LITMIR.BIZ

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tried to ignore the fact that it annoyed him.

      Fact was, he should encourage Simon. Brooke seemed nice, could cook like a taste bud’s dream come true, and was pretty. No, she was more than pretty. But he was afraid to put a name to how he thought she looked. He didn’t want to risk wanting something he couldn’t have. Shouldn’t have.

      And the last thing any woman needed in her life was him.

      “Ryan, why don’t you help Brooke with the dishes?” his mom said as they all began scooting away from the table.

      “Oh, I’ll do it,” Grace said.

      “Nonsense. You worked hard all day.”

      Ryan thought about how he’d worked nearly nonstop since daybreak, but he didn’t point out that fact, didn’t even meet his mom’s eyes. Objecting would just draw more attention to the situation and give his mom fuel for her matchmaking fire.

      “Sure.” He stood and started collecting dishes.

      When Brooke joined him in the kitchen, she started loading the dishwasher as he scraped what little was left on the plates into the trash.

      “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “Go on and be with your family.”

      “I’d rather do this. I think Mom has a Scrabble tournament planned.”

      “I heard that,” Merline called out from the dining room. “Don’t think either one of you is getting out of it.”

      He caught the surprise on Brooke’s face that was coated with a layer of fatigue. With a lowered voice, he said, “Don’t feel you have to stay.”

      “No, it’s okay. It’s good to get to know everyone I’ll be interacting with.”

      Working together, they finished the cleaning by the time his mom got the Scrabble board set up.

      “How are we doing teams this time?” Simon asked as he stepped over Nathan’s outstretched legs and took a seat in the living area.

      “Guys versus girls,” Grace said.

      “Oh, no,” Nathan said. “You all killed us last time.”

      Grace smiled wide. “That’s why I like that team structure.”

      “How do you think we should divide?” his mom asked, looking at Brooke.

      “Uh … names in a hat?”

      “Well, we got plenty of hats,” his dad said, grabbing his from the rack by the front door. He tossed it bottom up on the coffee table made from a slab of a huge tree trunk polished to a high shine.

      Ryan wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be on Brooke’s team or not. On the one hand, he had to get used to her and over the initial attraction. He didn’t want to deal with the awkward feelings every time he saw her. On the other, what if being around her just increased the attraction? That was a complication he didn’t need in his otherwise simple life.

      He shook his head, telling himself just to focus on getting through family night. He could do that—he certainly had enough practice.

      They ended up on the same team, and in the shifting of positions he found himself sitting next to Brooke on the couch.

      She smelled like roses.

      He took a slow, deep breath so no one would notice. Of all the flowers, she had to smell like roses. He closed his eyes for a moment, remembering the day when he’d been sleeping on the side of the road outside Baghdad. The air had been choked with dust, heat and sweat, not fit for man or any other living creature to breathe. Out of nowhere, he’d wanted nothing more than to smell roses. It hadn’t made sense. The Hill Country was filled with wildflowers, and his family didn’t grow roses. But the desire to smell them had taken over and dogged him for days. He’d begun to think the heat had finally used his skull for an oven and baked his brain.

      When he’d been shipped back to San Antonio to mend, he’d asked one of the nurses at Brooke Army Medical Center to get him a vase of roses. She hadn’t even blinked at his request, making him wonder what other types of odd things broken soldiers asked for after they’d been to hell and back. The scent of those roses had helped him more than the therapy sessions during those early days, convincing him each day that he was truly back home in Texas.

      “Yoo-hoo, Earth to Ryan,” Simon said.

      Ryan opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented.

      “It’s your turn to draw tiles,” Brooke said beside him. Her voice sounded as soft as those yellow rose petals.

      He plunged himself fully into the present, drawing letter tiles from the bag and refusing to catch his mother’s gaze. He suspected she would be wearing that too-familiar expression of worry for him. She thought she hid it well, but she was wrong.

      When he revealed the three tiles to his teammates, Nathan groaned at the Q. But Brooke took it and the other tiles and immediately started rearranging letters. He did his best to hide the wide grin that wanted to spread across his face at the word her quick fingers produced. If the other team made the right play, his was going to be off to a great start. Suddenly, a game of family Scrabble didn’t seem like such a hardship.

      BROOKE KEPT HER expression neutral, but she almost lost it when she glanced at Ryan and saw the edges of his mouth twitching. If she knew him better, she’d be tempted to nudge him in the ribs to keep him from giving away that she had a high-scoring play in the making.

      “They’ve got something good,” Grace said as she nodded toward him.

      Simon looked up from examining his team’s tiles. “What? No one’s even made a play yet.”

      Brooke kept her competitive spirit tamped down until the other team placed their opening word, stare, on the board for a total of ten points. Only when she put her team’s last tile into its spot did she meet the eyes of her opponents and smile.

      The forty points of oblique stared up at everyone.

      Merline slapped her palms against her knees and laughed. “We’ve got ourselves a serious player.” Her pale blue eyes sparkled, and Brooke recognized the look of excitement at the upcoming challenge.

      As play after play was made, Brooke wondered if there had ever been a more raucous game of Scrabble. She found herself laughing along with everyone else, and it felt good, like a massage to her bruised emotions. It’d been a long time since she’d had anything to laugh about. It was nice to be appreciated again, too, and that’s exactly how she felt when the various members of the Teague family went back for seconds—or in a couple of cases, thirds—of her desserts.

      “I’m going to be fat in a week with your cooking, Brooke,” Simon said as he polished off another slice of orange-juice cake.

      “You’ll just have to find more crooks to chase,” Ryan said.

      Crooks? She met Ryan’s gaze, and he must have seen her unspoken question.

      “Simon is our local sheriff. Ranching isn’t enough for him. He has to chase bad guys, too.” Ryan said it as though it was an old joke, but the revelation caused Brooke’s mood to shift. She thought of the last time she’d spoken with police officers and the horrible aftermath. Would Simon be able to tell she was hiding something?

      Fatigue settled on her like a heavy, suffocating second skin. As soon as her team pulled out a win, she decided to make her exit. Luckily, it appeared as if everyone else was calling it an evening, too, so she didn’t stand out.

      “Sorry if it felt like you got a bit of trial by fire tonight,” Merline said as she accompanied Brooke into the kitchen.

      “It was actually fun. Can’t tell you the last time I played a board game.”

      “Good. Now do you need some time off tomorrow to get settled?”

      “No, I can be here

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