Willow in Bloom

“Uh-huh.” Willow braced for what she knew was coming, since she’d already had this conversation with two of her other three brothers. Apparently Bram, Ashe and Logan had had breakfast this morning and discussed her, and if Jared hadn’t married and moved to Texas with his new wife, he would have been in the mix, too.

“Carl says something’s wrong with you,” Bram continued. “He thinks you’re sick or something.”

“And you reported it to the other Musketeers over breakfast,” Willow said. “Well, I’m not sick or anything. Just like I told Ashe and Logan when they called.”

But Bram wasn’t going to let it drop that easily. “Carl says he caught you sleeping at your desk. That you’re dragging your tail around here, and that you don’t even have the strength to move a feed sack.”

Willow had made a special call to her doctor to ask if it was all right for her to go on lifting the heavy bags of feed and grain that she’d always hoisted without a second thought before. The doctor had advised against it.

“I have the strength. I’m just trying to learn to delegate.”

Bram looked at her as if she were out of her mind.

“I know this comes as a surprise to you,” Willow said, “but I’m not a man. And I might want to have kids someday. Gloria always said I shouldn’t be lifting such heavy things or I was going to strain my insides, and I just thought maybe it was time to take that seriously.”

Bram laughed. “Right. You’re a delicate little daisy.” He was making fun.

“I didn’t say I was a delicate little daisy. But I’m also not one of the guys. And the guys around here can do the lifting. That’s what I pay them for.”

She hadn’t intended for that to come out so brusquely, but it had, and she hoped her brother might just let it pass.

No such luck.

“Geez! Don’t bite my head off,” he exclaimed. “That’s another thing Carl said—you’re not acting like yourself. I can see what he means. Touchy, touchy.”

Willow rolled her eyes.

“Carl says you’re always in the bathroom, and the other day when he came looking for you he was pretty sure you were in there throwing up.”

“Oh for crying out loud, I had the flu,” Willow said, as if it were nothing. “And what’s Carl doing counting how many times I’m in the bathroom?”

Bram ignored her question to ask one of his own. “Why didn’t you call one of us if you were sick?”

“Because I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself,” Willow said, exasperation ringing in her voice.

Her brother stared at her, his forehead creased in a frown, and Willow knew that she was not putting on a convincing defense.

She made a conscious effort to lighten her tone and said, “I appreciate that you care. You and the rest of the guys, and even Carl. But I can’t call you all every time I have a hangnail. I must have caught a bug of some kind, which was here and gone before it was worth talking about.”

“Are you sure?” Bram asked suspiciously.

“I’m positive. I’m fine.” Then Willow decided the best thing to do was to get him talking about something else, so she said, “Is that the only reason you came in here today?”

“No. I was coming in to talk to you anyway, and then I met Carl and he gave me another reason.”

“So what was the first reason?”

Bram went on staring at her for a moment longer, as if he wasn’t sure he should let her throw him off track.

Willow calmly waited him out, afraid that any more attempts to defend herself would be overkill and do more harm than good.

Apparently it worked, because he finally said, “I wanted to know if you’d seen anyone suspicious hanging around, or if you’ve had anybody asking questions about us.”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“Some people say there’s a tall, skinny guy—homely with dirty brown hair—asking questions about our family.”

Willow shrugged. “That could be a lot of people we know. But no, I haven’t seen anyone fitting that description who we don’t know. Are you thinking this might be the same guy who broke into the newspaper office and set the fire at the town hall?”

Both were recent incidents that Willow knew Bram was investigating.

“Could be,” he answered noncommittally. “The guy is asking about Gloria and any kids or grandkids she might have had. Which brings me to my next point—have you gone through her room yet like I asked you to?”

Bram had been after Willow to do that for weeks now, ever since he’d been contacted by another stranger in town. Rand Colton, a visitor from Washington, D.C., had brought up the possibility that there might be a connection between his family and theirs. It had become Willow’s job to go through Gloria’s things to find out if there was any information their grandmother might have had about it. Willow knew Bram was particularly curious because on her deathbed, Gloria had implored him to find the truth, something he was still trying to figure out the meaning to. She couldn’t help wondering if this stranger had anything to do with that request.

“No, I haven’t gone through her room yet,” Willow admitted somewhat reluctantly. She was embarrassed at how long she’d been dragging her feet about it.

“I know it’s a tough thing to do,” Bram said, showing more understanding than he had about her not wanting to lift feed sacks. “Do you want me to do it?”

“No, I said I would and I will.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow,” she promised, knowing herself well enough to know that if she made a firm commitment she would follow through even though it was something she didn’t want to do.

Bram knew her, too, and didn’t need any further assurance. “Good. You may not find anything important or revealing, but we need to rule out the possibility. And who knows? There might be something up there that will help me figure out what’s going on.”

Willow nodded in spite of the knot her stomach twisted into at the prospect of going into her grandmother’s room, going through her things.

But her brother was satisfied.

Unfortunately, that meant he was ready to return to the previous subject.

“And you’re sure you’re okay?” he said.

“I’m sure. But if I come down with scurvy or rickets or green slime disease, you’ll be the first to know,” she joked, trying to cover up the uneasy feeling she had that her brother suspected the truth.

Bram gave her that hard stare again, but before it went on too long, there was a knock on the door. It opened at about the same time, and a strikingly pretty, blond-haired, blue-eyed head popped through the opening.

“It’s just me.”

“Me” was Jenna Elliot, and Willow saw her brother’s whole being light up instantly.

“Come on in,” Willow invited as Bram yanked his feet off her desk in a hurry and stood.

It didn’t take a genius to see how much he cared for Jenna, who had nursed their grandmother after the first stroke Gloria had suffered in July and gotten involved with Bram in the process.

“I got your message to meet you here,” Jenna said to Bram, her own face beaming with love for him in return.