They both looked back at the table where they had left the other two behind. Iris looked like she wanted to pull her eyelashes out, so great was her discomfort. Elliott didn’t seem to notice.
Iris would be fine if she wasn’t so wound up about the whole thing.
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be much easy about that,” he said dryly.
“She just needs time to warm up.”
“Why are you meddling?”
“I already told you,” she responded. “I want to make sure that everyone is taken care of. That’s it. I want to give back something of what I got.”
“Next time make her a cake.”
“She’s better at baking than I am. She’s better at... everything than I am. The only thing I’ve ever done for Iris is give her a potential streak of premature gray hair and teach her enduring patience. Nothing has made this clearer to me than watching...watching my other siblings do new things, have new lives, while she hasn’t. She had to raise me, and don’t think I’m not aware of that. You, too,” she said.
He drew back. “I didn’t raise you.”
“You know. But you are always there. You and Iris and Pansy and Ryder. Colt and Jake helped out, too. You were all there for me. And I was the baby. I couldn’t contribute anything.”
“Nobody would have asked you to.”
“I know that,” she said. “I know. But still.”
Laz Jenkins, the owner of the bar, sidled up to where they were standing. “Anything I can get you?”
“Yes. Four beers,” she said. “Whatever you have on tap that is good.”
Laz nodded in the affirmative and pulled four beers, setting them out on the counter. “On your tab?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Come on,” she said, picking up two of the beers.
“Maybe we should walk slow.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not in a particular hurry to get back to that.”
“Come on. We need to help Iris feel at ease.”
“I don’t think anything is going to do that.”
By the time they got up to the table Logan had plastered a smile on his face. He was obviously ready to at least pretend to be well-behaved, and for that she was grateful. Because knowing Logan it could have gone either way.
“We were just talking about...water filtration,” Iris said.
“Well,” Elliott added, “Iris was also generously sharing her sourdough recipe with me.”
“Oh, yes,” Rose said, feeling animated now. “Iris makes absolutely the best sourdough bread. She’s been making it for me since I was a kid. She got the recipe from our mother.”
Iris nodded, forcing a smile. “Yes. I did.”
“Iris can send it to you!” Rose said. “It’s really a great recipe.”
She realized he might not bake, but he did seem enthused about the subject so that was potentially a good sign.
“That would be terrific,” Elliott responded.
They found a rhythm in the conversation, and while it was true that Elliott could never be called a sparkling conversationalist, he was serviceable enough. And in fact, this time around they got a chance to see a little bit of his humor. Iris began to warm up, bringing her own sly humor to the conversation, which Rose always enjoyed. Iris wasn’t flashy or animated with her humor, but she was clever. Rose had always thought that about her sister. That she was a diamond in the rough for anyone who wanted to actually get to know her.
She wasn’t obvious. She was understated, and so often understated tended to get overlooked.
Which really was what had drawn her to Elliott for her sister in the first place.
She had seen him around for years, and he seemed very nice.
He didn’t attract the kind of attention that Logan did. Or even the way her brother, Ryder, did.
But they were tall and obvious in a chiseled sort of way, both of them very clearly cowboys. Then there were her cousins Colt and Jake. Rodeo cowboys who didn’t just emanate that sort of rugged charm, but who also seemed to carry a layer of danger with them. Women made fools of themselves for them.
But Iris was steady, and she wasn’t going to like someone like that. No, she was well suited to somebody who was like her. Someone put together. Someone who could manage their life.
Rose knew it.
So Logan and even Iris could doubt her all they wanted, but she did know what she was doing.
She did.
“Who feels like dancing?”
Rose thought it was a little bit of a funny question coming from Elliott, since she wouldn’t have thought that he was much of a dancer, but if he wanted to get Iris into closer proximity, then that was great as far as Rose was concerned.
“Me,” she said cheerfully. “Come on,” she repeated, goading Logan and Iris.
She knew that Logan was more than capable of dancing when there was a woman on the dance floor he was interested in getting his hands on.
She’d seen it a couple of times. She had never particularly liked it. It was just one of those things that seemed beneath him. Like he was too... She didn’t know. Something. To behave like other men did and to be motivated by...that stuff. But that was all kind of childish thinking, and she realized that.
There was a part of her that still hero-worshipped him.
Because he had been such a large, defining figure in her life for so long.
Because of the way he had cared for her. Because of the way he had talked to her straight about grief and life and big, hard things that a kid shouldn’t have been explaining to another kid. But they’d had no choice.
They’d had each other.
So yeah, she always felt a twinge of discomfort when she saw the way that women responded to Logan, and the way that he responded to them.
It was uncomfortable. And stranger, it made her feel like she was standing outside a window, looking in at something.
But the real point was that he did dance, and she knew it. So he could suck it up and do it now.
