“Yeah, I know.” Caleb took another drink. “But you have to let him do it his way.”

“Well, I guess that’s fair enough. He isn’t going to just up and do it our way because we tell him to. He’s just like you that way.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

Gabe looked at his younger brother and managed to, somehow, not laugh his ass off at him. They all looked alike. Hair differing shades of brown, eyes the same Dalton blue.

“Because I wouldn’t. None of us would. We are all just a shade too stubborn for that bullshit.”

“Tough to say if we get it from Hank or Tammy,” Caleb said, shaking his head.

“I expect we split the difference between the two. Tough news for anyone who has to deal with us.”

“I suppose McKenna might be a little more even-tempered than the rest of us as a result. Since she’s only got Hank’s DNA.”

“Who the hell knows what her mother was like,” Gabe said, reluctant to think about his half sister right now. Which was stupid. He had felt a connection to her pretty instantly when she had shown up at the ranch the first day Jamie had stopped by to get a tour of the place. McKenna had come along and dropped her bombshell, and Gabe had done his very best as the oldest brother to pave the way for his younger half sister. To try to set up a meeting with Hank and feel out the situation. And then Hank had been a dick and told her that he didn’t want his wife to know about her. Had given her money and sent her on her way.

Gabe and his father had not had a fight like that since Gabe was in high school. If they’d ever had one quite that vicious at all.

Gabe had been ready to blow the whole thing up himself, and ultimately, it was that threat that had seen Hank calling a family meeting and confessing his sins to their mother.

That had been a fight. One that Tammy had never let McKenna see evidence of.

Tammy was everything you could expect a good redneck woman to be. She was tough, and she was fierce, but she was also fair.

When she got angry, she directed it at the person who deserved it, and no one else. But boy, when she was pissed the woman breathed fire.

Gabe could remember one time his mother had been the inspiration for a country song, out of their driveway with a baseball bat, sending their dad’s new truck to an early grave.

But after the explosion of anger, sadness hadn’t been far behind. And Gabe had been the only one she’d ever shown that vulnerability to.

She’d needed a protector. And Hank had never been that.

In some ways, Gabe felt that as long as he protected his mother he was finding some way around that stamp of sameness Hank Dalton had left in his blood.