Awakened (Steel Brothers Saga #16) - Helen Hardt Page 0,9
Indian summer evening.”
“California’s a different kind of warm, Bree,” Diana says. “Ashley will get out her down-filled parka when it goes below sixty-five.”
They all laugh—everyone except Dale. He stays stoic, eating his meal quietly.
I filter out the sound colors easily as conversation hums around me. I eat my food, joining in when someone asks me something directly or brings me into the discussion.
Dale, though? Quiet. All quiet. It’s almost as if he knows what his voice does to me and he’s purposely not speaking.
But he couldn’t know.
Though I did tell him that sounds have colors for me. But not all colorful sounds affect me the way Dale Steel’s rich, low voice does. It’s a husky timbre, and oh, that dark-red hue.
Abruptly, Dale pushes his chair outward and rises. “Thanks for dinner, Mom, Dad. I need to get to the vineyards. It’s a crucial time.”
“It’ll be dark soon,” his mom says.
“Doesn’t matter,” Dale says. “I have to check the grapes several times a day during this season.”
I stand quickly, speaking before I think the words through. “Take me with you.”
He doesn’t meet my gaze. In fact, he looks past me. “This is something I like to do alone.”
Silence.
No one tells Dale to let me go along. They seem to know this is his thing.
Still, I’m here to learn.
“Please,” I say. “I won’t be any trouble.”
Finally, he looks at me with those clear green eyes and their jingling bells. “Get a sweater, then. If you’re cold here on the deck, you’ll be freezing out in the vineyards.”
Point taken. “Thank you for dinner,” I say to Talon and Jade.
“Our pleasure,” Jade says, and then she eyes Dale.
A look passes between them, one I can’t decipher. It’s more on Jade’s end than Dale’s, but he responds. Only slightly, but he does. His eyes narrow just a touch, and if I weren’t staring at him all evening, getting to know his facial expressions, I may not have noticed.
The relationship between them seems…awkward. Actually, Dale’s relationships with everyone at this table seem awkward.
Or do they? Maybe he’s just the strong and silent type. After all, he hugged Diana, and he seems to get along well with his father.
Spending the next three months in his presence, I’ll no doubt learn a lot about the enigmatic Dale Steel.
But I have the distinct impression that no one knows the real Dale.
No one.
Until now.
I’ll get to know the real Dale. Somehow.
Chapter Six
Dale
See, this is why my mom and I never got close. She always wants me to be someone I’m not. Not in a bad way, really. She’s a great mom, and she loves me. I know that as well as I know the vineyards on the slope.
She just doesn’t get me, not in the way my dad does. She doesn’t have that issue with Donny, Diana, or Brianna. Just me.
For a long time, I thought it was my fault, but Aunt Mel assured me time and again it wasn’t. We can love each other as mother and son. We can take a bullet for the other—and I definitely would take a bullet for her—but sometimes that nurturing closeness just isn’t meant to be, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
The look she gave me meant she was concerned I was going to do something that would bother Ashley. Why would it bother her that I told her to get a sweater?
Except my mother knows I don’t want to take Ashley to the vineyards.
She knows the vineyards are mine.
I don’t mean mine in an ownership sense, though they’ll be mine someday. But still they’re mine. They’re the place I go to when I need to find peace, tranquility. It’s why I slept there when I was younger.
It’s why I sleep there still.
During the warm weather, I spend more nights in the vineyards than I do in the guesthouse. Sometimes even in the cold weather. I have a zero-degree sleeping bag and a one-man tent that I use when it’s truly too cold to sleep under the stars. It’s not the same, but sometimes I just need to be with my vines, even if I can’t see them from the tent. I know they’re near, keeping watch over me as I do over them.
We understand each other.
Seems like he’d rather be with those damned grapes than he would with me.
My mother’s words that I overheard long ago, spoken to my father.