River's Escape (River's End Series, #2) (4 page)

“Yeah, we just never had any issues. Now, with Erin involved, and the boys getting bigger, and Joey becoming an adult…”

“You’re saying we might need to change some things?”

Ian nodded. “Yeah, it might soon be time to change a few things around here.”

Jack started leaning the ladder against the side of the barn. “I hate change.”

“Change brought Erin here,” he pointed out reasonably.

“Okay, I liked that change. I don’t like to think of us changing.”

Ian understood. The four brothers had handled the ranch and dealt with each other for so many years, it was nearly impossible for any of them to picture it otherwise. But Joey enlisted in the Army last summer, and now there was Erin… So maybe it was just time to move on.

“Besides, there’s no way Lynnie would let you do that. It would be crazy, Ian, to even believe it could be so.”

“You’re right. Just seems a shame.” Ian ended the conversation by ascending the ladder to start figuring out how to patch the roof.

It was crazy and inappropriate. And it just sucked to him. He had every possible chance to do whatever he chose to in his life, so why shouldn’t Lynnie? He left the ranch when he was eighteen to everyone’s surprise, and attended Eastern Washington University where he studied finance and marketing. He was never big on explaining his actions or plans in advance. It always came as a surprise to most people when they learned he had them. Not to mention, he had a few more ambitions beyond his career at the ranch.

Returning to the ranch after four years to do just that, he managed to employ a lot of what he learned. In only the last couple of years, his orchard was finally producing significant amounts of fruit. It would soon became a new source of revenue for them.

Taking an unused chunk of land across the river they owned, he turned it into an organic apple orchard. It was no cheap endeavor to start and took almost four years to bear fruit. But Ian was convinced the profit from his orchard would be more than enough to set into motion his next endeavor. Now, with Erin’s arrival, the time may have arrived to set his next plan into motion.

After finishing the roof, he went out to inspect the workers in the orchard. His foreman, AJ, was currently collecting truckloads of apple crates for the picking season. Luckily, AJ handled most of the actual labor and oversaw any physical work. It was a full time job for AJ, whom they hired just over a year ago to help with the horses. He now managed to satisfactorily fulfill the duties of both jobs.

Ian knew it just required a little more patience. That was something he had a freaky amount of. Right now, however, all he could do was hope to make Kailynn Hayes realize that it was he whom she belonged with, not Drew Nichols, and especially not his brother, Shane.

KAILYNN ENTERED HER HOUSE to find her dad still awake with his leg propped up on the table. “Hey, Dad, glad to see you’re up.”

“Yeah? Wish I could sit here without my damn leg feeling like it’s burning up.”

“I’m sorry. Can I get you anything?”

“I would appreciate some dinner. You forgot to leave lunch for me.”

She kept her smile pasted on, even though her annoyance at his statement made her want to grimace. Or stick her tongue out at her “feeble” father. He could stand. He could walk. He limped, but could still move. There was no reason he could not go into their teeny, tiny kitchen and make himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “Sure, Dad. Coming right up. I thought you’d make yourself something.”

Turning his head back towards the TV, he glared straight ahead.

In a freak tractor accident, he caught his leg in the machinery and mangled part of it. Coupled with his already weak heart, he could never be the same father she remembered and grew up with. He was surly and sour now, unwilling to do even the most minor of things to make himself feel better. Or even act better. He spent most of his time in bed. Kailynn was often torn between feeling terribly sorry for him when she saw he was in pain, and feeling annoyed at his martyrdom, that prevented him from doing the slightest thing to improve himself. He could have been doing physical therapy and accepting homecare, which several doctors heartily encouraged. Instead, he preferred to complain and lie in bed, sometimes totally whacked out on pain pills. His sedentary lifestyle did little more than atrophy his leg even more. He chose to wallow in misery and self-pity than try anything that might increase his mobility and enable him to regain his independence. Consequently, Kailynn had to pick up a lot of the slack. Now receiving disability because he was hurt while working in one of the local orchards, it simply wasn’t enough. That was why she could not even consider moving out. Her dad needed her too much.

Her mother rarely threw in any morsels of help, and pretty much scoffed at Kailynn for not leaving the valley and her father and brothers long ago. Her mom abandoned her father when Kailynn was eleven. She just left one day, and hardly a month later, had a new boyfriend, who became Kailynn’s stepfather. She was not invited to live with her mother, and it was never even an option or topic of discussion. Her mother merely decided one day to leave her three kids and enjoy the life she felt she deserved. She walked out of the dismal trailer, her lame husband, and looking-to-be juvenile delinquent offspring without ever looking back. It never seemed to occur to her mother that her kids might need her. Her mother currently lived an hour away in a more populated town. Kailynn used to see her every couple of months, but still felt motherless ever since she was a young teen.

Her mother, meanwhile, wanted to relive her youth in a way she hadn’t the first time around. She partied, barhopped and drank to excess. Kailynn’s visits there when she was younger made her so uncomfortable in her mother’s new lifestyle that she opted for the rather pathetic life she shared with her father. She didn’t like the grabby way her new stepfather often greeted her, and also did with her mother. It disgusted her when they made out and groped each other. It was something she couldn’t stand to see. So, of course, her mother didn’t have much of a role in her life, much less than even her father.

They weren’t terrible parents, and didn’t neglect or abuse her. They saw she was always fed, clothed, and sheltered, and were neither mean, nor rude to her. No one ever yelled at her. No one harassed her, or expected much out of her. Her biggest childhood complaint was that she just wished either one of them would notice her and remember they had a daughter. Especially when she entered her teen years. Now? Not so much. But as a teenage girl, she wished for a mother she could go to with her questions, doubts, and adolescent fears. When she got her first period, she wished she could ask her mother all about it. Instead, she was relegated to quietly figuring out how to buy sanitary pads at the River’s End tiny gas station convenience store. She regularly snuck in to buy them until she was sixteen and could drive to a much bigger store.

She felt that she didn’t particularly matter to anyone. Not to her mom, her dad, or her brothers. She did, however, have friends and neighbors who cared about her; but that’s how the whole valley was. She had known them and they her since she was a little girl. The old ladies who came into café were like surrogate mothers, and many of the younger women were her friends and confidantes.

Kailynn felt like she graduated high school and her life kind of stopped. There she was, in the trailer still, with her father and obnoxious brothers. There she was, still a waitress and working for the Rydells, after four-and-a-half years, and nothing had changed.

She wanted it to change. She wanted that more than anything. She wanted Shane too, and she was good and ready to make it happen. However, she didn’t know how to make it happen.

So she settled for boys that she didn’t really care about particularly. They helped her pass the time and kept her Saturday nights busy. What could’ve been more depressing than her already pathetic life if she had nothing to do on Saturday nights?

She quickly went into the kitchen and washed her hands. Still dressed in her uniform, it had flecks of grease stains and coffee spills. She was busy today at the café. There was no reason for her to change. She quickly brought down a small bowl and started mixing up batter to make biscuits. Her dad and brothers always loved her biscuits and gravy.

She, however, longed to be making something different. Something more cultured, made from fine ingredients, which she could not afford, and truthfully, had never even heard of. She longed for so much more than her dismal, boring, drudgery, which she barely endured. Although she had no idea what she longed for, she only knew it was something unlike she had ever known. Was it… culture? She often wondered if that was what she sought. She saw in the movies where people went to dinners that cost hundreds of dollars, and afterwards, attended a play, or concert, or maybe even the symphony. Truly, she didn’t know, since she’d never been to a city. She visited Yakima once. That was probably the biggest city near River’s End. It had close to a hundred thousand people living there and a few buildings that rose up several stories high. But she’d never actually seen the giant skyscrapers that comprised big cities’ skylines.

Someday
. Someday she would see big cities and go to symphonies and plays. She’d drink wine that cost as much as her daily wage, and do something special in which a stained uniform was forbidden. Someday, she’d figure out what she truly wanted. All she really knew at this point in her short life, was what she did not want: the life around her, the people around her, and the men around her.

Her brothers tromped in just as she began scooping the food onto plates. Being loud and boisterous, they often fought. They also made her laugh sometimes, so they weren’t all bad. She didn’t want to stop seeing them; but preferred not to live with them and continually be serving them all of their meals. Or doing their laundry. She didn’t have to, of course, except her dad and brothers left trails of dirt and disarray everywhere. They flaunted their sloppy manners, as was evidenced by all the clutter in the trailer. She couldn’t stand living that way, so she routinely washed and put their things away. At least, she tried to keep the dismal trailer from being downright disgusting. Not that they ever received any company that would have caused them to become embarrassed by the eyesore. The fanciest guests they received were Shane and Ian Rydell. Even Erin, Jack’s girlfriend, and Kailynn’s slowly developing close friend, was not allowed to come there.

“Hey, the guys are coming over later. We got any beer?”

“The guys” meant usually anywhere from ten to fifteen men that her brothers were hanging with at any given moment. A lot of transient workers came and went in the valley. Sometimes, it was the cowboys, who came in town for rodeos, or the migrating, seasonal workers. They usually included Shane Rydell. Her heart skipped a beat. She needed to change, and maybe wash her hair. She had to scrub away the stickiness of grease and coffee that she always worried was slowly enveloping her.

Maybe Drew would arrive by then. He was, of course, her brothers’ friend. That’s how she hooked up with him in the first place. He hung around their trailer a lot. He started making advances toward her on any number of such evenings as tonight promised to be. Big groups. Drinking beer. Hanging out. Drew never even really asked her out on a date, not that she could remember, although it really didn’t even matter.

“No. You guys drank it all the other night.”

Caleb stretched his long legs out before him and sighed. He was so busy scooping the biscuits and gravy into his mouth, he didn’t even look up. “Damn. Can you run out and grab some?”

She bristled. “No. I can’t run to the store. Do it yourself.”

Jordan snickered. “What’s your problem? You on the rag?”

Always. They always said that to her if she ever complained, or refused to do what they asked. She gritted her teeth. Brothers were the most annoying, disgusting siblings she could ever imagine having. Why couldn’t she have had sisters? Polite, sweet, caring sisters.

Instead, she was relegated to living with lazy brothers, who incessantly scratched their “junk” and released any number of rude, bodily noises when they felt so inspired. Their friends weren’t any better. None of them seemed to realize she really was a girl, or that she didn’t appreciate it.

Shoving her own plate away, Kailynn stalked down to her room. She silently refused to answer their sexist assumption about why she might have been in a bad mood. Surely, they could never have been the source of her bad mood, could they? Grown men who couldn’t clean anything, or prepare their own food. Or even work, for that matter. None of that should have concerned her so much, but all of it did.

When she answered the pounding knock on the front door later that evening, she was already changed into shorts and a tank top. She covered it with a loose blouse. She hated her enormous boobs. They were too big and matronly-looking. They weren’t like those nice, perky, fake big sizes. No, hers were natural, full, and thick. They started nearly at her back and sagged down much too far. Her bra straps left deep indentations on her shoulders and she often had a stiff neck and upper back aches. She hated them with a passion that no man could ever hope to understand or comprehend. Sure, her boyfriends adored that part of her anatomy. She wasn’t stupid. She saw where most men’s eyes first went upon meeting her, and even after knowing her. She was that big. She hated seeing anyone’s eyes linger there. Lacking the kind of personality to make light of it, or enjoy it, she was timid, and shy. Not so bubbly and never flirty enough to carry off her boobs as something fun and sexy. Instead, they remained a big nuisance that never ceased to embarrass her. She habitually covered them with any means necessary. Winter was her favorite season, with its big sweaters and even bigger coats.

She opened the door wider and allowed the three friends to enter. Not thirty seconds behind them were Shane and Ian. Her heart tripped when Shane came running up onto the porch. He saluted her with an offhand grin. She tried to mask her discomfort with a quick smile. They all lounged around the trailer. Dad had already gone to his room, shutting the door tightly for the night.

Drew eventually got there and came up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her and let them rest on her waist. She initially jumped at his touch and turned towards him with a frown. He had thick hair and a tuft of it drooped over his forehead. He did that on purpose. She once witnessed him styling it with hair gel, making it spring back just so. It nearly begged a girl’s hand to brush it away, and she was sure that was his intent. It gave him a boyish,
aw, shucks
kind of look.

“I’m sorry about the other night.” He grinned as he nuzzled her neck. She restrained the eye roll and pushed him back a bit. He was way too grabby in front of others. Especially, a trailer full of young guys and she didn’t always appreciate the constant attention.

They were standing in the hallway towards her bedroom. Ian leaned against the kitchen counter, his gaze roaming until it stopped on hers when she accidentally made eye contact with him. She turned away quickly and tried to focus back on Drew’s face. “You should be. You acted like a dickhead.”

He wrapped his arms tighter around her and pressed her body against his chest. “Come on, Lynnie. It’s just that you’re so attractive. How can a guy help himself, and not want to have more of you?”

It was kind of a compliment. So it kind of worked against her resolve to make him grovel a bit more. She relaxed into his arms. “Well, don’t press me again.”

“I won’t. I won’t. Now, are we good?”

She sighed. Why not be good? Shane was throwing peanuts at her brother, rarely sparing a glance at her. So why not be good with Drew? “Yes, we’re good.”

Soon, the crowd grew too large for the cramped double-wide. They spilled out onto the front porch and yard. The night was warm and clear, and the stars hung out over the valley, far outnumbering the fading dots of man-made lights. A large bonfire was ignited and people mingled, drank some more, and laughed harder the later the evening grew. Feeling a bit chilled, she finally stepped close enough to enjoy the fire’s heat through the crowd. She sipped the beer she’d been nursing for over an hour. She wasn’t much of a drinker after having seen how it zapped her brothers’ ambition, and made them spend half their days nursing hangovers. She didn’t see the point. She was enjoying herself tonight, however. The guys were funny tonight, telling one story after another and describing the acts of mayhem they had all partaken in over the last few years. She heard everything: from practical jokes to arrest-worthy exploits. Things she didn’t even consider doing. But she knew her brothers did. She knew Drew sometimes did too. She just was never around during any of it. All the stories were familiar. They were invariably interspersed with sexual references, innuendos and macho exploits. Ever since she was fourteen, her brothers and their friends talked as if she weren’t there, and there wasn’t much they kept from her. She hated those parts of their conversations.