For His Brother's Wife

He laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. If he hadn’t stumbled, I wouldn’t have a bum knee and we wouldn’t have had our talk this morning about the things I said while I was on painkillers.”

Loving the easier atmosphere between them, she grinned. “Do me a favor. The next time you need to think, why don’t you try doing it from the porch swing? I don’t think it would be nearly as hard on you.”

He surprised her when he shook his head. “That wouldn’t work.”

“Why not?” she asked, her pulse racing when he began to trace slow circles on the back of her hand with the pad of his thumb.

“Because if I played it safe and never got hurt, you wouldn’t have anything to fuss over.” His deep voice sent heat coursing through her veins.

“I do love to fuss,” she admitted, feeling a little breathless. Especially whenever the one I’m fussing over is you.

* * *

After lunch, Cole sat in the den with his leg resting on an ottoman in the wide space under his father’s big walnut desk. Going through a few of the boxes, he found several things of his father’s that he wanted to keep and more that could be donated to one of the thrift shops in town.

Staring at the pocket knife his father had always carried, Cole couldn’t help but smile as he turned it over in his hand. He couldn’t remember a time that his dad hadn’t had it with him. The handle had been made from a deer antler, and then carved with a scene of a stag regally standing in the middle of a forest. Cole remembered his dad telling him that his and Craig’s grandfather had carried that knife from the time he was twelve years old, and Cole had no trouble believing it. The intricate carving had been worn down over the years but it was still a work of art and something that Cole was more than happy to keep. He placed it alongside his dad’s pocket watch and chain and the silver dollar with a bullet hole in the middle that had belonged to his great-great grandfather.

With all of the boxes containing his father’s things emptied, Cole reached for the carton of his sports trophies. Along with the high school memorabilia, he found a couple of belt buckles he’d earned from junior rodeo and a baseball signed by a couple of Rangers ball players. But he was mystified at finding a computer flash drive at the bottom of the box. He knew for certain that it wasn’t his. He hadn’t left anything like that behind when he went off to college. That could only mean that at some point in the past several years Craig had thrown it into the box. He didn’t even consider the notion that it had belonged to his father. His dad had hated technology and swore that computers would lead to the ruination of the world.

The drive probably had pictures on it or maybe music. Craig used to like collecting both.

Picking up the device, Cole put it into the USB port of the laptop Paige had said belonged to Craig and opened the directory. Most of the files were labeled by month and it appeared that Craig had been keeping a digital journal. But as Cole scanned the list, one file stood out and caused a sickening dread deep in the pit of his stomach.

Double-clicking on his own name, Cole opened the file to find several documents. When he clicked on the top one in the list, he realized it was one of many emails Craig had sent to him in the past year or so.

A deep sense of guilt settled over Cole as he stared at the heading. When his brother had sent the messages, Cole had deleted every one of them unread. At the time, he hadn’t been interested in a thing Craig had to say to him. But now?

Cole stared at the computer screen for several long minutes as he tried to decide what he wanted to do. If he opened the email and discovered that Craig had been trying to reach out and make things right between them, he would never forgive himself for not meeting his brother halfway. But the only way he would know for sure would be to read them.

Before he had a chance to talk himself out of it, Cole quickly read the first message, then sat back in the desk chair to stare off into space. What had he ever done to Craig to inspire such hatred? Why had his twin been determined to taunt and harass him with events of the past, even as adults?

In the email, Craig had been reminding him about the fight they’d had over Paige just before she’d graduated from high school. Cole had been home from college on spring break and somehow Craig had discovered that Cole intended to ask her out after graduation. His twin had apparently decided that he was going to spoil that for Cole and vowed that by midsummer Paige would be dating him and by Christmas he would be sleeping with her.

Cole had done everything he could think of to protect Paige from Craig’s sick sibling rivalry, but nothing he had tried had made a difference—not even the broken nose Cole had given Craig with a solid right hook. When it became clear that his brother was still intent on executing his plan to use Paige, Cole had tried feigning indifference in the hope that Craig would think he had lost interest in her and give up. Cole had even gone as far as taking a couple of classes during the summer semester to stay away from Royal and prove he was no longer interested in Paige. But Craig had seen through the ploy and finally convinced her to go out with him for the first time that fall.