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Grady followed the two men into the house. “Are you guys babysitting?”
“Nope. Nathan and Willow are out back with the twins. They took the shortcut.”
The Caseys owned Skyview Ranch, which abutted the JP’s eastern side. Willow had inherited the property from the biological father she’d never met and turned it into an alpaca farm. She’d bought a small operation after its owner died, and the rest of the family wanted nothing to do with it. Willow and Dale agreed he would move to Skyview and stay on as her foreman while she learned the business. That’s how he and Jeremiah met, though they’d danced around each other for a while before finally getting together. Dale was a good man and made Grady’s cousin happy. That was all he had ever wanted for Jeremiah, who’d hidden the fact that he was gay well into his forties and had been single and lonely for far too long.
They passed through the beautiful house Jeremiah had renovated and updated after his parents retired to Arizona, then stepped out onto the back porch. Willow sat at a table, feeding Jason and Ryan, the year-old identical twins, who sat side by side in a two-seat stroller. Grady still couldn’t tell them apart, but apparently everyone else present could. Thankfully, they wore different-colored shirts, so he could fake it until he knew which was which. Willow and Nathan never dressed the twins alike and had started the habit early of always sitting them in the same order in the stroller, but Grady could never remember who sat on the right and who sat on the left.
“Hey, Willow. Those boys are getting bigger every time I see them.” He kissed her cheek, then shook her husband’s hand as Nathan came over from the grill.
Dinner looked like chicken, burgers, and hot dogs with sides. Grady would definitely go for the chicken if Dale had made some of his secret barbecue sauce. Judging by the delicious smell filling the air, he’d done exactly that.
“I hear we have a celebrity in town.” Jeremiah handed him an opened bottle of beer he’d grabbed from a nearby cooler. “That’s Dale’s newest brew, by the way. Something about wild yeast. All I know is that it’s amazing.”
“I love that you listen so closely when I talk about the beer, babe,” Dale grumbled. “You helped make it, and yet you can’t remember that it’s a strain of wild yeast, a different type of hops, and that we did a secondary fermentation?”
Jeremiah took a big gulp of his own beer and blew his husband a kiss. “Nope, I can’t. But it’s delicious—that’s all I know and care about. Anyway, now that my husband is done complaining, the celebrity? Is the rumor true?”
The bottle had almost reached Grady’s lips when he paused, his eyebrows shooting up. The man had to be talking about Amanda because, as far as the sheriff knew, no other celebrities had arrived in the county recently. A few lived on quiet ranches over in Valley City, but they’d all been there for a while. He hoped no one in court had reneged on their promise to keep Amanda’s appearance from becoming public.
He decided to play dumb. “Uh. Who would that be?”
“I heard it too. Ginger Moore said everyone was talking about it at Sheer Genius.” Willow fed Jason a spoonful of mashed sweet potatoes… or was it Ryan? “Amanda Sparks is Edith Sparks’s niece and is here taking care of her while she recovers from that nasty fall she took. Apparently, no one knew that her niece was the Amanda Sparks until a few of Edith’s friends stopped by to see how she was doing and met her. I hear she’s very nice.”
Grady nearly choked on his drink as he remembered his first not-so-nice encounter with the beautiful woman. Since then, though, he’d become intrigued by the other side of her personality—the one everyone else seemed to have seen and that he was certain she was hiding from him.
Before he could respond, Nathan asked, “Who’s Amanda Sparks?”
Jeremiah swallowed a mouthful of beer. “We follow her on Instagram and her YouTube channel, Inspired by Amanda. She started as a blogger and now has her own cable TV show—Life, Restyled.”
“Yeah, she’s a decorator and has a ton of life hacks and stuff,” his husband added.
Willow set the now-empty baby food jar on the table. “I have a few of her books. She’s kind of like a younger, modern-day Martha Stewart.” Flicking a lock of her dyed-blue hair out of her eyes, she glanced at her husband, who just stared at her. “What?”
Nathan blinked a few times. “You say that like I’m supposed to know who the hell Martha Stewart is, babe. I have no clue who that is.”
“Glad I’m not the only one,” Dale muttered. “I only know Amanda because Jay likes her show, and I’ve watched it with him a bunch of times.”
Willow rolled her eyes. “Martha Stewart has done TV shows, books, magazines—the whole lifestyle thing—for decades.” Her husband still gaped at her, totally clueless. “Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party?”
At that, Nathan's eyes widened in recognition. “Ooooh! I know who you’re talking about now. She went to prison, right?”
“Yes! Her! Thank God! I was about to give up.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, Amanda does a lot of the same kind of lifestyle stuff, but for a younger audience.”
Grady wanted to add that she was also gorgeous, a terrible driver, and had a smart mouth he was becoming a little obsessed with. Thankfully, Kennedy’s arrival from one of the barns kept him from blurting any of that out.
“Hi, Uncle Grady!”
The girl wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed him as he bent down and kissed the top of her head. She’d grown so much in the two years since her parents had been killed—all three of the kids had. Grady bet Mark and Kate were smiling down on them from heaven, happy to see such loving fathers raising their children.
“Hey, pumpkin. Whatcha up to?”
“I was helping Anthony, Shane, and Troy feed the horses.” Anthony Garner was the JP’s foreman, while Shane Rivers and Troy Downing were two of the ranch hands. “Are the hamburgers ready yet, Uncle Nathan? I’m hungry.”
“Just about.”
Dale set Shannon in a booster seat next to the toddler’s mother. “Go wash your hands, Kennedy, then tell Trent, Sara, and Rissa to come eat.”
“Okay.”
