Gary Ricardo had grabbed before escaping had most definitely
not
been Rachel. “Oh, hell. Okay, now it makes a lot more sense why you took a shot at Gary.”

“Still doesn’t make sense.” Lee paused for a beat, before looking Steve in the eye. “She said there were too many years between us. Any time I asked her out, she thought I was kidding around and turned me down. And then she started seeing Gary, and they had this whirlwind engagement, and the next thing I knew, they were married.”

“They moved away, didn’t they?” Steve asked. “I was surprised to see him at Traders tonight.”

“They did move away. I thought that would make it easier, not having to see her all the time, but he’s driving deliveries in the area. Which means every time I see him cheating on her, it’s enough to make me blow my top.”

The mess got even more tangled. “Does she know? That he’s cheating?”

Lee hesitated. “I think so. I mean, word gets around. I can’t imagine how she feels. So when I saw him fooling around with that girl tonight, I couldn’t stop myself.”

“I don’t blame you.” Steve laid a hand on his brother’s back, not sure there were any words of wisdom he could offer.

“The good thing is Gary is scared shitless of me. Maybe at some point he’ll be frightened enough to clean up his act. I hope so, for Rachel’s sake.”

His little brother had to be talking out his butt. “You don’t want her to stay with him, do you?”

“If that’s what she wants, of course. As long as he’s doing right by her, why would I want anything less than what makes her happy?”

For a kid barely out of his teens, Lee was putting Steve to shame in the maturity department. “You’re a better man than I am,” Steve admitted.

“Then how come you’re the one with the girl, and I’m the one over here singing the achy-breaky songs?”

Lee had no idea what happened after he’d left the bar. “I don’t know about that. It seems you and I have something in common tonight.”

“What?”

“We’re both on Anna’s shit-list for starting fights at Traders.”

Lee glanced up, surprise streaking his face. “You?”

Steve checked out the distant mountains himself. “Even better, after I slammed my fist into Barry Ragan’s face, and Anna read me the riot act, Melody gave me hell. She isn’t talking to me.”

“Ahhh. You did something she asked you not to.”

His little brother was far too canny. “At the time, I didn’t think so. After a moment’s reflection, probably, though I still think I’m right.”

“Listen to yourself. What a bunch of bull.”

Their father’s deep tones echoed from behind them, and they twisted to watch Randy make his way onto the deck, joining them at the railing.

“You eavesdropping?” Steve asked.

“Tonight, yeah. The windows are open, and I was sitting in the living room. But more than that, I’ve been listening to you two boys since you were born. You make your own decisions, but if you’re willing to hear your old man out for a minute, maybe I can give you a thing or two to consider.”

Lee waved a hand in welcoming. “Go on. You’ve never been the type to interfere unless you had something worthwhile to say.”

Randy rested an elbow on the railing as he glanced at them. “When I married your mother, Mike and Marion were already going together, and it was pretty clear Mike would be the one to take over control from our father when he passed on. I had no trouble with that—Mike’s a good man, and between him and Marion, they set up a strong lead for us Coleman boys to follow.”

Steve and Lee exchanged glances before Lee spoke. “You want to get to the part where this sweet family history has something to do with our particular problems, Dad?”

“Don’t get cocky.” Randy looked him in the eye. “They say those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. The first six months Kate and I were together, we lived in the Peters’ house right next door to Mike and Marion, and I thought everything was going grand until the night your mother walked down the stairs and plunked down a suitcase.”

“She was taking a trip?”

Randy stared back, his face gone cold. “She was leaving me.”

He definitely had their attention.

“How come we’ve never heard this story before?” Lee demanded.

“Because you never needed to hear it.” Randy folded his arms over his chest, his breathing loud as they waited for him to continue. “Fortunately, before she left she gave me a straight talking to. Said she loved me, loved Mike and Marion, and loved being a Coleman. But there was no way in hell she was going to stop being Kate.”

Lee was nodding, but Steve wasn’t sure he’d gotten the message. “And had you asked her to? Stop being Kate?”

“I didn’t think so, not at first. But when she left—and she did leave for a week—I sat down and thought it through and, hell yeah, there were a lot of things she’d had ideas about that I’d basically ignored. It wasn’t that she wanted to run things, but she had a voice, and an opinion, and while she didn’t care in the end whether we did things the way it had always been done or some newfangled way, she wanted to be heard.”

Steve’s problem had
always
been he hadn’t listened. “Shit.”

Randy stood up and patted the railing under his hands. “One of our solutions was to move a little farther apart—we built this house, and established the Moonshine spread so there’d be a bit of separation between us. It wasn’t an earth-shattering change, but it proved I was listening, and valued her ideas.”

And what Steve had done was the exact opposite. “I think I get it.”

“Every day Kate proves she knows how to take care of us. The entire time I’ve been feeling poorly she’s been a rock, and somehow found a way to get it done.” He nodded at Steve. “That’s why I called bullshit on you. It doesn’t matter whether you think you’re right or not. When you have a relationship, you make decisions together, and that means listening to each other.”

Steve had enough to chew on. He slapped his father on the shoulder in appreciation.

“I understand what you’re telling Steve, but maybe this time I’m the stupid fool,” Lee said. “There’s not much listening I can do when I don’t have the right, and that just plain sucks.”

“It does,” Randy agreed. “But here’s the other thing. Sometimes the people who listen the best are our friends.”

Lee shook his head. “I don’t see Gary approving of Rachel and I being friends.”

“And it’s so much more helpful when you punch her husband out?” Randy’s condemning glare had Lee squirming. “Maybe you should leave it up to Rachel if she needs a friend or not, instead of Gary.”

Lee didn’t answer, just got a far-off look.

The three of them stood in silence, listening to the owls debating territory from the nearby trees.

“When did life get this complicated?” Steve asked.

Randy’s chuckle echoed off the wall of the house and wrapped around them. “Wait until you have kids. Then you’ll know complicated.”

“Save us all,” Lee intoned. He tilted his head toward the house. “Come on. If anyone wants a drink, I’ll see what I can find.”

“I might have discovered something I can eat,” Randy added with a grin. “So far the more grease, the more fat and the more calories, the better.”