“At the time, I was a bit vexed with him.” Adam took a sip of his wine.
“He was ready to tear Uncle T.C.’s head off,” Tally said to Cay. “I was wishing you were there so you could draw a picture of the fight. Wouldn’t that have been something to see?”
“I hardly think such a thing would have happened,” Adam said.
Tally went on telling of all his trials and tribulations of getting down to Florida to try and reach Cay before she took off on the boat. “Uncle T.C. didn’t tell us you were with one of the Armitage boys.”
“I doubt if it was important to him,” Adam said. “Unless the man sprouts leaves and blooms on schedule, I don’t think T.C. would think he was interesting.”
“Was Grady warned about me, about us?” Alex asked.
Adam answered. “Not that I know of, but the last time I saw Jamie, he asked if my little sister had grown up yet. I don’t think it would have taken much for him to add things up.”
Throughout all the talk, Nate sat in silence and watched. He liked to observe whatever was going on around him, whether it was people, animals, or even the changes of the landscape. He had a formidable memory and remembered all that he saw and heard.
He now watched Alex and Cay with all the concentration of observing them under a magnifying glass. He saw the way his sister had changed, both physically and mentally. He knew that all her life she’d been protected. He’d even told his father that the way Cay was treated wasn’t necessarily good for her. If she married and moved to someone else’s house, she was going to have a difficult time adjusting. She was used to only the best and the finest; no bad parts of life had been allowed to touch her.
But Nate saw that now his young sister was different. The fact that she was sitting next to a man who’d been tried for murder, but of whom she didn’t seem in the least afraid, was a big change. On the walk to the restaurant, two men, obviously drunk, had nearly run into her. Adam had instantly reached out to push them away, but Cay had already sidestepped them. And she’d done it in such a deft way it was as though she’d done the same thing a hundred times. More unusual, she hadn’t seemed to notice the men. Her eyes were on Alex. Always on Alex.
Now, in the restaurant, Adam was seated across from Cay, Tally and Nate on either side of him, and Alex was beside Cay. Adam had been telling what they’d done to track them down, while Tally was adding as much drama as he could to the story.
“When I was at Thankfull’s I even saw an alligator,” Tally said. “Really, I did. It was no more than fifty feet from me, but I stood still and let it pass.”
“Did you?” Cay asked as she glanced at Alex, their eyes registering mutual merriment.
Tally looked from one to the other and frowned. He and Adam were too polite to comment on the fact that Cay and Alex were eating off each other’s plates. They seemed to know every food the other liked, and without so much as a look at each other, they traded vegetables. The whole family knew that Cay didn’t like green beans, so when they saw her eat them and share them with Alex, even Adam paused with the fork halfway to his mouth.
“I can’t get over how you look,” Tally said to his sister. “You’ve changed.”
“My hair will grow back,” she said. “Although maybe I don’t want it to. I can ride better without fifty pounds of hair trailing behind me.”
“Bad for your neck,” Alex said, and Cay laughed, as though it was the funniest thing she’d ever heard.
Tally looked at Nate, but he was staring at Cay and Alex so hard that he didn’t seem to be aware of what was going on. But Tally knew his brother was doing what they’d come to call “conjuring,” meaning that he was studying something to figure out what it meant. He knew that later, Nate would tell them in one concise sentence what had actually taken place.
“After we eat,” Adam said to his sister, “we’ll go to the hotel I’ve arranged for us, and tomorrow morning I’ll have some proper clothes brought to you. You won’t need to dress like a boy anymore. I have enough brothers, I don’t need any more.”
Alex glanced up from his food. “No. The corset hurts her. Let her have as much time of freedom as possible. When she sees her mother, that will be soon enough to strap her back into that cage.” His voice was quiet, but it held command in it, and Adam looked straight into Alex’s eyes.
Nate had seen few men stand up to his oldest brother, and he’d never seen anyone except their father win against Adam, but Alex’s unblinking stare and his immovable jaw said that he wasn’t going to back down.
“Well, then,” Adam said at last. “I guess that tomorrow we’ll be five men moving about New Orleans. But Cay, you can’t—” He broke off at a look from Alex.
“She can’t what?” Alex asked, and his voice was that of a man who was ready to fight.
All three brothers looked at th
eir sister, but she had her nose nearly on her plate.
“What do you think she should do?” Nate asked Alex.
“I think she should—” He cut himself off, and the challenging look left his face. He turned to Cay. “I think she should do whatever she wants to do.”
The change in Alex’s tone was dramatic. He’d been ready to fight all two-hundred-plus pounds of Adam, but when it came to telling Cay what to do, he blanched. In a second, his voice went from confrontational to conceding.
The men looked at one another, all of them over six feet tall, then looked at tiny Cay, and suddenly, they all burst into laughter. Cay tried to remain aloof, as though she had no idea what they were laughing about, but then she, too, joined in the merriment. When she slipped her hand to Alex’s side and withdrew his big knife from its sheath and waved it around, the laughter grew louder.
Nate watched as Cay looked at Alex with eyes that seemed to melt. She’s in love with him, Nate thought, and he had to repress a smile. How convenient it was that his sister was in love with his best friend.