“A part of our business, period, since we’ve asked her to marry us and she said yes.”
“Hey, congratulations!” Cam appeared genuinely happy for him. For them. That reaction reinforced their desire to build a life in Texas—in Lusty. It also underscored that they would have to be careful of their woman, going forward. None of them liked the pretense of Ian alone being her fiancé. But they all understood the necessity of it.
He shook Cam’s hand, and then they both left the building. Cam waved as he drove off, and Ian turned toward his own car, just in time to see Travis drive off.
“Are we about ready to head out to home, then?” Ken asked.
Ian looked at his watch. It was nearly three-thirty in the afternoon. Alice had texted earlier that she planned to cook supper tonight. It would be their first home-cooked-by-them supper in their new house. Ken had called her to ask if she needed them to pick up anything when he’d been busy with Travis, earlier.
The aunts—Samantha, Bernice and Anna—had supplied the fare the night they moved in. The next night, they’d gone to Lusty Appetites, and then last night, they’d met Alice’s brothers at the roadhouse. Bailey had joined them, and it had been a family supper of sorts.
But tonight would be a beginning, their first just-the-three-of-them supper at home.
“Yeah, I’m ready. Did Alice mention what she was making?”
“Her mother’s meatloaf recipe,” Ken said. “She sounded excited about it. I’ve decided I’m going to love it.”
“You’re a wise man. I’ll follow your example.”
Ken seemed to be thinking about something. Ian knew he wouldn’t have to wait too long to know what was on his cousin’s mind.
“Did you ever think things would come together for us so quickly—or so well?” Ken asked as they got into the car.
Ian knew he meant with their woman, and he sensed more to Ken’s question than was on the surface. His cousin was as self-assured and knew his value as much as any other well-adjusted man would. But sometimes—not often, but sometimes—there’d be an echo of the too-small-for-his-age, awkward schoolboy Ken Kendall had once been. A boy who had been embarrassed by his name and who had hated, down to his soul, the teasing he’d received as a child, both at school and from the mean cousins in their family.
Ian had seen signs of that deep-rooted insecurity when they’d sprung getting their own place on Alice and when they’d gone to the warehouse to furnish the house.
Their woman had caught it, too. And though she might not know all the details of their early lives, Ian thought she’d recognized the emotions poking at Ken.
Recognized them, he knew, because she’d told them that she herself had felt like a misfit at times growing up. And likely still had, until she’d met them.
Ian started the car then turned his head to look at Ken. “I knew that once we found her, we’d know it. And we both did, right there in Lusty Appetites. We heard her give her opinion on finding a way to get anything that meant enough, and we were both smitten.”
“Yeah, we were, weren’t we?”
“We were. And what she revealed as she spoke with us that day, and every day since, is that she’s the woman we’d prayed to find—one who is aligned with us on so many issues and in so many ways. So, really then, why wouldn’t we find our early days without a struggle?”
“You know what? You’re right. I just kept thinking that something might tick her off, and then—” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“If we tick her off, she’ll be ticked off. We’ll likely have disagreements, here and there. So we’ll do our part to pay attention to her. To pick up on her clues and to make sure we spend some time, every day, focused on her.”
“That’s a damn fine plan.” Ken grinned. “Let’s get home. I’m looking forward to our first home-cooked meal. It could just very well be that Alice’s meatloaf will become my favorite supper.”
“I’m looking forward to it, too.”
Ian felt very certain that tonight’s supper would not only be the first of many. He felt that the reality of that old expression. Tonight really would be the first night of the rest of their lives.
Chapter Fifteen
“This is like taking a stroll down memory lane.” Ken looked up from his computer screen. His smile looked more relaxed today, and Alice knew whatever past skeletons that had haunted him the other day had been tucked away again.
For now.
She’d been thinking about Ken off and on over the last few days. She was finally coming to see that, just as they liked to say she was perfect for them, that they were perfect for her, too.
Ian’s sometimes insouciance came out to play with her total sense of irreverence, and it was very nice to enjoy that side of him. But under the surface, he had a backbone of titanium. She knew without thinking about it too hard that if she were to consider either man to be head of their family, it would be Ian.
Ken had that thread of insecurity running through him. At the last Sunday supper that they’d enjoyed over at the New House, Grandpa Noah had confided that, of all his grandsons, Ken had been the most sensitive, the most easily hurt as a boy.
He more or less embraced that nickname of “triple K” now as an adult. But Grandpa’s words had let her know it hadn’t always been so. She’d also heard stories of the “mean cousins.” Listening around the table that last Sunday as Sean and Noah, recently returned from their latest jaunt, told about their own past encounters with those cretins…Alice
