“You said she’s in a nursin’ home?” Brendon questioned, peering over his shoulder at her.
“She is. Back in Abilene.”
“West Texas Princess,” Brendon muttered.
Cheyenne chuckled. “Not quite so fitting now that you know the real story, huh?” She had no idea why the media had taken to calling her that, but it was a name that stuck. If people only knew that she’d been as far from living a fairy tale as one could possibly be, she sometimes wondered how they’d look at her.
Brendon didn’t say anything, so Cheyenne continued.
“That’s why I want to get this done,” she said, motioning toward the house. “I need to bring Grams here with me so I can take care of her.”
“Where’re your parents now?”
“No idea. I haven’t talked to them for almost a year.”
Brendon’s head snapped around, his eyes studying her momentarily.
“They’re what you could consider … freeloaders. My mom has always thought that people owed her. It also didn’t help that she married the world’s most selfish man. My father has always taken money from my grandparents, and he didn’t have any qualms about taking it without asking, either. Now that he’s wiped Grams out completely, I want to get her away from them.”
“What about your mom’s parents?”
“She’s estranged from her entire family, her brother included. I haven’t spent much time with any of them, with the exception of visiting my cousin’s ranch a few times when I was younger. My parents really are difficult to get along with. They have a distinct ability to wear even the strongest person down. They’re another part of the reason I’ve been hidin’ out. I don’t want them to know where I am.”
“Do they want something from you, too?” Brendon asked, his attention once again on the rolling green landscape in front of them.
“They want anything and everything. They burn through money, spending it on frivolous crap. That and alcohol. They’ve told me that I owe them, that I should be sharin’ the wealth. It’s not that I wouldn’t do it, but I can’t trust them. Buying them a house and a car would be easy. Money’s not an issue. Knowin’ them, they’d sell it in a heartbeat, use the money for whatever, and be right back on my doorstep for more.”
The ice rattled in Brendon’s glass and Cheyenne realized he was finished. Perfect timing, too. She was suddenly tired of talking about herself.
WHEN CHEYENNE TOOK his empty glass, Brendon got to his feet and went back to work, everything she’d told him still spinning in his head. Admittedly, he felt more like an asshole than he ever had. Hearing her story had given him insight into Cheyenne’s world: a picture of what it was like for her growing up. And the truth was, he hadn’t expected it. It didn’t fit at all with the assumptions he’d been making about her all along.
Just more proof that Cheyenne Montgomery was too damn good for the likes of him. Hell, he’d figured her for the type to have been given everything she wanted growing up. Difficult to hear that she’d lived quite the opposite.
Flipping on the sander, he finished with the flat surfaces on the last chair and when that was complete, he moved on to manually sanding the spindles with a sandpaper block. When he was done, he put the chair on the ground and watched as Cheyenne jumped into work mode, wiping the dust from the chair and then applying the stain.
Removing his protective glasses, he watched her while he leaned against one of the posts that held up the porch roof, and he wondered briefly what had ever given him such an inaccurate impression of this woman. It certainly wasn’t something she’d shared with him, because until now, he’d never asked about her history. And honestly, she’d never given him any reason to believe she was all flash and glitter, but that was exactly how he’d categorized her from the minute he met her. Well, more like the minute she turned him down.
And therein lay the problem. Brendon had made up his own version of Cheyenne because he hadn’t been happy with the fact that she had turned him down. All the while he’d missed out on this. Spending time with her, talking, working. Normal things that normal people did.
“What’s runnin’ through that head of yours?” Cheyenne asked.
Brendon glanced down at her, noticing she wasn’t looking at him. She was working diligently on the chair, slapping on a coat of stain and getting more on herself than on the chair. He grinned.
“Nothin’,” he told her, throwing back her reply from earlier. He’d been surprised that Cheyenne had opened up to him so easily. Surprised, but definitely not disappointed.