Page 13 of Waiting in Wyoming

“He’s still at the hospital. But Joel, that’s the sheriff, said he’s going to be okay. He’s bruised and sore, but Brandt will be okay.” She’d been worried about him all night. She hadn’t slept much at all. “He’ll be okay.”

“What in the hell happened?” the taller of her brothers asked. He was almost as tall and muscular as Brandt. A very beautiful man, but very scary. His eyes were that same bright blue as Brandt’s. But he was the kind of man who was used to being in charge. So was Brandt, but Brandt didn’t feel as intimidating. At least not to Meyra. Not anymore.

“All I really know is that someone hurt him and he made his way here. I found him in the back garden. I stayed with him until we got to the hospital.” She went through the process of booking them rooms on the same floor as where they had put Brandt. That they were only going to be a few doors down from the family wing—andherroom was the first one inside the family wing on that floor—made her a little nervous.

She had never really liked men who wore those kinds of suits. Well, besides Calloway Grady, anyway. And for some reason, the way they were looking at her made her want to squirm a little.

It was like they were trying to figure out whoshewas inside. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t know these people at all.

Why would they care abouther?

She really wished they’d stop staring at her like that.

“Do the police have any leads?” the taller one asked, kind of rudely. His sister elbowed him and glared.

“Excuse Mac, Meyra. He gets to be a bit hard to handle when he’s on a quest,” she said. She had Brandt’s smile, too. Meyra would just focus on her and not the two men. She liked Powell much better than she did his brothers. “He’s just worried. Mac thinks he has to take care of us all since he’s the eldest.”

Well, Miranda and Darcey were like that, too, sometimes. And Dylan tended to hover over the three youngest Talleys alot, too. And Meyra. Dylan liked to hover over Meyra for some reason, too, even though Meyra was two years older.

“Brandt said there were three of them and he didn’t know it. They had a ball bat, I think. Otherwise, he would have been able to fight them off.”

“He probably would have,” the other brother said. He stared at her for a moment. Again, almost rudely. Meyra wasn’t certain she liked his brothers one bit. “We trained him well.”

To do what? It took her a minute, but she figured out he was trying to make a joke or something. “I’ve put you all on the same floor as Brandt. He is supposed to get out of the hospital in the morning, I think.”

“We’ll drive over there after we get upstairs and settled,” his sister said.

“I want to speak to the cops in charge here,” the tall one said. He held out a hand to Meyra. “I’m McKinley, but they call me Mac. I’m his older, smarter, better-looking brother.”

He was very good looking, but Brandt was still more handsome.

“I’m Meyra Talley.” A thought occurred to her—Brandt’s sister was Charlotte’s good friend. They had met before, after all. But she didn’t think she’d met his brothers. “Charlotte is my older cousin.”

“We can see the resemblance. The eyes, for one thing,” the other brother said. She kind of got the impression he was a bit of a flirt or something. But there was still worry in his blue eyes. For his brother.

Well, she could understand that. She worried about Miranda and Marin all the time. “He’s going to be okay, you know. I wouldn’t have left the hospital if he wasn’t. They said he’ll be okay. I promise.”

Powell just looked at Meyra for a long, long time. “Thank you, Meyra. We appreciate that.”

They went upstairs.

Meyra just watched the desk and waited.Shewanted to know he was going to be okay, too. Her shift was over in two hours. Maybe she’d drive to the hospital again to check on him for herself.Afterhis brothers and sister had time to be with him now.

She didn’t want to get in their way or spend more time with his brothers than she really had to. But she wanted to know he was okay.

She just was worried. That was all.

9

It washis daughter who mentioned it first. Sierra had shown up to see her mother just as dinner was almost ready. Dale was glad to see the girl, but he was under no illusions. It wasn’t him she was there to see. They had had too much acrimony between them during Sierra’s rebellious teen years. She had never taken to him telling her what he thought she should do with her life, not even from a young age.

But she had chosen her own path and was successful already. Though he hadn’t wanted either of his children to be pulled back into the small, dead-end world that was Masterson County. He wanted more for his daughter than for her to be swept up by some low-level thug rancher who would set her up on an isolated ranch somewhere just for her to pop out babies they could barely afford to feed.

That had been his nightmares when she had been growing up and almost failing out of school. But she had turned things around her in her last two years of high school. And she had excelled in college. Maybe he wasn’t too thrilled with her career choice of nursing, but at least she would be having a career instead of being in jail. For a while or two, he had doubted.

She was a beautiful girl who looked very much like her mother. It always made him proud to see her.

“Hello, Dad.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek, and he hugged her, then she turned to her mother. “So…have you heard what’s going on in town now?”

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