the familiar tone of reproach stopped his words immediately. Looking over to Sandra, Gideon paused. She gave both of them a quieting glare before settling back onto him. "Don't fight with your sister."
Chapter 2
Like a cold draft rushing into a warm room, the mirth within him died. Sister, he wanted to laugh. Oh, how he hated and loved that title. Not one person at this table was related by blood to anybody. But here they were, all the family each other had. Schooling his features, Gideon buried the annoyance deep and looked at Jade, who was giving him an openly wary look as he gave her large predatory smile.
Patting her on the back with two, too strong thumps, he cocked his head to the side and gave her a mockingly contrite expression. "I'm sorry lil' sis."
With a small huff of air, she narrowed her hazel eyes at him with wintery accusation before activating her most powerful weapon in her arsenal—silence. A silence directed only at him.
A silence she knew provoked him more than words ever could.
Silence, she was an expert in.
Conversation flowed around him as he ate. Henry talked of getting his big-rig worked on before pulling his next haul from the meatpacking plant in Holter, which neighbored their town and taking it all the way to Houston. It was a conversation Gideon should have been listening to, especially considering he would be running the same haul for Henry at the end of next week, but Gideon couldn't bring himself to focus on the man's words. With each passing second, he could feel Jade erect the silent wall between them brick-by-brick.
Damn it! He needed to tear it down before she settled too comfortably behind that wall of aloof silence. If they weren't eating, he could do it too. He would poke and prod her sensitive flanks until a smile broke free through her resolve and ticklish laughter escaped her lips. Or he would pester her until she had no choice but to respond. But here and now, he could do nothing but wait and stew at her silent treatment. Something that was happening a lot more frequently as of lately, he noticed irritably.
Taking the last bite of his mashed potatoes, he glanced up at the calendar hanging off the peach-colored wall in the dining room. In a few days, it would be Jade's seventeenth birthday. Maybe that was it, he reasoned, maybe it was all a part of hormones or something or just the normal emotions of a teenage girl, maybe that was why it felt like every other week she would find something or another to be mad at Gideon about and sink into those silent depths of hers that she had been a master of since the moment they first met. Although he mentally hedged, as he snuck a considering glance at the girl to his left, that reasoning felt a little insufficient. Quiet and thoughtful, anybody who met her couldn't describe her as someone consumed by their emotions. Comparing her to the average teenage girl would be highly negligible. There was a maturity about the reserved young woman whose far-off, silent dreaminess separated her from the rest of the world and other people. So, what in the fuck was it that was creating this constant rift between them?
"Oh, that's right dear," in the middle of catching Henry up with the latest gossip at her quilting committee, Sandra's eyes lit up, and she turned from her husband, catching Jade's attention. "I almost forgot to tell you, I signed us both up for a competition next month. It will be on the second Saturday of the month, and the theme is American Dreams," Sandra announced with breathless excitement.
Quilting, sewing, and all other categories of crafting was Sandra's one true love, right after Henry, of course. Calling it an obsession would be an understatement, Gideon thought dryly. An obsession she all but forced on Jade from the moment they both stepped into their house. Being all too eager to please their mother, Jade picked up the inane hobby just like she picked up everything else she touched—with perfect precision. Winning contest after contest, Sandra shamelessly flaunted her daughter in front of their competition. The infuriating part was that Jade always went along with it. Not once did she ever tell her no. No, she did not want to go to a musty old community center on a Saturday and sit around a bunch of old ladies talking about quilts and