“I’ll be right back,” she told him.
Cheyenne disappeared inside and made quick work of preparing their drinks. When she returned to the porch, she found Brendon—ball cap on backward—in the yard with Scrap. He’d found a stick and was tossing it for the sweet little dog who would retrieve it, scamper back, and leave it at Brendon’s feet, yapping until Brendon threw it again.
A weird sensation filled Cheyenne’s chest as she watched the two of them.
The scene wasn’t unusual, just a man playing with his dog, but it was so domestic, so natural, Cheyenne felt a flicker of longing ignite in her chest. She wanted this. This feeling of family, of normalcy. It wasn’t something she’d ever had. Her parents had never been big on making a home, or even being parents, for that matter. Which was why Cheyenne had lived with her grandparents most of her life.
“What’re you thinkin’ about?”
Cheyenne broke herself from her thoughts to see that Brendon was standing on the steps in front of her. Even with him two steps down, she still wasn’t as tall as he was. Smiling, she handed over his iced tea and took a sip of her own.
“It’s nothin’,” she muttered as she watched Scrap sniff around the porch. She had no desire to freak Brendon out by telling him where her thoughts had drifted to.
“It didn’t look like nothin’,” he told her. “Sit.”
When he pointed to the porch, Cheyenne moved down one step and then lowered herself to the wood floor. He joined her, sitting one step below.
“Now, let’s try again. What were you thinkin’ about?”
Cheyenne peered over at him. He wasn’t looking at her but was instead staring out at the acres of grass spread before them, and maybe that was the reason she felt a little stronger about sharing her thoughts. “I was thinkin’ how I’d never had this before. It’s kinda nice just sittin’ at home, doin’ mundane things.”
“By this, I take it you aren’t referrin’ to the house and the yard.”
“No. When I lived with my grandparents, we had that.”
“Tell me what it was like growin’ up at your house,” he said.
Figuring she would have to open up to him sooner or later if she wanted this relationship to go anywhere—and she really did—Cheyenne gave it some thought. Taking a deep breath and losing herself in her memories, Cheyenne began. “My parents were around until I was eight, I think. Maybe nine. Third grade, I know that much. I remember so many nights my grandmother would come over and stay at our apartment, sleeping on the couch so she could keep an eye on me while my parents went out. They had a lot of friends—most traipsed in and out of our house whenever they felt like it.
“I loved the nights my grandmother would come over. For one, it meant my parents weren’t there and neither were their scheming friends. We would spend hours playing board games, or we would sit on the couch and read. Grams wasn’t big on watching television, so rarely did we do that. Her reasoning was that I had enough TV time as it was because that’s how my parents allowed me to stay preoccupied. I don’t know what changed, or why my grandmother made the suggestion that I come live with her, but when she did, I think my parents were grateful. They were never home anyway. Starting in the first grade, I had walked home from school by myself, sometimes with a friend from the neighboring complex. Always coming home to an empty house.”
“Did your parents work?”
“My dad was a mechanic, but he never seemed to hold a job down well. My mother would hop from job to job on purpose, doing whatever suited her at the moment. I know she’d worked as a receptionist once but hated answering phones; she tried working with a maid service, but she didn’t even keep our house clean. So it was no wonder that neither of those worked out.
“Anyway, I moved in with my grandparents and I rarely saw my mom and dad. My grandfather managed a grocery store and my grandmother was a first-grade teacher. We lived in the same old house they’d moved to when they left here. It was a beautiful place, similar to this one in many ways.”
“Why’d they leave Coyote Ridge?” he asked.
“From what my grandmother told me, my dad was a hellion. And not just the mischievous sort. He was in trouble with the law by the time he was in junior high. It was around that time that they moved back to the area where my grandfather had grown up.”
“Is that why you bought this house? Because it reminded you of your grandparents?”
“I guess. This house, just like the one my grandparents owned, has so many memories. Unfortunately, when my grandfather passed away and my grandmother’s mind started to rapidly deteriorate, my parents wiped them out. Sold the house, the cars, anything of value. They took it all and left my grandmother with nothin’.”