Lovers at Heart (The Bradens, Book One: Love in Bloom Series)

Chapter Thirty-Four, Lovers at Heart

Chapter Thirty-Four

BY DINNERTIME TREAT was exhausted. His father was feeling infinitely better and practically needed to be tied to his chair to follow Ben’s order to rest. Every time his siblings turned around, their father was trying to get outside to the barn. Josh finally lured him inside by offering to watch a rodeo with him, and Treat sat on the front porch, watching Rex park the tractor in the barn.

They’d worked from sunup to sundown, and they still had evening chores to take care of. He had to give Rex credit. Rex was still running on full steam while Treat was sucking down coffee just to get a second wind.

The screen door opened behind him. “You still alive out here?” Savannah sat beside him on the top step.

“Barely. I had forgotten how labor intensive it was to run the ranch. I don’t know how he does it.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty tough. So are you, you know. Everyone is tough in different ways.”

“I guess.” Treat looked at Savannah. The spark in her hazel eyes had dulled. He’d assumed it was from his father’s health issues, but he remembered what his father had barked at him in the hospital. “Everything okay with you? What was Dad talking about with Connor? Do I need to pummel him for you? Because I’m wondering if Rex might be a better person for that job.”

She wrapped her arm in his and laid her head on his shoulder. “No one is better for that job than you. You’ve always been my protector.”

The weight of her against him reminded him of Max. He’d called her two more times, and he was kicking around the idea of showing up at her apartment. He just wasn’t sure that hounding her was the right thing to do.

“Way to skirt the question, Vanny.”

She sighed. “It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t everything?” Treat had replayed the night before Max left over and over in his mind, like a movie stuck on rewind, and he still couldn’t figure out what Max was so afraid of. Every relationship meant compromise. He wasn’t closing down shop. He was simply not going to acquire more overseas resorts. And now that he’d formed a plan, he wasn’t even giving that up. He was just changing how he’d do business in the future.

“Yeah, I guess. Do you remember what Mom and Dad’s relationship was like when you were younger? Before Mom got sick? I was too young to really remember. All I remember are trips to the hospital, being quiet when she needed to rest, and celebrating when she was feeling well. That would last a few days, a week, and then she was resting again.”

Treat had often wondered how much his younger siblings really remembered about their mother. Hugh had been an infant, and he knew Josh had also been too young to remember, but Savannah had been four when their mother got sick, and he’d avoided talking about their mother, in fear of upsetting her.

“She was the most beautiful woman who ever lived, Vanny. She had this light about her that’s so hard to describe. Mom was always happy. She used to yell at Dad when he’d try to toughen you up. I can still hear her.” He raised his voice an octave. “Hal, she’s a girl. G-I-R-L. She doesn’t need to know how to climb onto a roof and bang a nail. That’s what men are for.” He laughed at the memory.

“She did?”

“Oh, yes. You were always treated like a girl by Mom. She’d want to dress you in frilly pink dresses and make your hair all pretty, and Dad would say she was raising a sissy.”

Savannah pulled away from him and scrunched her nose. “Pink dresses? I can’t even imagine. I loved growing up as a tomboy. I always thought Dad did such a good job with us.”