“When I first got the call from Larry,” Jonas went on, “I thought he was going to tell me that you’d drawn Maddie’s name.”
Lily made a quick sound of agreement. “I thought the same thing when I spotted the crowd.” She didn’t add they’d dodged a bullet by it not being Maddie because she had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach there might be a bullet of a different kind headed her way.
“I think it would have been hard on Eli to have Maddie’s life dissected,” Jonas added.
“Yes,” she verified. Because such dissecting would have brought up her death.
“What’s Alma doing?” he asked, tipping his head to the woman. Since only Alma’s overalls-clad butt and legs were showing, Jonas no doubt recognized her from her car.
“Getting some research stuff on Hezzie.” Lily didn’t add that Alma was also acting weird. Then again, Alma had begun her stand-up comic career at a point in her life when most people would have been winding down, so weird was usually Alma’s default behavior.
“Alma, you need help carrying that?” Jonas called out to her.
“Nope. It’s not heavy. I’m just making sure it’s all here before I give it to Lily.” Alma glanced back at them and kept aiming those glances at her while she continued to thumb through the box. It seemed to Lily, though, that Alma was stalling more than verifying the box’s contents.
Since Jonas was studying Alma, too, Lily expected him to remark on her odder-than-usual behavior. But he didn’t. “Once Alma’s gone, we need to talk,” Jonas said, keeping his voice low. “I found something in the mailbox.”
Now Lily had to risk that eye contact when she turned toward him. “What?”
Her mind started doing more whirling with speculation. Some kind of prank maybe, like poop? After all, she had a teenage daughter and Jonas had a teenage stepson, so one of their kids’ friends could have thought that was a fun way to pass the last week of summer break.
Jonas didn’t answer because Alma chose that exact moment to drag the box from her back seat and head toward them. Despite Alma’s assurance that it wasn’t heavy, Jonas hurried to help her with it.
“Thanks bunches,” Alma said. “If you want to go ahead and set it on Lily’s porch, that’d be great.”
Of course, Jonas didn’t refuse, but Lily saw the suspicion on his face and was sure it was on hers as well. Alma clearly had something she wanted to tell Lily in private.
As Nola and Lorelei had done, Alma watched Jonas as he took the box from her and walked toward the porch. The woman shook her head.
“Not sure how you can get work done when you’ve got a view like that,” Alma remarked.
The view was Jonas’s butt, which she knew was just as prime as the rest of him. The fit of his jeans verified that.
Alma fanned herself, and then, as if snapping herself out of a lust-induced trance, she cleared her throat and swiveled back to Lily. Her expression went into the “total serious” mode.
“Full disclosure,” Alma said after an extremely windy sigh. “Every quarter before the drawing, I make sure to shove Hezzie’s name all the way to the bottom of the bowl.”
Because of all the speculation Lily had already done over Alma’s oddball mood, that didn’t come as a surprise. “Because now that Hezzie’s name has been drawn, you think people might lose interest in the Last Ride Society.”
Alma blinked as if that thought had never occurred to her. Then her forehead bunched up. “No, I put Hezzie’s name at the bottom of the bowl because I never wanted it to be drawn. Never ever,” she emphasized.
Now Lily had to shake her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, but I’m about to explain it to you.” Alma gave another of those windy sighs. “Girl, we got to be very, very careful about this big-assed can of worms you’re about to open.”
CHAPTER TWO
JONAS SET THE box of file folders and letters on the porch and looked back at Alma and Lily. Judging from their expressions, they were in the throes of a serious conversation. One that Alma’s body language suggested she wanted to stay just between them. So, Jonas headed to his office in the main barn.
When he’d taken the job as Lily’s ranch manager eight years ago, she’d suggested converting one of the rooms in her sprawling three-story Victorian house into an office for him, but Jonas had instead chosen to create one in the barn. He hadn’t wanted to mix business with Lily’s living space. He’d learned with Lily that it was best to establish personal boundaries and keep them.
Not always easy to do.
But so far, so good. There’d been times during the past two years when the grief over Maddie’s death had been chewing him to bits, and it would have been so easy to turn to the comforting shoulder that Lily would have no doubt offered. However, comforting shoulders often came with an enormous price tag that he was pretty sure neither Lily nor he wanted to pay.
Couldn’t pay.
Jonas didn’t care much for the mushy-sounding term soulmate, but that was what Maddie had been. And it was what Lily had been for his brother Griff. It didn’t matter that Lily had gotten involved with Cam Dalton and had his child. That had likely only happened because Griff died from suicide when Lily and he were nineteen, and Lily had sought out that comforting shoulder from her pal Cam.
If Jonas needed proof about that high price tag for such comfort, he only had to look at Lily. She’d gotten involved with Cam, had his daughter and then Cam had abandoned both of them when Hayden had been just a baby. It’d no doubt given Lily a heartbreak on top of the heartbreak of losing Griff.
Jonas knew way too much about heartbreaks. Not just from losing Maddie. It was the way he’d lost her.
For months before Maddie died, Jonas had noticed that she was tired all the time and that she’d been having night sweats. He had asked her to go to the doctor, but he sure as heck hadn’t pushed her to make that appointment to have some tests done. And because he hadn’t pushed, it had been too late by the time she’d finally sought medical attention. Jonas had ended up watching her die as the cancer spread. Eli had, too, and Jonas knew the boy was still grieving. Both of them always would.
With that sour thought doing a number on his mood, Jonas made his way through the barn, taking in the scent of the horses, the fresh hay and the leather from the saddles in the tack room.
This helped, and yeah, the location of his office suited him just fine.
Being near the horses always helped, too, and Lily and he had built something here by raising some fine Andalusians and Arabians with stellar champion bloodlines. Their breed stock had given them more than mere comfortable livings and put the Wild Springs Ranch on the proverbial map. Jonas could have done that on his own, of course, but the success had happened a whole lot faster because of Lily and him working together on this.