A Wife for a Westmoreland - Brenda Jackson [18]
In a way, she knew how Bane felt. She hadn’t looked forward to returning to Denver either, knowing she was still harboring feelings for Derringer. It was hard running into him while he was dating other girls and wishing they were her. And now to find out they could have been her. Her father had no idea what he’d done and the sad thing was that she couldn’t get mad at him. Bane hadn’t been the only Westmoreland with a reputation that had made it hard on the other family members. Derringer’s younger brothers—the twins, Adrian and Aidan—as well as his baby sister Bailey had been Bane’s sidekicks and had gotten into just as much trouble.
Needless to say, it had gotten to the point everyone in town would get up in arms when they saw any Westmoreland headed their way. But she had heard her father say more than once lately that considering everything, he thought Dillon and Ramsey had done a pretty good job in raising their siblings and in keeping the family together, and that he actually admired them for it. She knew that several people in town did. All the Westmorelands were college-educated and in some sort of business for themselves or holding prestigious jobs. And together they were the wealthiest family in the county and the largest landowners. People no longer feared them, they highly respected them.
“Just look how things turned out, Derringer,” she heard herself say. “The twins are at Harvard. Bailey will be finishing up her studies at the university here in a year, and Bane is in the hands of Uncle Sam. Ramsey mentioned that Bane wants to become a Navy SEAL. In that case, he has to learn discipline, among other things.”
Derringer chuckled. “For Bane, even with Uncle Sam, that won’t be easy to do.” He picked up his glass to take a sip of his iced tea. “So do we have a date for Saturday night or what?”
A date with Derringer Westmoreland…
She couldn’t stop herself from feeling all giddy inside. She almost trembled at the thought. But at the same time she knew she had to be realistic. He would take her out on Saturday night and probably some other girl on Sunday. He’d asked her out to the movies, not a trip to Vegas to get married.
She would take the date for what it was and not put too much stock in it. She hadn’t been born yesterday and she knew Derringer’s reputation around town. He dated a lot, but let it be known that he didn’t like women who clung or got too possessive.
Still, she couldn’t help but smile at the thought that he was attracted to her and had been since she was eighteen. Didn’t that account for something? She decided that it did.
“Yes, I’d love to go to the movies with you Saturday night, Derringer.”
Four
Derringer frowned the moment he pulled into his yard and saw his sister Bailey’s car parked there. The last thing he needed was for her to drop by to play nursemaid again. Megan was bad enough, but his baby sister Bailey was worse. She had only been seven when their parents had gotten killed. Now at twenty-two, she attended college full-time, and when she didn’t have her nose stuck in some book it was stuck in her five brothers’ personal affairs. She liked making it her business to know anything and everything about their comings and goings. Now that Ramsey was married, she’d given him some slack, but she hadn’t let up with him, Zane and the twins.
He wondered how long she’d been there waiting on him and figured she probably wouldn’t like the fact that he hadn’t been home and had driven into town. Since she wasn’t out on the porch, that meant she had let herself inside, which wouldn’t be a hard thing to do since he never locked his doors. His sister flung open the door the moment his foot touched the step. The look on her face let him know he was in trouble. She was there when the doctor restricted him from doing almost anything, other than breathing and eating, for two weeks.
“Just where have you