I bring him his plate last.
When I set it down in front of him, I bend just enough that I can speak under the sound of the brothers' forks. "Thank you."
He looks up at me. "For what, Hadley?"
"You know what for."
He holds my eyes for a long second. Pale blue-green, sun-flushed at the cheekbones, a man who hasn't slept in a day and I’m the only one who knows it.
He nods. Just once.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't make me carry the gratitude, or pretend the thing didn't happen.
He just says, low, "Anytime."
I go back to the kitchen and I keep working.
* * *
Marlena drops by at ten with Cal on her hip and a covered ceramic dish in her free hand. "I made peach cobbler this mornin'. Had more peaches than Cal and Phantom could eatbetween 'em. Phantom told me about yesterday," she says, holding the dish out. "Figured you might want some after—well. After."
She doesn't say after Todd, but I know what she’s trying to say.
I take the dish. I make us ice coffee instead of lemonade because it’s too early for anything tart.
We sit on the porch. She doesn't ask about Todd. Phantom already told her so she knows whatever she needs to.
I keep my shit together, even though I’m still pissed at Todd. Marlena drove over to check on me, and she doesn't deserve to mop up my mood for it.
I don't unload on Marlena. She has enough to deal with. Being the President’s ol’ lady has to come with its fair share of trials and tribulations.
The anger stays banked behind my ribs while we talk about Cal teething, Presley calling last night from College Station, about Phantom being out on a run, and the fact that the new prospect—the one whose name I can never remember.
I tell her that, and she laughs—apparently shot his own foot at a target range and lived to tell about it.
Before she leaves, she shifts Cal on her hip and looks at me square.
"Hadley?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm not going to say a lot about yesterday because you didn't ask me to. But I want you to hear one thing from me."
"All right."
"Rogue would burn this ranch down before he'd let something happen to you or that boy. You hear me? He'd burn it down to the cattle skull on the gate and walk into the fire smiling."
She doesn't pause for a reaction. She just steps off my porch, heads to her SUV, and drives the gravel back to the main house.
I sit there with the cobbler dish cooling between my hands and I let what she said sink in.
* * *
Mama Lou's old blue Ford pulls up to my cabin just after eleven with a peach pie on the passenger seat and a nine-year-old girl in the back.
Do I have a sign on me that says ‘bring all the peach desserts’?
I've heard about Mama Lou. I haven't met her until now.