Rust Creek Falls Cinderella. Melissa Senate

wings.”

      He laughed at the thought of two dachshunds attacking a piece of celery. He held the door open, and they exited into the breezy night air. She sure was easy to talk to, much more than he expected. Not that he’d expected anything since the only thing he’d known about Knox’s date was her name. “I’ve always wanted dogs. Maybe one day.”

      On the way to the park, they chatted about dog breeds and Lily told him a funny story about a Great Dane named Queenie who’d fallen in love with Dobby but ignored Harry, who was jealous. He told her about the two hamsters his dad had finally let him get when he was nine, and how they were so in love with each other they ignored him. She cracked up for a good minute and he had to say, she had a great laugh.

      Rust Creek Falls Park was just a few blocks away and not crowded, but there were plenty of people walking and biking and enjoying the beautiful night. Since they didn’t have a blanket, they chose a picnic table and she sat across from him. For a moment they watched a little kid try to untangle the string of his kite. He looked like he might start bawling, but his mom came over and in moments the green turtle was aloft again. Xander swallowed, the tug of emotion always socking him in the stomach when he saw little kids with their moms. Big kids, too. He was always surprised at how the sight affected him. After all these years.

      He turned his attention back to Lily and started opening the bags containing their wings. “My brothers and I love the food at the Maverick Manor. We’re there for lunch and dinner pretty often. I’ll bet you have something to do with that.”

      She popped open the containers of sauces. “Well, thanks. I hope so. I love cooking. And I love working at the Manor. I can try all kinds of interesting specials and the executive chef always says yes. Lamb tagine was last night’s special and it was such a hit. Nothing makes me feel like a million bucks more than when someone compliments my food.”

      “I love how passionate you are about your work,” he said. “Everyone should be that lucky.”

      “Are you?” she asked.

      He dunked a wing in barbecue sauce. “Yes, ma’am. One hundred percent cowboy. A horse, endless acres, cattle, the workings of a ranch—it’s what I was born to do.”

      She stared at him, her green eyes shining. “That’s exactly how I feel—about cooking! That I was born to be in the kitchen, with my ingredients and a stove.”

      He held out his chicken wing and she clinked hers to his in a toast, and they both laughed.

      Huh. Whodathought this night would work out so well? When he’d heard his brother Knox arguing with his dad earlier and then calling his date and canceling, he’d been livid. Not so much at his brother for not just sucking it up and going on the date, but at his father for being such a busybody. Knox might have gone on the blind date if he hadn’t learned his dad had been responsible for it in the first place. Xander and Logan had told the other four brothers what their father was up to and to hide behind all large tumbleweeds if they saw Viv Dalton coming with her phone and notebook and clipboard, but Knox had thought the whole thing was a joke. Until Viv had apparently cornered him into going on a blind date with one Lily Hunt. He’d agreed and had apparently meant to cancel, then had put the whole thing out of his mind. Until his dad had said, “Knox, shouldn’t you be getting ready for your date tonight?”

      Knox’s face: priceless. A combination of Oh crud and Now what the hell am I gonna do?

      “What’s so terrible about you going on a date?” Maximilian Crawford had said so innocently. “Some dinner, a glass of wine. Maybe a kiss if you like each other.” The famous smile slid into place.

      Knox had been fuming. “I always meant to politely cancel. I’ve been working so hard on the fence line the last couple days that I totally forgot about calling Viv to say forget it.”

      “Guess you’re going then,” Max had said with too much confidence.

      Knox had shaken his head. “Every single woman in town is after us. Who wouldn’t want to marry into a family with a patriarch who has a million dollars to throw around? No thanks.”

      “Well, it is a numbers game,” their dad had said.

      Knox had been exasperated. “I don’t want to hurt my date’s feelings, but I’m not a puppet. I’m canceling. Even at the eleventh hour. She’ll just have to understand.”

      Would she, though? Getting canceled on when she was likely already waiting for Knox to show up?

      So Xander had stepped in—surprising himself. He’d avoided Viv Dalton, the wedding planner behind the woman deluge, like the plague whenever he saw her headed toward him in town with that “ooh, there’s a Crawford” look on her face. But c’mon. He couldn’t just let Knox’s date get stood up because his brother was so...stubborn.

      And anyway, what was an hour and a half of his life on a date with a stranger? Some conversation, even stilted and awkward, was still always interesting, a study in people, of how things worked. Xander had been trying to figure out how people worked for as long as he could remember. So he could apply it to his own family history.

      “Best. Wings. Ever!” Lily said, chomping on one liberally slathered in maple-chipotle sauce.

      “Mmm, didn’t try that sauce yet,” he said, dabbing a wing in the little container. He took a bite. “Are we in Texas? These rival the best wings in Dallas.”

      “That’s a mighty compliment. Do you miss home?”

      “This is home now,” he said, more gruffly than he’d meant. “We bought the Ambling A ranch and are fixing it up. We’ve done a lot of work already. It’s coming along.”

      “So you and your five brothers moved here, right?” she asked, taking a drink of her lemonade.

      “Yup. With our dad. The seven Crawford men. Been that way a long time.”

      Her eyes darted to his. “My father’s a widow, too. I lost my mom when I was eight. God, I miss her.”

      Oh hell, she’d misunderstood about his mother and he didn’t want to get into the correction. “Sorry to hear that.”

      “I’m sorry about your mom,” she said.

      Well, now he had to. “Don’t be. She’s not dead, just gone. She took off on my dad and six little boys—my youngest brother, Wilder, was just a baby. When I let myself think about it, I can hardly believe it. Six young sons. And you just walk away.”

      He shook his head, then grabbed another wing before his thoughts could steal his appetite. These wings were too good to let that happen.

      Change the subject, Xander. “So what else do we have in common?” he asked, swiping a wing in pineapple-teriyaki sauce. “You have five brothers, too?”

      She smiled. “Three, actually. All older. So you can guess how they treat me. We all live together in the house I grew up in—the four of us and my dad.”

      “Protective older brothers. That’s nice. Princess for a day for life, am I right?”

      She snorted, which he didn’t expect. “Exsqueeze me? Princess? My brothers treat me like I’m one of them. I don’t think they know I’m a girl, actually. I’m like the youngest brother.”

      He laughed, imagining the four Hunts racing around the woods, playing tag, trying to catch frogs, swinging off ropes into rivers.

      “They do appreciate that I cook for them, though,” she said. “And I do so because they’re hopeless. I told my brother Ryan that I was teaching him to cook and that he should heat up a can of stewed tomatoes, and I swear on the Bible that he put an unopened can of tomatoes in a pot and turned on the burner and asked, ‘How long should it cook?’”

      Xander cracked up. “That’s bad.”

      “Oh, yeah. He’s better now. He can even crack an egg into a bowl without