He tore his gaze away from it. He had to keep his feet on the ground here.
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Colt said quietly.
“That’s right. It is.” Jane looked over at him.
“Are you a churchgoer?”
“I normally am,” Jane said. “When I can get there. Everything’s more complicated with twins.”
“Yeah, I could see that.” He cleared his throat. “I go every week, myself. So... I’d be going tomorrow. If you want to come along, I’d be happy to drive you. It’s just a little church on a side road—not so easy to find if you don’t know where you’re going.”
“Yes, that would be nice.” She smiled. “Thanks, Colt.”
He felt gratified to know he could do something for her—make this a bit easier.
“Sure. No problem.”
Colt realized he was looking forward to this, probably more than he should. The thing was, he cared for Jane. She was a good woman, and she deserved better than any of them could offer. A good woman couldn’t fix a broken family.
“Supper.” Peg’s tart voice snapped his attention away from Jane, and he rose to his feet.
“Right. Thanks, Peg,” he said, but when his aunt looked at him, she raised an eyebrow just a little and he felt some heat hit his face. No doubt she was jumping to all sorts of conclusions right now.
But Colt wasn’t trying to start something with Jane. If anything, he was trying to protect her. He could say that he was doing it for Josh, but he wasn’t. He was doing this for himself—and if he could do well by Jane, when she went back to her life, here was hoping he wouldn’t be filled with regrets.
Supper consisted of some dry meatloaf that was salvageable with ketchup on top. The potatoes were quite good, though, and the boiled veggies were downright passable with some butter melting on top of them. Overall, it wasn’t too bad and Colt was too hungry to chew too much anyway.
When Jane took the toddlers to brush their teeth, Colt stayed at the table, his elbows planted in front of him. Peg rose to her feet and started gathering plates.
“Leave that,” Colt said. “I’ll take care of it.”
“I won’t complain about that,” Peg said and she smiled. She paused with her hands on the back of her chair. “She’s nice, isn’t she?”
“Jane?” he asked, as if there were anyone else for Peg to be commenting on.
Peg smiled but didn’t look fooled. “I don’t like just anyone, but she’s...decent. A good mother, too.”
“Yeah, well...” Colt wasn’t sure what he could say to that, so he picked up the plates and brought them to the counter. He turned back to see his aunt heading out of the kitchen. “Peg?”
She turned around. “Hmm?”
“Why did Beau leave me the ranch?” he asked.
“You know why,” she said with a shake of her head. “You wanted to actually ranch this land. Josh didn’t.”
“I wanted this,” Colt admitted quietly. “I really wanted it.”
“And that makes you feel guilty,” Peg concluded.
He looked over at the older woman, then shrugged helplessly. “I was the nephew. I shouldn’t have been put in the will ahead of Josh. We all knew that. Beau was wrong.”
“Beau was wrong about a lot of things,” Peg replied. “You know how he was. He was so determined that Josh do things his way that he couldn’t see past his own ideas. He’d always been like that. You were more like him.”
“I’m not sure that’s a compliment,” Colt said bitterly.
“You know what I mean,” Peg said, softening her tone. “You loved the land. You wanted to raise cattle. You wanted to keep this ranch in the family, and that meant a lot to Beau. He wished Josh could have been more like you.”
“It tore Josh and me apart,” Colt said. “That stupid will...”
“That stupid will has put you in a very good position,” Peg countered. “You wanted to ranch, and now you own your own land. That’s something some men can only dream of. Be grateful that he gave it to you, and not someone else. Because Josh wasn’t getting this land.”
“When Josh found out about the will, he came and asked me to talk to his dad with him,” Colt confessed. “He asked me to tell Beau that I didn’t want to own the land. That I liked things as they were.”
“But you didn’t like it,” Peg replied. “You were working long hours, you were getting paid a fair wage, but it wasn’t much. And you wanted more for your life than to be working for your uncle, and later your cousin.”
“I could have gone elsewhere,” he conceded.
“Listen, Colt. You had someone offer you a ranch of your own, and you jumped at it,” Peg said. “I can’t say that I blame you. No one does.”
“If I hadn’t jumped at it, Josh might have stuck around,” he countered.
“You couldn’t have known,” Peg replied.
“That doesn’t make it any less my fault,” he replied quietly. “Beau offered me what I wanted most, and I sacrificed my relationship with my cousin to get it.”
“Even if you’d told him you didn’t want it, Beau might have still left the ranch to you,” Peg said quietly. “He loved you, Colt. You were a cowboy at heart, and he understood how you ticked. You loved the dirt under your boots in the same way that he did. You cared about the ranch, the cattle, the legacy of this place. That was more than he could say about Josh. He loved his son, too, but he didn’t understand him. Josh was cut from different cloth than you and Beau were. Was that a tragedy? Of course. But you can’t blame yourself for all the ways Beau failed as a father. Your uncle loved you. I’m sorry that his love came at such a high price.”
Colt stuck the plug in the sink and turned on the water. “Thanks, Peg. You’re
