Page 40 of For Always
He laughed and Gabriella smiled. She liked hearing him laugh. He didn’t do it often.
“My dad would be tired after the day’s work. He’d sit back with a glass of lemonade, his dark brown hair ruffled because he never paused during the day to comb it. My mom would be wearing one of her pretty dresses. She always wore dresses, except for the days she went down with the horses. And she always cooked a big dinner. I used to wonder why I wasn’t fat as one of the pigs in the pen, I used to eat so much. But then getting up at four every morning and working straight through until the noon break for lunch, only to start back for another three or four hours, was plenty of exercise.”
“You liked growing up on a ranch,” she said.
“It was my life,” he replied. “My dad said it was my future.”
“But you didn’t want it.”
He sounded so much like her. Marvin Bennett had expected all of his children to grow up, go to college and work at his family’s company. It hadn’t worked out that way.
“I didn’t want to risk having a family and separating them the way I felt this ranch did.”
“You’re talking about you and Jagger,” she said.
Tyler finished his smoothie. He leaned forward and set the glass on the porch floor beside the rocker before sitting back again.
“We used to be close,” he continued. “We were brothers, only two years apart in age. We even shared a room until I was ten. Jagger packed up and moved to his own room saying he needed his space. My mom thought it was funny. My dad didn’t think too much of Jagger by then, so he rarely commented on what he was doing. I didn’t want to be the better brother. I just thought it was easier to do what my dad said and to do it right. Jagger was more independent I guess. He did what he wanted, when he wanted. And had a better time of it, I believe.”
Gabriella drank more before deciding she was done with the smoothie. She followed Tyler’s lead and set her glass down before tucking her legs under her in the chair.
“Maybe he didn’t,” she replied finally. “I used to think that Adriana had the best life ever. She started modeling when she was young and she traveled. My mother went with her of course, in the early years. I couldn’t go because I had school. But every time I saw a picture of her I thought she was beautiful. Her smile was so big and so bright she had to be having a great time. Just a couple of years ago I learned that those times weren’t all good for her. She had run-ins with some pretty mean-spirited people and she even battled with an eating disorder. I wished then that I hadn’t been so naïve that I’d looked a little harder to see what was really going on with her.”
“The modeling industry can be tough, especially on young girls. But I don’t know that you could have done anything to change what she was going through,” Tyler told her.
“Not change it,” Gabriella said with a shrug. “But at least be there to help her through it.”
“Yeah,” he said and leaned forward again, this time resting his elbows on his knees. “I left Jagger here. I left my parents and this ranch and I didn’t look back.”
“You went to live your life. You don’t have to penalize yourself for that.” Gabriella sighed. “I spent the first years of my college life feeling so guilty every time the professor handed me a paper with a big ‘ole ‘C’ as a grade. I thought about how much my parents were paying for me to go to school and get a good education and I was totally blowing it. But eventually I realized it was because going to a great college and getting a good education was their dream for me. It wasn’t my dream for myself.”
“You’re a lot smarter than you look,” he said.
Gabriella glanced over to find him staring at her. “Gee, thanks. Pretty girls aren’t expected to be smart, huh? Thought we were years past that.”
“No, that’s not it. I knew you were intelligent when you walked into the equestrian center that day. I could hear it in your tone as you resisted cutting me down when I was being so rude to you. You were about your business so I assumed you’d studied well and prepared for your meeting. But to me, that’s different than being smart. You get people and you react to them accordingly. I watched you do it with Brooke and then with Hannah.”
“I won’t call them anything other than their given names, but those two are quite a pair.”
“You’re so much more,” he said. “So much more than either of them could ever imagine.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Like it actually did some type of thump and stop action in her chest as she stared at him.
“You’re more too, Tyler. More than you’ve been giving yourself credit for. You’re keeping this ranch in the family when you have a thriving business that you should be tending to. And you’re taking the time to learn how to do it right, when you could have easily returned to your business and let Stephen run the day-to-day operations here.”
“I may have to do that at some point,” he told her. “My manager’s going crazy with the emails and Skype calls. They want me on the road promoting the sportswear line and I’ve been pushing off meetings to discuss the gym franchise.”
“Because a part of you is still here on this ranch. It’s still your home.”
“I can’t leave until I know what happened to them and why,” he said solemnly.
“I understand.” And she did. If it were her parents Gabriella knew that she would want answers to.
They fell into a comfortable silence again. It was comfortable, she realized, because she hadn’t once thought about reaching for her phone to check for messages—the good or the bad. She hadn’t thought about the work she needed to get done before Monday morning or even the scrambled eggs and bacon she’d been craving when she woke up. She’d been content just being with Tyler, drinking that concoction that wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be, and sitting on this porch the way his parents had.
It was probably a quaint looking scene, one that Gabriella had never pictured for herself. But it was about to be interrupted, she thought as she heard footsteps coming from in the house.
“There you are,” Dessie said as she made her way out onto the porch.
