And that was when her face dissolved and she started to go down.

“Tobe,” Johnny growled, on the move, but Toby was on it.

He caught her in his arms and sank down to the floor with her. Addie’s ass hit his inner thigh with Toby’s leg at a bad angle, and Johnny saw him wince but he didn’t do anything but put his arms around her and tuck her and Brooks close to his chest.

She sobbed into his neck.

Brooks fretted in her arms.

Toby lifted his gaze to Izzy. “Where you want her, babe?”

“My bedroom,” Izzy whispered. “Upstairs. I’ll show you the way.”

Toby nodded, got his feet under him and lifted Addie and Brooks cradled in his arms, walking behind Izzy as she hurried into the hall.

Johnny, Deanna and Charlie watched them go.

When they heard footfalls on the stairs, Johnny turned to Deanna.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Johnny Gamble and that was my brother Toby.”

She stared into his eyes.

And then, very slowly, she smiled.

Johnny sat in the wooden chair at the head of the table in Izzy’s backyard, staring up at the windows of Izzy’s bedroom.

“You need another beer, big man?” Deanna asked.

The one he’d cracked open two seconds after he’d opened one for Charlie while Charlie was pouring Deanna wine, and after he’d tossed one to Toby, was gone in about three gulps.

So yeah.

He needed another one.

He did not share that.

He looked to her. “He had to know. He had to know what they’d lived through. So what I wanna know is, how an asshole could know that and marry her, get her pregnant and then bang some bitch in her fucking bed.”

“I do not know the answer to that question, but I do know maybe you should have another beer, which might serve to help you calm down,” Deanna said soothingly, studying him closely.

“This is gonna go her way,” Johnny stated.

“In your mood, I’m gonna take that as a threat and share with you now that if the authorities ever question me, I heard you make no such threat, and then I’ll say again, calm, big man, so you don’t commit any felonies,” Deanna replied.

Johnny turned his gaze from her to his brother.

Toby was also in a wooden chair (Deanna was the only one in a curlicue one) and his eyes were also aimed at Izzy’s bedroom window.

Johnny looked from Deanna to Charlie, pushing out of his seat, asking, “Can you both excuse us a minute?”

Toby’s gaze came to him as Charlie murmured, “Not a problem.” And Deanna murmured, “Wine ain’t gonna cut it, I may need a martini,” which Johnny decided to take as a yes.

Toby pushed up and moved to walk beside Johnny as they made their way to a tree that was hopefully out of earshot.

As he took this short trek it hit him that he’d always seen it, but now he was noting that Izzy had an enormous lawn. Everywhere for fifty yards around her house was thick, lush grass mowed up to a line of trees that led to the forest that surrounded her house.

He hoped she had a riding lawnmower in that shed too.

He also hoped she didn’t give him too much shit when he shared it was his ass that was going to be on it from that point forward.

Johnny stopped and turned to his brother who’d stopped with him.

He then started.

“You know I’m glad to see you so I don’t have to say that. Though still wanna know why you’re here.”

“Bryce called. Told me Shandra was back in town,” his brother told him.

Not this shit.

“Tobe—” he began.

Toby shook his head. “Was just worried about you, Johnny. Her coming back, close to the anniversary of when we lost Dad, thought it’d be a nice surprise to come up and maybe take you fishing, make sure you were okay. Got to the mill, you weren’t there. Decided to go to Home and have a beer and some wings to give it some time before I went back. Hit Home, got an earful.”

Johnny bet he did.

“And they told you about Iz,” Johnny surmised.

Toby grinned. “Lotta people said a lot of things. Including telling me where she lived. Didn’t think I’d hit a drama. Thought I’d show and give you shit, and if you weren’t around, size up the new girl.”

Johnny sighed.

That was when Toby smiled before he asked, “Brother, is a wood nymph gonna materialize and do a dance for us later, or what?”

“Izzy has a certain style,” Johnny muttered.

“Can’t miss that,” Toby replied, still grinning. “Didn’t miss that dress she had on either. I could handle crystals hanging from trees too if my woman wore a dress like that.”

“You can’t miss her dress, but from here on out, how ’bout you keep your mouth shut about shit like that?” Johnny warned.

Toby didn’t exactly heed his warning.

He asked, “Then can we talk about you doing her against a wall?”

“No,” Johnny growled.

“You’re back,” Toby said, suddenly quiet.

“What?” Johnny asked.

“That’s what they said,” Toby shared. “At Home. They said you’re back and I see it. You care about something again. You care about her. You care about her sister. Thought you were gonna break that asshole’s neck. Since Dad died and Shandra left, you go to work, you do your job. You go home to the mill. You go fishing, mostly out of habit. You go camping just the same. But have you taken an ATV out in three years?”

“Probably.”

Toby shook his head. “Back before we lost Dad, then that woman knew you were already on your knees, and still . . . she gutted you, you worked hard, you played hard. You had plans to open more garages. You wanted to go back to Hawaii. You wanted to eat pizza in Italy. Have you left the state of Kentucky since Shandra took off?”

“Yeah, to drive down to Tennessee to get your ass out of that sling when that woman stole your truck,” Johnny reminded him.

Toby ignored that. “You gonna take this girl to Italy?”

If Izzy wanted to go, absolutely.

“She’s sweet, she’s shy, she’s funny—” Johnny started.

“She’s got a flair with crystals and a way with wearing a dress,” Toby cut in to razz.

This time Johnny ignored Toby and laid the big shit on him.

“And Margot loves her.”

“Holy Christ,” Toby said, his eyes widening. “It took Shandra two years to win over Margot. And she never liked a single woman I dated.”

“Tobe, that’s because you don’t date. You sleep with women until they get bored of your inability to commit to something like, I don’t know . . . a date. Then they dump your ass and you move on like you haven’t just spent two, three, four months wasting their time. Like you haven’t just spent two, three, four months with them at all.”

“None of them complained,” Toby returned.

“Not in earshot,” Johnny informed him. “But in town you’re known as ‘Take ’Em and Leave ’Em Toby.’”

“I didn’t make any woman any promise and I don’t hide how it is with me, so they got nothing to bitch about,” Toby shot back, no longer in a joking mood. “Now what I wanna know is, how are we talking about this when I had a brother who was so not over his ex he was never gonna get over his ex and now I’m hanging out in the backyard of a woman who’s stabling Ben’s horse, Ben being your best bud since second grade. And even Sally, whose sister was best friends with Shandra, and far’s I know still is, is talking about how awesome this Eliza is.”