For the Brave (The Gentrys of Paradise Book 2) by Holly Bush

Author:Holly Bush [Bush, Holly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Holly Bush Books
Published: 2017-05-15T18:00:00+00:00

“I just don’t want the womenfolk seeing that I can’t even shave myself or wash my hands and face.”

“But you don’t care if I see you?” Matt asked as he shaved the old man.

Ben chuckled. “No, I don’t care at all. It’d be different if it were our Annie.” He looked Matt in the eyes.

“There is no ‘our Annie,’ as she’s not mine,” Matt said. He’d made her his, though, in the basest most primal way. He’d had sex with her, left his mark on her by taking her virginity. She could be carrying their child this very minute.

“I think she is yours, son,” he whispered. “I think she is.”

Matt held his arm until he was seated at the dining room table. Adam was at the head now, with Mother at the other end. Aunt Brigid was alive and white-haired with crinkling, laughing eyes and arthritic hands. Mabel brought her to the table in a wheeled chair and then turned to Matt. She held his face in her hands, kissed his cheeks and told him it was high time he was home, that she had missed making his favorite meals.

“She’s been able to cook considerably less food since you’ve been gone,” Adam said and accepted a platter heaped with roast beef from a young girl.

“I will cook twice as much as usual,” Mabel said. “I intend to fatten Mr. Matthew up again.”

Matt filled his plate with beef and corn casserole and buttered parsnips and sliced potatoes, browned and seasoned, and then helped Ben cut his beef and tuck his napkin in his shirt. His mother’s table, of course, was covered with Irish linen and held shining crystal and china and heavy silver forks and knives. He and Adam and Aunt Brigid had a glass of wine with dinner. Everything was hot and delicious and well-seasoned and cooked, but it only made him think of Annie’s yellow tablecloth and the rough dishes he ate his turkey and corn bread stuffing from in her cabin.

Talk stayed very general during dinner, and he was glad of it. He had no intentions of retelling the last few years in front of everyone. He was still not certain if he’d only tell Mother or just Adam or both. He wasn’t going to tell Olivia any of it. He realized that his happy homecoming and his apparent status as a returning hero might not hold for long once he’d revealed where he’d been and what he’d done.

Mabel served slices of berry pie with cream for dessert, and Matt ate his and what Ben didn’t eat on his plate, too. It was strange to think how he now felt about Ben, whom he’d thought of as an interloper when Ben had found him, judging him and treating him as if he were a child. Was Ben his connection to his father? It didn’t matter. They’d weathered the river and their ailments and their travels home, but more than that, they’d left Annie together.

Adam rose and came around the table to help Mother and Olivia from their seats.

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