“Yeah. Carmen’s moving to the cottage in town, remember? I could have gone ahead and moved in out here. And FYI, I’m not allowing her to give me Silver Springs like she wants. I’m buying it from her.”
Since he was driving, he didn’t stare at her when she made a weird sound, but he did give her a glance. “You’re not taking the job in Dallas?” she asked.
Oh, so that was what the sound was about, and he frowned. “No. I was never going to take that job.”
She looked at him as if he’d just dropped the biggest bombshell in the history of bombshells. Hell. He obviously owed her an explanation. One that would have to wait, he decided, when he pulled into the driveway of the ranch and spotted the car and driver at the side of the house. So, apparently Hamish hadn’t driven himself. If he had, that would have given Gabriel the excuse to arrest him, since the man didn’t have a valid license.
Hamish was sitting on the porch steps, in the very spot where Carmen had been during Rosalie’s and his last visit. But his great-aunt wasn’t serving beer or lemonade tonight.
Nope.
She was standing in the doorway of the house, and while she didn’t look upset, or furious, she clearly hadn’t welcomed Hamish inside.
Sporting the same curly helmet of gray hair that he had in his old DMV photo, Hamish got to his feet when Gabriel and Rosalie got out of the truck. Hamish didn’t look upset, or furious, either. He seemed ready to do some groveling, but there wasn’t enough groveling in the universe to make up for what he’d done.
Hamish held up his hands as Gabriel and Rosalie approached. “If you’re going to punch me,” the man said, “wait until I confess that I’m the one who sent you each breakup letters fifteen years ago.”
“We know,” Gabriel and she said in unison, both of their tones as flat as the look Gabriel was giving his great-uncle.
Hamish flinched, frowned and then slid his gaze from Rosalie to him. “Not excusing what I did,” Hamish said, “but I figured you were looking for a way out of Last Ride, and I gave you one with that letter.”
Gabriel couldn’t deny that first part. He had been trying to find a way to leave town and not hurt Rosalie in the process, but he hadn’t come up with a solution. Neither had Hamish with those heart-crushing letters.
“I would have preferred Gabriel’s goodbye to come from Gabriel,” Rosalie snarled. “And you misspelled two words in the one you sent me. That might seem nitpicky in the grand scheme of things, but I went through the next fifteen years wondering how Gabriel had managed to get straight As in English when he’d flubbed words likefarewellandforget.”
“And I spent fifteen years wondering why the hell Rosalie would even use a word likefarewell,” Gabriel grumbled. Of course, until recently he hadn’t wondered about it enough to consider that she hadn’t even written it.
“I thought I was doing the right thing,” Hamish said. “I believed you were repeating the mistakes I’d made.”
That caused Carmen to make a disapprovinghmmpsound. Rosalie huffed and rolled her eyes.
The sound and the glare Rosalie gave him didn’t stop Hamish, though. “I always believed Parkman blue blood doesn’t mix with McCloud,” he went on, earning him a growl from Carmen this time. “Or so I thought,” he quickly added. “But I was wrong.”
“You think?” Carmen snapped, and she made her way onto the porch. “You thought DNA determines happiness? It doesn’t.”
“I know,” Hamish softly agreed, and he repeated it in a whisper while shaking his head. He groaned and sank back down on the step. “I came back to see you,” he continued, aiming that at Carmen. “About a year after I left, I came back and spotted you in the barn. You were smiling, obviously very happy. So, I guess thatHa Ha, Carmen. I got the last laughwas really a laugh on me.”
“Yes, it was,” Carmen agreed, but the fight was gone from her voice.
“I don’t know why I was so bitter,” Hamish continued. “And I blamed it on everything but myself. This ranch. Your silver-spoon family. The fact I was practically broke when I came to the marriage. After I won the lottery, I knew I wasn’t miserable because I didn’t have money. I knew it was on me and me alone.”
“He gave me a check for a million dollars,” Carmen said, showing it to them.
“Her half of the lottery I won,” Hamish supplied. “It seemed only fair because I chose the numbers of her birthday.” He stayed quiet for a moment and got to his feet. “Let me be a cautionary tale, Gabriel. Don’t screw things up like I did.”
Gabriel nearly snapped that he’d never do that, but that would have been the anger talking. Truth was, he had screwed up with Rosalie, and now he was hoping he’d get the chance to fix that.
The words seemed to have an effect on Carmen, too. She wasn’t exactly misty-eyed, but she no longer looked ready to shove that check into some orifice of Hamish’s body.
Hamish turned to Rosalie. “I heard you drew my name for the Last Ride Society. Mind telling me what you were going to put in your report on my life?”
Rosalie opened her mouth, probably to snarl out a laundry list of his wrongdoings, but she stopped and seemingly rethought that. “Maybe I would have said that I hoped you wouldn’t blow any second chance you got. A second chance you wouldn’t deserve, by the way, but hey, sometimes people get lucky.”
Hamish smiled. Then he laughed. He gave Gabriel a playful jab on the arm. “You’ve got a good one there, Gabriel. I can see why you love her. Can see why she loves you, too.”
The silence rolled in. An awkward kind of silence, because neither Rosalie nor he addressed the love thing. Gabriel heldhis breath, waiting to see if Rosalie would laugh and deny it. Not because that was what she would want or how she felt but because she might think it was what he wanted to hear.
It wasn’t.