“Let’s play the M.A.S.H. game again. Right now.”
Valerie
WHAT KIND OF HOUSE? CAR?
Mansion Porsche
Apartment Lamborghini
Shack Corvette
House SUV
WHERE TO LIVE? NUMBER OF KIDS
Paris 5
London 3
Dallas 1
On the Ranch 2
GUY OCCUPATION
Mason Teacher
John Doctor
Fred Fashion Designer
Bill Actress
three
“play the game?” valerie gaped at jolene. “are you nuts? We’re not kids anymore.”
Jolene took a long swallow of wine, then went to the bar and refilled her glass, bringing the bottle over to refill her sisters’ glasses, too. “Oh, come on. What’s the harm in having a little fun? How long has it been since we played this game?”
“Ten, twelve years or so, at least,” Brea said.
“Exactly. So let’s do it.”
Jolene looked so eager and excited. Even Brea was digging in her bag for a pen.
Valerie didn’t want to be the one to spoil their fun, and even she had to admit she was eager to take pen to paper and play again.
“Fine. We’ll play.”
They swept their notebooks to the first blank page and grabbed their pens. Valerie stared down at the blank page for a long time. She wasn’t a kid anymore, with childlike dreams of fame and fortune and big houses, expensive cars and the man of her dreams. Real life didn’t work that way. But oh, to dream . . .
She put her pen to paper and started filling out the dwellings, the cars, the occupations, where to live and even the number of kids she wanted to have. Jolene was right. It was fun getting into the game again, imagining all the what-ifs. But when it came time to fill in the guys—men she wanted to marry—she drew a blank.
“You stopped again,” Jo said.
“What are you, my warden?”
“You paused at the guys, didn’t you?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because Brea did the same thing.”
“Hey,” Brea said, tilting her notebook away from Jolene’s prying eyes. “Quit peeking.”
“It’s not like I’m going to copy the guys you write down. I already know who I want.”
Valerie’s brows perked up. “Really. That confident, are you?”
“About who and what I want? Hell yes. Now if I could just get him to see it my way . . .”
“And which guy would this be?” Valerie still found it hard to believe her baby sister was old enough to date, let alone fall in love or have sex. But Jolene was twenty-six, and more than capable of running a ranch by herself. She could certainly fall in love. Get married. Raise a family. Time had passed too quickly. And Valerie had missed a ton of it.
“Walker Morgan.”
“Ahh, I thought I saw you making eyes at him over supper,” Brea said, a knowing smile spreading across her face. “He’s hot, with that coal dark hair and stormy eyes. Yummy.”
Jolene licked her lips and scribbled in her notebook. “That he is. And what about you, Brea?”
Brea shrugged, tapping her pen against the paper. “I don’t know. I don’t really . . . get out much.”
“If you’d quit spending all your time falling in love with fictional characters in those books you read and experience real life, maybe you’d have some names to write down,” Jolene suggested.
Brea lifted her chin. “There’s nothing wrong with reading.”
“There is if that’s all you do. There’s a big ol’ life out there just waiting to be lived. Why don’t you try it?”
Brea glared at Jolene, then turned her gaze on Valerie. “What about you, Val? Any new guys in Dallas spark your interest enough to put them on paper?”
There had only been one man in her entire adult life, and that had been Mason. He was past, not future. Yet she didn’t have anyone else to list there; she didn’t date, wasn’t interested in it, really. Her life had been about work, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as she could remember. And the only thing that had disrupted her goal had been Mason.
“Val. Val!”
She jerked her head up and looked at Jolene. “What?”
“You done yet?”
She slid her gaze back to her paper. “No. I’m still thinking.”
“It never used to take that long,” Brea said. “What’s the holdup?”
“Give me a minute.” She wrote Mason’s name . . . then nothing, realizing he was the only man she’d ever wanted. Since she was a teenager, he’d been the only man in her life. How pathetic was that? After Mason’s name she listed the names of men who didn’t exist. “Okay, done.” They switched notebooks to prevent cheating.
“All right, then,” Jolene said. “Time to draw a number.”
“I’ll start the spiral,” Brea said. “Valerie, you tell me when to stop.”
“Fine.”
Brea started a spiral in her notebook, drawing a continuous, gradually outgoing circle. The rule was that you couldn’t look at the person drawing the circle so you couldn’t guess at how many rows of circles there would be, thereby guessing the outcome. So instead Valerie looked at Jolene, who smirked at her.
“Did you write Mason’s name down, Val?” Jolene asked.
“Of course not.” She turned to Brea. “Stop.”
Brea lifted her pen from the paper. “Okay, time to count.” Brea counted the numbers of swirls. “There are seven. Start crossing off your list.”
They crossed through the list every time they got to the seventh item, until each category only had one item left. Then they handed the notebooks back. Valerie noticed a few familiar names in Jolene’s notebook—ranch hands—and a few unfamiliar names, too. But she’d definitely seen Walker Morgan’s name on the list, the man who’d eaten supper with them, the man Jolene couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of.
“So,” Valerie said, ignoring her own list. “Looks like you and Walker Morgan are going to be very happy together in your mansion in Paris with your two children.”
Jolene snorted. “Yeah. You could see me in Paris in a mansion, couldn’t you?” Jo shifted her gaze to Brea. “And who were the guys on your list? Didn’t see anyone I know except our own Gage.”
Brea shrugged. “I just tossed him on there for fun.”
“Uh huh,” Jolene said. “He looks like he’d be fun. And dangerous. That man is wicked sexy. Think you can handle him?”
Brea blushed. “This is just fantasy.”
“Gage is some fantasy, isn’t he?” Valerie teased.
Brea lifted her chin. “What about you, Valerie? Who were the guys you had on your list?”
No one real except Mason. She put the notebook aside. “This game was a lot more fun when we were kids.”
“And guys were just a wish list instead of reality?” Jolene asked.
“Something like that.”
“You wrote Mason’s name down, didn’t you?”
Valerie nodded, unable to meet her sister’s eyes.