LITMIR.BIZ

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thoughts—and he seemed to be doing that quite a bit—she would find herself fighting a smile.

      Her—the remote Byrd. The prickly one who had never found the kind of love Tammy and Doc or Jenna and J.D. had, and the one who probably never would, based on her record of dating, then deciding her time was better spent on whatever project she had on the front burner.

      Speaking of which…

      Her alarm clock read 5:00 p.m., and she inhaled, standing, then leaving her bedroom. When she got to the living room, everyone was waiting: Jenna, who sat in the new rocking chair by the fireplace; Tammy, who perched on a leather sofa in between her brothers, Aidan and Nathan, both dwarfing her with their size.

      “What’s so all-fire important that you pulled me out of my cabin?” Nathan, the younger brother, asked lightly. He and Aidan hadn’t just been staying in their own cabins on the property, they had been making improvements bit by bit, practicing their home contracting business skills on the Flying B’s structures.

      Donna tried to smile at Nathan’s high spirits. At least her cousin’s jocular sense of humor was intact… for now.

      Aidan, the serious one, merely waited for Donna to start.

      “I got some good news today from Roland Walker.” Donna had learned from Dad that you always started out positive if you were about to lower the boom on someone. “But it’s also news you’ll want to brace yourselves for.”

      Jenna sat forward in the rocking chair. “Roland found out that Savannah did have a child?”

      Donna nodded, letting them all take that in.

      On the sofa, Tammy bit her lip, suppressing a smile. She’d been the most curious out of all of them when it came to Savannah. Jenna just sat back in her chair, thoughtful, but Aidan was running a hand through his black hair, cursing under his breath, exchanging a look with an equally darkened Nathan.

      “It’s a boy,” Donna said, still not knowing exactly how she felt about all of this, herself, now that matters had gone so far. “His name is James Bowie Jeffries.”

      Aidan let loose with that curse, following up with, “Are you kidding me? That woman had the gall to name him—”

      “In the same way our dads were named?” Nathan interrupted, his mood definitely blacker.

      “William Travis Byrd,” Aidan said. “Sam Houston Byrd. Now James Bowie Jeffries. All named after Texas heroes.”

      “Except James Bowie isn’t a Byrd,” Nathan said, all traces of humor gone now.

      Tammy said, “I have to admire Savannah.”

      “For what?” both brothers asked.

      “For owning what she did.” Tammy’s black hair swung over her shoulders as she looked at one brother, then the other. “I wonder if she told James who the father was or if she raised him to be a Byrd.”

      “What is a Byrd?” Aidan asked. “None of us even knew that until we met Tex, and based on what we gleaned from the little our dads have told us, Tex didn’t want any part of Savannah. So how would she know the definition?”

      Nathan folded his bulky arms over an equally wide chest. “Tex threw her off this ranch after he found Sam and her together then everyone went their separate ways.”

      The last thing Donna wanted was for this to disintegrate into a Sam versus William match. All of them were getting along way too well for that to happen.

      “The bottom line is,” she said, “we’re going to have to make a decision. It doesn’t have to be tonight, but Roland said he can track James down if we want to meet him.”

      The boys chuffed.

      Jenna rose from the rocking chair. “He’s our brother… or cousin. Any way you put it, James is one of us.”

      Aidan stopped laughing. “That’s another thing. I’d like to know just why it is he needs to be tracked down. Roland found Savannah already. Why isn’t James easier to find?”

      Donna automatically walked toward her sister, whom she had supported during the family’s first vote, when they had debated whether to hire a P.I. to investigate Savannah in the first place. She’d had mixed feelings about locating Savannah then, too, but she had wanted to turn over a new leaf and support Jenna and her desire to find Savannah more than anything else.

      “Roland told me,” Donna said, “that James and Savannah are estranged.”

      “Seems like she has somewhat of a pattern,” Aidan muttered.

      Tammy elbowed him in the ribs and he gritted his jaw.

      “Why’re they estranged?” she asked.

      Donna shook her head. “Roland doesn’t have that information right now, but we could ask him to find out.”

      Now Nathan was on his feet. “This is how I see it—we’ve already had any curiosity about Savannah appeased.” He shot a look to Tammy, making sure everyone knew that she had been working overtime to assuage his feelings about that family decision. “But do we really want to take this further?”

      Aidan stood, too, and although Nathan was a big man, his older brother was even larger. “Right now, we don’t know who fathered James. I’m fine with keeping it that way.”

      “Why?” Tammy asked from her seat on the sofa.

      “Because knowing the answer is going to put a real wedge between all of us,” Aidan said. “Can you imagine trying to work together on the Flying B after we know the truth? Tex didn’t bequeath his properties to us in order to tear us apart—he wanted us to stay together.”

      Nathan raised a finger. “We haven’t even talked about what kind of canyon this is going to put between our dads. They’re off traipsing around the wilderness right now on some male twin bonding ritual that I hope will finally do the trick and bring them together again, and here we are, debating about ruining that. They both have egos, and…”

      Donna had gone pricklier than ever. “You mean my dad has the ego, don’t you?”

      Jenna came closer to her as the boys, and even Tammy, got an I’m-not-saying-another-word-about-that look on their faces.

      Donna sighed. “It’s true that our dads have mended a lot of old wounds lately. But part of me wonders if putting this information in a proverbial closet will do more damage than ever.”

      Then again, no one was talking about how James might feel about a decision that was really his.

      “I agree about ignoring the truth,” Tammy said. “We should just lay everything to rest now. It could be that the revelation of whose son James really is will heal us altogether since not knowing would eat away at us and make things much worse.”

      Silence bit the room until Jenna took a breath, then spoke.

      “We should get in touch with our dads to see what they think.”

      When Donna glanced at Jenna, she knew that her sister would take it upon herself to contact their father since she had already reconciled with him. Donna sent her a smile of thanks, even while she ached to talk to him, too.

      But how, after everything he’d done to let her down?

      Tammy fetched a phone from a holster on her jeans. “I’m calling Dad now. I talked to him last night, so I’ll bet they’re within service range.”

      “We really want to ruin their idyllic nature walk?” Nathan asked.

      Tammy moved her thumb over her smart phone screen. “I don’t see that there’s a choice. They can hash this out together in the boonies.”

      “My vote’s still a big no about having our P.I. find the kid,” Aidan said.

      Nathan chuffed. “That

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