Asher learned all the history and details of the modern day Rydell River Ranch and Resort. Starting with the four brothers whose parents died in a tragic car accident and left their Rydell River Ranch to them. It was rather simple then for Jack, Ian, Shane and Joey Rydell. Four brothers running a family ranch. Jack had two sons, Ben and Charlie, from his first wife who died. And for many years that was the entire family. Until Jack met Erin.
Jack married Erin and they waited more than a decade to have their daughter, Melanie. That’s why Melanie’s “niece,” Lillian, was two years older than her.
Charlie Rydell married Cami, who was AJ’s daughter, and they had a set of twins, Ethan and Isaac. So, Cami was Asher’s sister by adoption and her boys were his nephews, and since he’d been around for thirteen years, that’s exactly what they meant to him.
The next original Rydell brother, Ian, married a local girl, Kailynn Hayes. They didn’t have kids until a good decade or longer. First, they had a son named Hunter and a few years later, another son, Landon.
Shit. Wait until Hunter got wind of what the hell Daisy just said. Maybe Hunter could help him make sense of it.
The next brother, Shane Rydell, married a local schoolteacher named Allison, and they had four daughters, Rose, Iris, Violet and Daisy.
Daisy’s two older sisters were, in fact, married, and were starting to have kids.
Rose married Mateo and she was pregnant.
Iris married Quinn Larkin.
And then there were Violet and Daisy.
No doubt they’d add more kids to the expanding, tangled Rydell family tree.
That left the most blended family of Joey Rydell. He married Hailey Starr, a woman who had two kids. Those kids, Brianna and Jacob, became part of the Rydell family and lived close by. Brianna married a guy who worked for the ranch named Finn Alexander, and they had two kids, Ayden and Emory. Jacob suffered from drug addiction and had a son he couldn’t care for when he was young. Hailey and Joey raised his son, Silas, although Silas understood Jacob was his biological dad. Silas nonetheless treated Jacob as his brother and his grandparents as his parents. Jacob, years later, married Luna and they had two kids, Blake and Brynn.
That covered most of the Rydells.
Then there were Kailynn Rydell’s two brothers, Jordan and Caleb Hayes, who worked for decades on the ranch with Asher’s dad, AJ. Now in their mid and late fifties, they were still strong ranch hands.
Jordan married Pedro Ruiz and they adopted two siblings, Roman and Rodrigo.
Caleb married Josephina Ruiz, yes, a brother and sister, to complicate things even more. They had two kids, Dominik and Eliana.
When Asher found this big, robust, complicated family, he expected it to be another temporary situation. Now, on an almost daily basis, Asher felt relieved that it turned out to be a permanent one.
And Daisy was trying to change all the rules.
His head swam and his eyes got blurry.
Daisy touched his face and the soft, silky fingertips sliding over his jaw and up the side of his cheek captured his attention. “Asher?” That husky tone was familiar to him when women spoke. Women who were sexual beings. Women who wanted him. For sex.
Not freaking little Daisy.
He suddenly stood up and pushed her back, striding four steps away from her. Standing near the edge of the roof, he kept his back to her as he faced the opposite direction.
“You’re drunk and mistaken, Daisy. We have to pretend this never happened. You made a mistake. Do you hear me?”
He didn’t turn towards her. He couldn’t. Not without keeping his sanity. He wasn’t sure what to think or do. His brain was scattering in pieces all around. He couldn’t follow a thought. No. Blinding pain slashed through his head. Daisy! Daisy was coming onto him. He shouldn’t have gotten her so drunk. The blame lay at his door. The combination of too much alcohol and the deep, profound commiseration were mistakenly regarded as attraction by her. A false sense of affection and closeness. She was equating their intimacy and emotions with mature love. That was it. It had to be it. She wasn’t his blood, so it wasn’t inevitable or anything. But she was very much mistaken.
He could sense her rising behind him. Her voice was low, and it rumbled through his body as she said, “I am not that drunk. I did not make a mistake either. I will not pretend this didn’t happen when I am clearly right here and know that it did. I said the things I wanted to say. I’ve wanted to say them for years. Do you hear me? Years. And I didn’t before because I was scared and obviously unsure. For all the weird reasons that lie between us. But I said them. I will not be told how I feel. Not anymore. I might not be sure about my life choices yet, but I’m smart enough to know how I feel. Especially when it’s been going on this long. You are a coward. You could have let me down gently if you don’t feel the same. I’d understand if my feelings weren’t reciprocated. I suspected that when I said them. But don’t you dare try to deny my feelings as if you have the right to do that. You can’t make that decision for me. No. Hell no, Asher Reed.”
Then… she was gone.
He turned and Daisy vanished. He didn’t know what to do now except grip his aching, heavy head and stumble into his bed. He planned to pretend nothing about this day or week happened. The earth seemed upside-down now. Everything was wrong, sad and out of place.
Chapter 4
“HEY, CAMI. CAN I talk to you?”
His sister opened the door to their two-story home. The Rydell family had portioned off a large section of their ranch years ago to allow the various family members to build single family houses. Over the years, it made an exclusive neighborhood of sorts, right there on their own land. Jack and Erin had a home, Ian and Kailynn, Joey and Hailey, as well as Cami and Charlie. After traveling the world for many years, Cami and Charlie came back to the ranch to have their kids. The twins came from Cami’s side of the family. No one ever expected her to have two boys at once.
“Sure, what’s up?” Cami was busy folding laundry on the couch. She swiped her hand to a chair beside the occupied couch. “You can entertain me while I wade through all the boys’ clothes. No one told me I’d be doing boat loads of laundry. Sometimes the boys go through two and three outfits a day.”
Asher had to laugh. “I remember doing that. Digging in the sand, making piles of fine dust, using the tractors… this place is a nirvana for kids. I couldn’t believe anything like this existed until I saw it for myself.”
Cami snorted. “Don’t I know it. I was thirteen too, you know. But unlike you, I was just a little shit when I got here. It was the middle of the summer and I was imagining myself as a goth-diva. I wouldn’t wear anything but tight, black, skinny jeans and sweatshirts. I remember how I melted in the sun when I finally did start to explore the place. Mom wisely told me to put on some sunscreen and wipe off my makeup. I was so damn stubborn then, she had to work pretty hard to penetrate my defenses.”
“And yet she never stopped, did she?”
“No.” Cami stared down at the small shirt in her hand as she folded it, and the beginning of a smile appeared on her lips. “No, Kate never gives up. She might be the only reason I’m the woman I am today. And why I stayed.”
“It was both of them for me.”