HER FOUR COWBOYS

A STANDALONE REVERSE HAREM ROMANCE

NATASHA L. BLACK
 Copyright © 2022 by Natasha L. Black

All rights reserved.

The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for
mature readers.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except
for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
 CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
H is for Hawk (Sample)

A Note from the Author

Books by Natasha L. Black
Connect with Natasha L. Black
 INTRODUCTION

This cowgirl knows how to ride.

All night long.

My tomboy best friend is all grown up.

One mistletoe kiss is all it takes.
Electric and steamy.

I want to break all the rules.

So do my three brothers.
The Kent brothers learned a long time ago:
Don’t fight with your brother. Just share.

We wouldn’t mind sharing,

To get Lucy all to ourselves.
She can still be a good girl,
Even if she’s a little bit bad with us.

Now we just have to make her our lady.

1
 LUCY

T rekking up to my old bedroom, I threaded my way through the boxes and

duffels that I still hadn’t gotten around to unpacking and got to the old
bed in the corner that had been sitting unmade since I’d gotten up for work
that morning. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I heaved a sigh of relief as
I started pulling off the new black shoes Doc Boyd recommended that I buy
before starting to work at the clinic. They had been helpful in taking the
strain off my lower back from a full day of appointments and examinations in
the office, but not even the most comfortable shoes could change the fact that
I’d been on my feet for the whole freaking day. I rubbed my foot
absentmindedly, going over the events of the day.
“Hey, sweetie.”
I looked up at the soft voice, blinking at my mom as she smiled through
the doorway at me. I gave her a tight smile back.
“Hey, Mom.”
“How was your day?”
“Fine,” I said, sighing in relief.
It had been a long day, and I had a weird feeling it was about to get
longer.
“I have some of your laundry for you,” she said, weaving through the
mess in my room expertly. I winced a little as I watched her moving carefully
through all the belongings that I’d brought home with me from Utah.
“Thanks,” I said, reaching back behind my neck and rubbing out the knot
that I’d been feeling growing there all week, after the lifting and packing and
unpacking of boxes and then the hours in Doc Boyd’s clinic.
After setting the basket down, she stood up, taking a deep breath as she
looked around at her surroundings. “You know, sweetie, I think that it would
be great for you if you were to do some unpacking this weekend. Maybe
some organizing?” She huffed another sigh. “I just don’t think that it’s good
for you to be mired in this mess, you know?”
“I know what you’re saying but me being here is temporary. I don’t really
see a point since I’d need to pack it all up again as soon as I find a new place
anyway.”
“Oh, Lucy,” she said, coming over to the bed to sit next to me as she put
her hand on my shoulder. “You know that Dad and I would love for you to
stay here with us now that you’re home. We’ve missed you so much.”
“I know,” I said, leaning over to rest my head on her shoulder. “I’ve
missed you guys too.”
I had. Really, I had, but after almost a decade of living on my own terms
during college and veterinary school, there was no way I could see myself
giving that up again, as much as I loved my parents.
She turned to me, pressing a quick kiss to the top of my head. “Just think
about it. Okay, sweetie pie? We don’t mind having you around for as long as
you want to stay.”
“Yep. I’ll think about it.”
She gave me another smile before standing up and once more weaving
her way through the maze of stuff that stood in her way. I sighed once more,
reaching back to pull the black hair tie from my hair and letting it fall around
my shoulders.
I grabbed the towel from where it lay draped over my desk chair and went
to one of the duffel bags that sat next to the door.
It took digging through a few different duffels before I found the clothes
that I’d been looking for, draping them over my arm before I headed down
the hall toward the bathroom. Maybe Mom had a point about the unpacking
and the organizing. Digging for my clothes each time I got dressed could
getting annoying, really quickly.
I went into the bathroom and shut the door, turning on the water for the
shower and shucking off the clothes I’d worn to the clinic.
A knock sounded at the door, startling me so badly I couldn’t help my
shriek.
“Sorry to scare you, Lulu,” my dad’s voice came through the door.
“Mama sent me to ask if you were staying for dinner tonight.”
I sighed. On second thought, maybe not.
A few hours later, freshly showered and in clean clothes, I pulled up to the
curb outside Spurs and threw my truck into park before grabbing my
jacket and heading inside.
A quick look around the bar showed me that it hadn’t changed while I
was away. Somewhere on one of the walls was a plaque that had the date the
bar had been built… sometime in the mid-nineteenth century.
Looking around, I highly doubted that the decor had been updated since
that day. I seriously doubted that the bar itself had even been brought up to
code.
No—if somebody wanted to drink at a modern, upscale bar in this town,
they didn’t come to Spurs. They went a town over, to the more modern pub
that had been opened a few years before.
But Spurs had something that the other bar didn’t have.
“Well, if it isn’t the woman who increased the class and education factor
in our town by about five thousand percent,” called a husky, rich voice from
behind the bar, and I grinned.
“What are you talking about?” I asked as I slid the barstool out from
under the bar with a booted foot and took my seat. “You’ve been keeping this
place classy for as long as you’ve been working here.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Molly said, pulling out a handle of whisky and
dropping some ice into two tumblers with a few other ingredients. “Damn,
girl. Did you come here trying to set this place on fire?”
I raised an eyebrow, looking down at myself. I wasn’t wearing anything
different from what I normally wore. A rust-and-black plaid shirt that might
have sat a bit more fitted over my shoulders and breasts than some of the
others I had, showing off the fitted black camisole that I wore underneath.
The shirt was tucked into a pair of skinny indigo cigarette jeans that fit all the
way down my legs and were tucked into the old cowboy boots that I’d had
since I was eighteen.
As for my hair, I could admit that it looked pretty good. Freshly washed
and dried, it hung down around my shoulders in the long, blonde waves that I
never managed to keep neat for very long. In fact, it would be a miracle if I
managed to keep it down this entire night instead of pulling it out of my eyes
out of sheer annoyance.
“Come on,” I said, reaching for my glass. “Do I really look all that
different than I usually do?”
“No, you don’t,” Molly said, stirring her own glass. “That’s what’s so
obnoxious about you. You always look so insanely sexy, and you don’t even
have to try.”
“You know, it does take effort to wash my hair,” I said, shooting her a
mock dirty look.
“I believe it,” she said, grinning at me above the rim of her drink. “You
know, I have seen some of the nonsense you get up to; I’m just saying that
you could be covered in horse crap, and you’d still be the best-looking
woman in here.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up,” I groaned. “Do you have to say that? You’re
my best friend.”
“Exactly. As your best friend, would I lie to you about something like
this?”
I grinned, shrugging one shoulder. “Guess not.”
She nodded, picking up a rag and wiping down the bar. “Good. Now talk
to me about what it’s been like being at home with Eddie and Marge.”
I sighed, reaching up and rubbing my fingers over my eyebrows. “Well,
my dad came and banged on my door while I was in the shower to ask if I
was staying for dinner.” I took another slug of my drink.
She snorted. “Making you crazy already?”
I groaned. “I don’t know if I can last the full three months,” I said,
referring to the plan I’d made to wait out three months in my parents’ house
to save money before finding my own place in town. “I might just have to
skip out on Marge and Ed early.”
“You know my door is always open if you need a place to crash,” she
said, looking up at me with her wide brown eyes. “And now, we don’t have
to sneak booze anymore.”
I laughed a little. “Maybe,” I said, thinking of Molly’s tiny apartment.
She’d moved during one of the rare occasions that I’d been able to make the
trip up from school, and as excited as she’d been to get into her new place,
I’d been a little worried about how she’d be able to make it work in the little
studio. “I don’t want to cramp your style.”
“Well, see how you feel after Christmas,” she said, heading over to the
far end of the counter to do some clean-up. “You never know how things
would land right now that the holidays are so close. I bet if you talked to your
parents about moving out right now, they’d flip out just over the principle of
it being so close to the holiday.”
She had a point, and I guessed it came from having grown up with my
family for so long that my parents had practically raised her also.
“You may be right,” I admitted. The two of us continued to chat casually,
going over our plans for the next few weeks, with Molly occasionally
opening a bottle of beer for a new customer or shooting Vin, the bar’s
manager, a dirty look in return when he came over intending to lecture her for
having a conversation on the clock. I didn’t think much of any of the other
customers until Molly looked up at the opening door, a wicked gleam filling
her eyes. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the A-Team.”
The words were called with her typical crow of barkeep welcome, and I
raised an eyebrow at her in surprise at the strange name. She cocked her chin
over my shoulder, grinning. “See for yourself.”
I turned around on the bar stool, feeling my eyes widen and a hard,
echoing thump in my heart as I saw the group that loped into the bar, carrying
with them the smell of hay and hickory smoke just like I’d always
remembered.
“Holy shit,” I said, blinking rapidly. “Are those the Kent brothers?”
“Yep,” she said, and I could practically hear the wickedness in her voice.
“They turned out pretty good, didn’t they?”
That was an understatement. The four Kent brothers had never been a
bad-looking group. But these men were far from the boys who I remembered,
crowding around the dinner table at their parents’ ranch.
2
 ADAM

I tofhad been another long day, and to be honest, I hadn’t really been in favor
coming out tonight.
By the time I’d come back in from mucking out the stalls for the new
foals, I’d been filthy, hungry, and feeling every one of the thirteen hours that
I’d spent out in the pasture and the barn today.
But Andy had had that restless look on his face that he always got after a
day of looking over the ranch’s books, and Austin had had a particularly
grueling day out in the pasture, vaccinating the pregnant mares. The two of
them had been practically chomping at the bit for a beer, and it hadn’t been
enough when Aaron and I had offered to go into town to pick up a six-pack.
No, they needed to get out and breathe the air in Spurs. Sure, it was
vaguely stale and smelled like old liquor and the peanut shells that littered the
floor, but it was still our place, and Molly deserved our best efforts. After my
mom had sat down on the sofa next to my dad and put her head on his
shoulder, saying, “You boys should go out. Have a good time! Leave the old
people to their own devices,” with a raised eyebrow at my dad, I’d taken my
annoyed ass up to the shower, knowing that I’d lost that argument before I’d
even tried to win it.
Even when I’d tried to get Aaron on my side with a look, he’d just
shrugged at me, essentially signaling to me that we’d lost this fight before
we’d even started it, which was how the four of us now found ourselves
climbing out of Aaron’s truck outside the bar.
We walked into the bar, the warm, beer-scented air washing over us as we
all sighed in relief. December in Colorado could be a cold motherfucker, and
even the few steps across the sidewalk from the truck had been brutal.
 “Well, if it isn’t the A-Team!” Molly called from behind the bar, and we
all looked over in unison to smile at her. She was grinning at us, her familiar
dark curls collected on top of her head into a high ponytail as she sliced limes
and wiped down her work surfaces behind the bar. “Usual table’s open for
you.”
My three brothers smiled at her also, going to take our usual spot in the
booth that sat at the back, next to the pool room.
“Who’s getting up to get the drinks?” Austin asked, his voice gruff as he
ran his hand over his face. I could tell he was just as tired as I was, but for
some reason, he’d needed this enough to get us all out here.
I got up, not bothering to hide my sigh from any of them. “First round’s
on me.”
“Good man, little bro,” Andy said, clapping me on the arm as I walked
away. I snorted a little, walking away toward the bar.
“Youngest Kent,” Molly said as I walked up to her, and she moved away
from the blonde woman she’d been chatting with when we’d walked in.
“How are you? Had a good day?”
I shrugged. “Fine. You know, typical ranch day.”
“Not A-grade?” she deadpanned, the only hint to her joke a slight dimple
forming at the corner of her mouth.
Molly was one of several hundred townspeople who were endlessly
amused by the fact that our parents had given us all names that started with
the letter A. After all, what else could one expect from a couple named Albert
and Alice?
As soon as they’d found out about Aaron, they’d chosen the name
quickly, and figured that they might as well continue the tradition as they
continued having kids. All of us had known that they’d continued trying for a
girl, but my parents had never let on even a hint of disappointment in their
four boys.
No, they’d been proud of their squad of boys, and as we’d grown up,
there had been no shortage of nicknames that had been thrown our way.
When I’d gotten old enough to start dating, the nickname Straight A’s had
even entered the picture.
As we’d gotten older, the nicknames had petered off, but Molly had
refused to let it go. Somehow from her, though, we’d never found it quite as
annoying as it had been from any of the others who’d made the jokes over the
years.
 Now, I raised my eyebrow at her, allowing the chuckle out. “No, not A-
grade. Unlike your bartending.”
“Oh, stop your shameless flirting,” she said, heading over to the tap.
“You guys all want the usuals?”
“Yep,” I said, leaning forward and setting my elbows on the bar. “Austin
and Andy are both raring to go.”
She chuckled. “I’ll bet.” As she started pulling out a few frosted steins
from under the bar, she tilted her head to the side. “By the way, who taught
you to ignore your old friends? Granted, I don’t know Alice that well, but I
happen to believe she’d think that’s pretty rude.”
I blinked at her, unsure about what she meant… but just then, the woman
that she’d been talking to turned to look at me, and I felt like all the air had
been sucked out of the room as I looked into a pair of familiar green eyes.
“Holy shit,” I said, blinking rapidly as I fully took in the woman in front of
me.
“Well, that’s a one kind of greeting,” she said, her eyes shining with
humor and a slightly exasperated smile at her friend’s shenanigans. “Hey,
Adam.”
Lucy Oliver, my childhood best friend, was stunning. Lucy, Molly, and I
had been in the same grade in school, and while Molly had been off doing
cheerleader things, Lucy had come over to help me get through my chemistry
and English tests so that I could graduate from high school.
After studying, we’d hang out, usually going for rides out in the pastures
at either one of our family’s ranches, and I’d try to hide how drawn I was to
her. We’d always found it so easy to laugh together, and those laughs had
always lit up her face more than any sunrise.
I’d never admitted to my crush before she’d left for college, knowing how
pointless it would be with her going off to school. My home was the ranch,
and I wasn’t prepared to give up on what my parents had been working so
hard to give us.
So she’d gone off to find her career, and despite her saying that she’d
come back eventually and become the large animal veterinarian for our small
town, I’d never really believed that she would, as much as I’d hoped for it.
Part of me had always believed that she’d just stay in Utah and meet someone
else in school as smart and ambitious as she was, and even though I’d thought
that I might see her on breaks, she’d only ever really come home for
Christmas, which she’d spent almost entirely with her parents.
 I’d never blamed her for that, but it hadn’t exactly made for easy catching
up.
Despite the occasional text here or there to check in and wish each other a
happy birthday, we hadn’t really kept in touch more than that over the last
couple of years. She’d allowed her ash blonde hair to grow out of the short,
shoulder length hairstyle she’d kept it in when we were teenagers, and now
the pale strands floated down to hit her back just below her shoulder blades.
Her smooth, pale skin was dotted with the familiar constellation of freckles
that I’d always found so hypnotic as a kid, wishing it wouldn’t be weird for
me to reach out and trace a line between the dots.
I didn’t allow my eyes to linger on the rest of her body, but that didn’t
mean that it escaped my notice. The dark jeans she was wearing hugged her
legs and ass so tightly that they practically formed a second skin against her
body. And as my eyes traveled up, they took in the shape of her under the
plaid flannel that she had tucked into the front of those jeans, and the very
slight edging of lace that seemed to hover on the pale skin of her breasts.
She was mesmerizing. If there was any such thing as a goddess of
cowboys, I reckon I’d found her, and I was ready to start her devotional
practice immediately.
I blinked a couple of times, realizing that I should really probably quit
staring. Taking a few steps forward, I decided not to overthink my actions as
I reached out to her.
She stepped forward into the hug, wrapping her arms around my waist
with a surprising strength. “It’s so good to see you, Adam,” she said, hugging
me tightly.
“Back atcha,” I said, breathing deeply as the smell of lavender and fresh,
green hay filled my nose. It was the same smell as it always had been, but
there was a deeper, richer note to it now than there ever had been, as if she’d
grown into the smell. “Jesus. Ten years really went by quick, didn’t they?”
She laughed a little. “What are you talking about? I’ve been back for
every Christmas.”
“Yeah, but when was the last conversation that we had?” I asked, pulling
out of the hug so that I could look at her again. “I guarantee it wasn’t less
than three years ago.”
“Which is still less than ten,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Jesus, I don’t remember your math being that bad.”
I had to laugh at that. “Well, I think you owe me a catch-up,” I said. I
tilted my head over to the table that my brothers were occupying and caught a
glimpse of Austin’s dirty blonde hair peeking out from around the booth to
see what was taking me so long. “Come sit with us. I can bet the others will
want to hear about what’s been going on in the last decade as much as I do.”
“Are you sure?” She looked over my shoulder at the little group. “I
wouldn’t want to impose on your family time if you guys came out here to
hang out.”
“It wouldn’t be an imposition at all,” I said. “We see each other all the
freaking time. It would be great to actually get to hang out with someone
different for once and hear from someone other than my dumb brothers.”
She laughed again, the sound seeming to echo and clink in the bar like
smoky crystal. “Well, if you’re sure about that….”
“I am,” I said. “Come on; we’ll make room for you.”
She didn’t say another word, but the smile that lit up her face was enough
to make my heart thud in my chest as she reached for the beer sitting in front
of her on the bar and stepped forward.
3
 ANDY

I didn’t think that I’d ever been so mesmerized as I watched Adam chatting
at the bar with Lucy. I hadn’t recognized right away when I’d walked into
the bar. Though, now as I stood there watching her talk to my brother, I felt a
little like I’d taken a sip from a bottle containing lightening.
“Damn,” I heard Aaron say from next to me, reaching up to run his
fingers through the scruff that he hadn’t gotten up early enough to shave that
day. “Lucy Oliver really grew up, didn’t she?”
“Uh huh,” I mumbled, reaching to take a sip from the glass of water that
I’d poured myself, courtesy of the pitchers helpfully set out on each table so
that the drunk rabble that came into Spurs wouldn’t forget to hydrate when
they came out for the very important duty of drinking their troubles away.
And right now, I was having real trouble finding words for what I was feeling
and seeing… and I was never at a loss for words.
“You know, I’ve heard that she’s been back in town, working at Doc
Boyd’s clinic,” I heard Austin say from behind me. “I guess it was only a
matter of time before we ran into her.”
I couldn’t help the little snort that escaped from me as I turned back
around to raise my eyebrow at Austin, whose tone sounded a little dry. I
knew that Austin had never liked being shown up by Lucy, who was three
years younger than him and seemed to swallow entire biology textbooks as
soon as she read them. There was also the fact that she never felt the need to
prove anything; she just knew what she knew, and all she wanted was to
ensure that the animals got the best possible care.
For my part, I’d just never had the reason or the inclination to hang
around her. I’d been too busy with my own schoolwork and driving myself
into the ground to get my own partial scholarship to Colorado University.
She’d always been interested in hearing about what I was working on. And
she’d wanted to hear about whatever I was writing, but with me being a year
ahead of Adam and Lucy in school, I’d been in the midst of my hell year
while they’d still been innocent little sophomores, and then I’d had a raging
case of senioritis while they’d been burying their heads in their books as
juniors.
Now, the woman that strode toward us was not the same person who had
come over to help my little brother pass his exams. Well, that wasn’t entirely
true; she was the same person, but taller… or maybe this was the way that
she was holding herself, meeting everyone in the bar’s eyes with her steady,
emerald-green gaze. Her hair hung behind her in a heavy, pale-gold sheet that
reached down to the middle of her back, and her curves were swathed in a
pair of jeans and a plaid shirt that could’ve been painted on her.
She held my gaze like a heavily polarized magnet.
“Hey everyone,” she said, smiling that slow, lovely smile that my stupid,
high school memory had somehow painted as being toothy and dorky. Now,
it seemed to hold a wealth of experience that I didn’t know anything about.
“It’s great to see you.”
I stood up, not allowing myself to overthink or get cowed by the fact that
this woman, whom I’d known since she was awkward and gawky, had
become so beautiful that it practically hurt to look at her. “Back at you, Luce.
It’s been way too long.”
I pulled her in for a hug, and her fresh, outdoorsy scent of lavender and
cut hay seemed to overtake me.
“Quit hogging, Andrew,” Aaron said behind me, and I let go, turning
around to shoot him a dirty look. All of my brothers knew that I hated being
called by my full name, and that there was something that profoundly
annoyed me whenever they used it.
I couldn’t help flashing Aaron my middle finger surreptitiously as I
backed away from her, allowing him to come forward and hug her himself.
“It’s great to see you, Lu,” he said, reaching forward and pulling her forward
to envelope him in his big arms. It was honestly a little intimidating seeing
her small frame wrapped in his embrace. None of us were small, but Aaron
was the biggest of all of us, and between his generally laconic manner and the
sheer size of his frame, he could be pretty intimidating to those outside of his
family. His brothers, on the other hand, knew that he was a quiet, grumpy
teddy bear.
Now, though, I couldn’t help worrying as I saw his arms tightening
around Lucy’s smaller frame, and part of me wondered if he would crush her
if he leaned forward even a little bit.
Soon enough, he let her go, and she patted him on the arm with that same
warm smile before she turned to Austin. “Hey, Austin.”
“Hey, Lucy.” Out of all of us, Austin’s greeting was the coolest. I
couldn’t help biting down on my lip as I heard the perfunctory way he said
hello to her, remembering the faint thread of competition that ran through
their relationship. Not on her part. She’d never been particularly concerned
about proving herself, since she’d been shadowing Doc Boyd practically
since she could walk.
On the other hand, Austin was particularly concerned with his reputation
as our unofficial veterinarian and would be particularly annoyed with her
whenever she made an assessment of the animals, especially when he learned
that she was almost always right about them.
Still, he seemed to have overcome his bitterness enough to greet her like
an adult, because he reached out his arms to hug her the way we all had and
gave her a warm embrace. I noticed that it was a lot shorter than the rest of
ours, but he did give her that usual, playful shove that he normally did before
hurriedly sitting back down.
“I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to run into all of you,” she said, smiling
around at all of us as she started pouring beer into each of the steins that
she’d brought over from the bar and distributing them. “It’s been so nuts
since I got back that I’ve barely had a second to breathe. Molly practically
had to threaten me to come out tonight.”
We all laughed at that—Adam a little bit too hard in my opinion— and I
settled back into my corner of the booth to look over at her. She settled her
chin into her hand, tucking that long, silky hair around her ear so that it
settled over her shoulder and caught the glow of the overhead lights.
Suddenly, awareness snapped into place at the appearance of my female
lead, whose physical description had been evading me for weeks. I’d been
playing with my outline forever, procrastinating beginning my work. I hated
writing unless my characters were fully fleshed out in my mind, and for some
reason, my female protagonist had been evading me to an intense degree
lately.
Looking at Lucy, though, I felt like inspiration had struck me, and I
couldn’t wait to get back home to my laptop and the worryingly blank word
document.
“I heard that you were working with Doc Boyd now,” Austin said,
leaning forward so that his presence seemed to take up all the space at the
table. “How’s that going for you?”
“It’s been really good,” she said, smiling as she took a sip of her Stella
Artois. “It’s exactly the work I wanted to be doing when I went to veterinary
school.”
“I would’ve thought that you would’ve gone to a big city,” he said, “or
that your school would have a feeder program.”
“It did, but I always knew that I wanted to come back up here,” she said.
“Salt Lake City is awesome, but I’m not built for it. I’m a small-town girl.”
“You’d fit in anywhere,” Adam put in. “You made friends so easily in
school.”
She shook her head ruefully. “You and I remember high school very
differently,” she said with a grin. She then turned to me, and I felt her gaze
settle on me like a physical weight. Being under that sharp, green-eyed gaze
was intense.
“What about you, Andy? What are you doing now?”
I shrugged as I gave her a small smile. “You know, the same as the rest of
these suckers here. Working at the family ranch, writing on the side when I
have the time. I’ve actually been getting really good at carpentry.”
“He’s being modest,” Austin said. “He’s an amazing mechanic, and he’s
an even better wood-worker. The ranch wouldn’t run the same without him.”
She smiled at me again. “So, are you taking a break from writing full-
time right now? It must be a pretty tough job. I definitely couldn’t do it.”
My smile started to feel strained as I looked away from her. “I never
really got around to writing full time, Luce.”
“You could’ve fooled us,” Aaron said, elbowing me. “You’re up there
typing away on your laptop every chance you get.”
Lucy blinked a couple of times. “Oh. I thought you went away to school
to write. CU Boulder, right?”
She couldn’t have known. She couldn’t have known that she’d stumbled
right into my sore spot and driven her elbow in.
My parents had been supportive of me going to college; all my family
had. My brothers had joked that they needed at least one of us to prove that a
Kent could get an education. As impractical as it had been, all of them had
been supportive of my choice to major in creative writing.
But even with the partial scholarship I’d gotten, I knew that the burden on
my parents was too much when I came home for Christmas and saw how
exhausted all of them were. It became obvious to me that they were working
themselves to the bone in order to put me through school, and it began to eat
away at my conscience.
I’d barely gotten three weeks into my second semester before I decided
that it would be my last semester, and that I’d come home and do my part on
the ranch, as much as it killed me to do it.
Lucy didn’t need to know any of that, though. Instead, I simply shrugged
my shoulders at her. “College didn’t really work out for me. I ended up
coming home after a year.”
She nodded at me, giving me another small smile before she turned to
another one of my brothers and I could’ve sworn that there was a gleam of
melancholy shining out of her eyes. Was she disappointed?
Don’t be stupid, I thought to myself. There’s no reason why she would
have any investment in your college career. She has no reason to care.
Biting my lip, I reached for my beer and took a long pull, trying to shake
off the strange weight that that look in her eyes had left in my gut as I
watched her chat with my brothers.
4
 AUSTIN

I couldn’t lie; I’d always found her annoying. She might’ve been kind of
cute as a kid, and she’d run around the ranch as I did my ranch chores,
checking on the animals and asking me questions. But as she’d gotten older
and we’d realized just how smart and precocious she was, I’d started to think
of her as more and more of a pain in my ass.
It was hard enough to take care of all the animals when I also had my
whole family to deal with. When I also had a kid, and then preteen, and then
teenager following me around and contradicting me and my care of the
horses, I became way less patient than I usually was.
After all, the possibility of vet school had never been something that I’d
been able to take for granted. Which wasn’t to say that I thought she was
selfish, or that she took her education for granted I knew how hard she’d
worked for her scholarship, and how driven she’d been to take most of the
financial burden off her parents for her college career. It was just that the idea
of shelving my ranch chores in favor of doing a little bit of extra studying had
never even entered my mind as a possibility.
In all of her following me around, chattering and contradicting me about
how I cared for my animals, she’d been right. More often than not, I was
correcting my own work when she was still in high school, and I was doing
my own studies late into the night, reading whatever discounted veterinary
textbooks I could get online secondhand and shadowing Doc Boyd every
time he came out to the ranch so that I could learn everything I possibly
could.
I knew that the annoyances were going to be starting again any day now.
Doc Boyd was getting up there. After all, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d
have to officially retire from making house calls, and the thought of it was
making my stomach twist uncomfortably.
“How’s it been at the clinic so far, Lucy?” I asked, crossing my arms and
leaning forward, so that I could turn my attention to her fully.
When she turned her attention back to me, I was struck once more by the
impression I’d gotten when I’d first walked in. The blonde woman sitting at
the bar was one of the most attractive people I’d ever seen. I’d toyed with the
idea of coming up with a decent come-on with which to approach the hot new
girl in town… until she’d turned to face my little brother, and her identity had
smacked me across the face.
There was a whole barrage of complicated thoughts swirling through my
head as I thought of her whip-smart, know-it-all little sass-mouth
contradicting me all over the ranch, and how furious it had made me. I
thought of the few one-night stands I’d had over the last few years since my
marriage to Katie had fallen apart, and how none of them—not a one—had
made me feel like a single look out of Lucy’s challenging green eyes did.
She turned back to look at me, drawing her finger up the slender neck of
her beer bottle with a deliberate gesture that made all the hairs on the back of
my neck stand up. “Things have been good! Everything’s been so nuts since I
got back here that I haven’t really had a chance to take on a big case from
Doc, so it’s mostly been me settling in and learning the ropes.”
“It’s gotta be a big change from school, right?” I asked, settling in and
fixing her with my own gaze, so that hopefully, she wouldn’t be able to see
just how much her appearance had caught me off guard.
“Oh yeah, huge,” she said, nodding eagerly. “But that’s why I’m so
thankful for my residency. I would’ve hated to come back here with no
practical experience… not to mention the fact that I wouldn’t have been able
to sit for my boards if I hadn’t had the hours.”
I nodded.
“Still,” she said, a completely earnest look on her pretty face, “I don’t
think anything will ever compete with my first residency.”
I raised my eyebrow at her, unsure of what she was talking about before I
turned to look at all of my brothers. The three of them looked back at me in
equal confusion, with Adam going so far as to give me a little shrug.
“Following you around your parents’ ranch and figuring out what was
going on with all of your horses,” she said, the serious mask finally cracking
just a little bit as the corner of her mouth turned up in a quarter of a smile.
 My brothers laughed, and I couldn’t help smiling in response. All of them
remembered how aggravated I’d been at her effortless ability to prove me
wrong every single time, even though she was years younger.
“Hey,” I said, holding up my hands in a surrendering shrug, “not all of us
can be science prodigies. Didn’t you take AP Biology as a sophomore?”
“Maybe,” she said, taking a sip of her beer.
“That’s a yes,” Adam said, grinning. “I definitely wouldn’t have survived
regular ol’ chemistry without you holding my hand through it. I think you
practically did all of my lab reports.”
“Ah,” I said, looking over at my baby brother. “The truth finally comes
out.”
“I did not do your lab reports, and I definitely didn’t take your finals for
you,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I just… helped you out a
little.”
“Are you really still worried about getting caught for helping me too
much?” Adam said, reaching over and punching her softly on the shoulder.
“Nerd.”
“I have literally never denied being a nerd,” she replied, primly lifting the
bottle to her full lips and taking a sip. “In fact, I think that there have been
more than a few occasions when I proudly proclaimed that I was a nerd for
the whole grade to hear.”
I laughed. “I think I remember that, on more than one occasion. You
weren’t shy about proving me wrong.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know why you minded. The animals are the
highest priority, aren’t they?”
“They are,” I said, leaning back and running my finger over my chin.
“But it’s still a little bit of a kick in the teeth to have a kid refuting everything
you think you know about treating animals.”
She snorted, rolling her eyes. “‘Kid.’ Dude, you’re three years older than
me. It’s not like there’s a decade of both education and experience between
us.”
I fought against the sting at that statement with all my might, knowing
that she hadn’t meant to rub my face in what she’d learned over the last ten
years.
I still couldn’t help the faint sense of insecurity that started to creep in
when what she said, and its impact started to set in. While there might not
have been that decade of education and experience standing between us back
then, it was standing between us now, and my own independent studies felt
like a particularly intelligent grade schooler chasing after the role model they
idolized.
From the faint tightening of her mouth, I could tell that she’d realized her
slip, and I knew that it was going to bother her. The last thing that I wanted
was for her to call attention to it again, so I cut across her before she had the
chance to bring it up. “So did you specialize in anything in particular at
school?”
The conversation continued to move easily after that, with all of us asking
her in turn about her life in Utah and for stories about what school had been
like for her. It surprised none of us to hear that she made the dean’s list
almost every semester despite holding a job for the entire time that she was in
school, or that she’d had the top pick of internship programs when she’d
graduated. Andy asked her question after question about college and her life
there, and I looked over at him a few times, thinking that there must be a part
of him that was thinking about going back. Adam was most eager to hear
about her life over the last decade, and she returned the questions with
enough affection to remind me that the two of them had been best friends.
Aaron sat back in his usual quiet, dropping the occasional question here and
there, but mostly taking in the rest of us in his usual oldest brother silence.
For my part, I was most curious about everything that she’d learned.
Eventually, she paused to take another gulp of beer. “Jesus,” she said. “I
wasn’t expecting an interrogation tonight, guys. I would’ve had a bigger
dinner if I’d known y’all were gonna be asking me so many questions.”
Aaron leaned forward, giving one of his mischievous smiles that meant
he was about to cause his own brand of chaos. “If you’re over it, we can just
wait for the next time you come over to the ranch for a house call to show up
Austin at his own game.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t help grinning at that and then at her.
When I’d originally heard that she would be coming back to take a job at the
clinic in town, I’d only been able to picture the skinny little tomboy in her
uniform of jeans and dirty boots who spouted veterinary facts the way some
guys I knew spouted football stats.
On an intellectual level, I knew that she was the same person as the
woman in front of me, who was, frankly, so hot that I was afraid the glass she
was holding might melt away in her hand. The possibility of asking that girl
out had never even entered my mind.
 This girl, on the other hand….
Everything about her seemed to be invading my consciousness, from the
scent that followed every time she swung that mass of blonde hair around to
the perfect swath of freckles across her nose.
There was no question about it. She’d grown up extremely well, and I
couldn’t deny that she was pretty damn easy on the eyes. I wouldn’t mind it if
she stopped by the ranch every now and then, even if she did show me up. It
had been a long-ass time since I’d been around any woman who I was this
attracted to; this whip-smart, sassy, scalding-hot woman would make for a
nice change of pace.
5
 AARON

I loved my baby brother, He’d had my heart since the second he’d been born
and opened his little blue eyes, the same color as mine. But given that I
was a full five years older than him, even though I’d loved doting on him, I
didn’t bother to take a ton of time for him as we got older, especially as I
finished school and started taking over my responsibilities on the ranch so
that my parents were able to scale back on their own duties a little bit.
So, the time that I spent with my baby brother’s little friend had been
negligible at best.
I remembered her. She’d been at the ranch all the time from the time she
and Adam had been in first grade up through the end of high school. Molly
had sometimes joined them, but she’d been busier doing whatever
extracurriculars she’d been interested in rather than accompanying Lucy and
Adam. Not only that, but Lucy had been way more into the ranch than Molly
had been, which had incentivized her to come hang out. I could still see Lucy
and Adam studying at our dining room table, with Lucy tutoring Adam to the
best of her ability in biology and chemistry and then breaking for a ride and
some fresh air.
I remembered the little tomboy who came to hang out at the ranch. She
stuck around for dinners three nights a week, her teeth completely encased in
metal for two years to fix her overbite. It never made her less cute or less
intrepid, but I did remember that her smiles had been a lot less common
during those two years.
She’d been a fixture within my life until ten years ago, even if I didn’t
really take the time to talk to her on a day-to-day basis.
So, one might imagine how jarring it was for me to remember that skinny
little nerd, zipping from one end of my parents’ ranch to the other, and be
seated in front of this striking, grown woman.
It was funny to hold the two images in my mind. I pictured her in the thin
plaid shirts that hung on her skinny shoulders the way it might on a hanger
with jeans that hung low on her thin frame, which was comparable to her
current self.
She still wore the plaid, jeans, and boots that had practically been her
uniform when she was a kid, but it was almost as if she’d grown into them,
filling them out in a way she never had before. Now, she wore the clothes
instead of being worn by them. It took all of my concentration to keep my
eyes off of the curves that I could see peeking out.
Now, sitting in the corner of the booth and taking a pull of the cold, crisp
beer, I had to flex my fingers a little bit as I remembered the way she’d felt
when I’d pulled her in for that hug when she’d first approached the table.
Yeah, she was still small—significantly smaller than me, in fact—but her
petite frame was softened by those curves, which were accentuated by the
tight jeans that were wrapped around her like a second skin. Her intoxicating
scent seemed to cover me like a blanket, and even though I was sitting across
the table from her, as far from her as I could possibly get, it felt like I could
still smell her on my skin when I breathed deeply after each sip of beer.
Listening to each one of my brothers asking her approximately ten
thousand questions while the five of us sat there, it was one of the many
times when I was grateful to have so many siblings. I’d never been much of a
talker, and I couldn’t deny that it had sometimes shot me in the foot when I’d
tried for relationships here and there. Complaints from my exes had included
a lack of communication; girls always attempted to get me to engage with
them on a conversational level.
Having the whole rest of the A-Team—as Molly called us—there, it
lessened the pressure that I usually felt to ask questions and provide some of
the conversation starters. I was content to just sit back, listening to her
recount the last ten years of her life and allowing myself to drink her in.
All the same, when the conversation lagged, I leaned in, pressing against
Austin a little bit as I tried to gauge Lucy’s reactions. “So, do they have you
do any crazy veterinary procedures on animals while you’re training, or is it
just examinations? I’d think your professors would have you get some hands-
on experience.”
“Oh God, you guys have no idea,” she said, leaning her chin into her hand
as she seemed to start sinking back into the events of the last few years.
“Especially when you’re specifically going to specialize in live animal care.
A lot of my textbooks had some pretty ridiculous stuff that I thought I would
literally never have to deal with.”
“Like what?” asked Adam.
“There was this one diagram that I had a huge quiz on about emus,” she
said, rolling her eyes. “I was super annoyed by that one. I mean, I was going
to school in Utah. If I ever go to Australia, it definitely won’t be for work, so
I didn’t think there was any reason I should learn about emu anatomy.”
“I don’t even know what an emu looks like,” said Andy, looking around
at all of us, “much less the fact that it was from Australia. That’s news to
me.”
“It looks a lot like an ostrich,” she said, “but a little smaller. Honestly, it
looks like the ostrich’s shorter, less attractive cousin.”
“Okay, I’m seeing it,” Andy said.
She nodded. “Right. So, I was honestly pretty peeved about that quiz and
that diagram. I think the closest emu farm is in California. Anyway, there was
one day when I had to go to the zoo to do a shadowing of their large animal
vet. Sometimes you shadow them for just a day of examinations, and
sometimes it’s for an actual procedure. On the day that I went to the zoo, it
turned out that I was going to get to shadow on a stomach surgery on a large
bird.” She took a sip of her beer and looked around at the group of us. “Five
points and a beer for whoever’s able to guess the lucky bird that had the
operation.”
“It was a goddamn emu, wasn’t it?” Adam said, grinning.
She nodded. “One more beer for the genius.”
“And what does five points get me?”
I had to snort a little at my dorky little brother and his barely concealed
flirting. I had a feeling it was just the fact that Lucy had been even shyer and
unaware of the appeal that she’d had, even as a teenager. And this had kept
her from seeing Adam’s obvious crush on her. We’d all been aware of it
when they were kids. I had a feeling that half the reason my mom kept
inviting her to stay for dinner—aside from it being polite after she’d been
studying for four straight hours in our dining room—was to give them even
more time to spend together. Since then, Adam had usually driven the two of
them back from school, and he would usually take her home.
I watched her get up from the table, heading back to the bar. This time,
she was accompanied by Andy, who’d decided to help her bring the drinks
back from Molly.
It was funny because the clothes that she wore now were almost the same
as the ones that she’d worn in high school. The exact combination of jeans
and plaid was what I’d seen her in almost every day,s with very little
variation. I remembered one Easter Sunday when her mom had been
complaining to mine about how trying to get her to wear a dress was pretty
much guaranteed to be a battle lost before it had even begun.
Now, a decade later, all I could think about was how incredible it was that
the same person, in the same clothing, could look almost entirely different. I
would’ve challenged anyone to find someone who could make her look more
beautiful than she did in the jeans that hugged her long legs down to the
ankles.
“Jesus,” Austin said as he took a sip from his glass of beer. “She’s grown
into something, hasn’t she?”
“She’s always been something,” Adam said, his voice sounding soft and
fond as he looked after Lucy and Andy.
Austin raised his eyebrows at me as he took yet another sip, not saying
anything until the two of them started making their way back to the table.
“So, Lucy showed me a picture of this freaking bird,” Andy said as they
started getting closer and set everything down on the table, “and you guys are
not gonna believe this. I can’t really believe that you actually operated on this
thing.”
She shrugged. “It has a liver, and it had a benign tumor. It needed a
surgery like anything else.” Andy passed his phone around, and the rest of us
made appreciative noises as we took in the strange-looking animal.
“Man, that’s a weird-looking creature,” Austin said. “According to
Google, they’re not too hard to farm.” He looked at me. “Maybe we should
talk to the parents about getting some and seeing how we do with them. After
all—” he gestured to Lucy, “—now we know someone who has experience
taking care of them.”
“I would not go that far,” Lucy replied, her mouth spreading into a smile,
“but since that day at the zoo, I did a little more research, and found out that
they’re not that uncommon in the States. It might be worth looking into.”
I shrugged, tilting my head to the side, and the conversation finally
moved away from emus.
“So,” Adam asked, “do you have, like, a wish list, or something of all the
animals that you’d like to work on?”
“A bucket list?” Andy asked.
“Yeah, exactly,” Adam said.
“What, like an elephant’s heart surgery and then spaying a giraffe?” she
said, raising her eyebrow.
“Dude, how gnarly would it be to operate on an elephant’s heart? How
much do you think that single organ weighs?” Adam asked.
“An elephant heart can weigh anywhere from twenty-six to forty-five
pounds,” Austin answered promptly. “That would be so damn cool.”
“It’s forty-four, actually,” Lucy said with a coy smile.
We all laughed as Austin shook his head ruefully, and the rest of the night
passed pleasantly enough with Lucy telling us different pieces of animal
trivia between us sharing our own anecdotes of the last ten years. I hung back
for the rest of the conversation, content just to listen to her and observe as she
talked. She was so stunning that it was physically difficult for me to pull my
gaze from her, and again, I was thankful that there were other people there to
distract from the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes from her.
With the way that her blonde hair hung down, occasionally brushing the
side of her neck, I knew that I’d be seeing her again… not just in person, but
also in my mind’s eye.
6
 LUCY

“H ey, Mama,” I said, coming downstairs for breakfast that Saturday. I

couldn’t remember the last time I’d allowed myself to sleep in until
whatever time my body just got me up naturally. “How’s it going?”
“It’s good,” she said, handing me a cup of coffee as I stumbled into the
kitchen. “I’m glad to see that you’re getting some good sleep. You’ve been
putting in such long days at the clinic.”
“I know,” I said, yawning as I took a gulp of my coffee and tried not to
grimace. It was way too sweet, and my mother had dumped in at least twice
as much cream as I usually took, but I wasn’t about to let on that I didn’t like
it. Not when she’d been putting in such an admirable effort to keep from
stifling me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out which of that nondairy stuff
you take, and I figured you might be able to pick some up if you went out to
get the groceries.”
Well, that was fair enough. I nodded, smiling. “Thanks anyway for the
coffee, Mom. I just don’t use sugar anymore.”
She shook her head, and the green eyes that I’d inherited went wide. “I
really don’t know how you can do coffee without any sugar at all, much less
how you can drink any of that oat stuff takes the place of actual milk.”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, we’re not that far from Denver. You must know
at least a couple of vegans.”
“Just because I know them doesn’t mean that I see eye to eye with them
on their dietary preferences,” she said.
I laughed. “So, I guess this is the moment where I say something cheesy,
like a farm girl is a farm girl no matter where the farm is?”
 “Exactly. And you wouldn’t be able to make me into anything other than
a farm girl,” she said, picking up the plate from beside the stove and handing
it to me. “Here. I kept these warm for you.”
“Aw. Thanks, Mom.” I really was grateful. No one made scrambled eggs
quite like my mom, and despite having lived on my own for the last decade,
I’d never been able to nail them the way she did them.
“Have a seat at the table, hon, and then we can go over what I’ll need you
to pick up from the store for Christmas.”
I’d already set my plate and mug down at the table, but I was brought up
short by her pronouncement, and how casually she’d seemed to drop it in the
middle of my breakfast.
I shut my eyes tightly before looking back at her. “Fine. Let me see the
list.”

F orty-five minutes later, I was pushing the cart through the aisles of our
local grocery store, looking for the exact type of honey and bulbs of garlic
that had the correct number of cloves for my mom’s purposes.
I’d been looking through the potatoes, carefully combing through them so
that I had a decent variety of russet and red and ensuring that none of them
had any rotten parts on them—I’d never hear the end of it if I brought her a
rotten potato—and I turned away from the little counter, weaving through the
produce section when I was caught up short by my cart running smack into
something. I blinked out of my reverie of annoyance to see that I’d run
headlong into another cart. I had allowed myself to get more distracted than I
ever did.
“Whoa there, Luce,” a familiar voice said, and I blinked up at the tall
frame of Adam Kent. His usual smile lit up his face, and he leaned over the
handle of his cart so that he was facing me straight on. “If you wanted my
attention, you could’ve just asked.”
“Ha ha,” I said, but the smile that stretched across my face was genuine.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“I’d make a sarcastic quip about being surprised to see you, but the truth
is that I’m still not used to this,” he said, that familiar shyness that I knew
from high school creeping across his face. “It’s honestly so good to have you
back.”
I couldn’t help the faint heat that spread across my cheeks at the words.
This was Adam, after all. One of my oldest friends in the world.
“You wouldn’t want some company, would you?” he asked as he
gestured to my cart. “I don’t know how much more you have to do, but my
mom asked me to get all of the stuff for Christmas Eve dinner.”
“My mom asked me to do all of the Christmas shopping too,” I said,
sighing. “I’d love some company.”
He smiled again, pulling back on his shopping cart, and turning it around
before pushing it forward toward the greens. “You doing brussels sprouts this
year?”
I consulted my list. “Yep.”
The two of us examined the selection as we pulled out a decent number of
sprouts for our mothers.
“Is your mom crazy high-maintenance about the groceries you bring back
to her?” I asked.
“You have no idea,” he said, rolling his eyes. “One time, she sent me
back to the market because one of the rib roasts I brought home had too much
fat on it.”
I blinked at him before laughing at him. “Okay, that’s a little extra. I
don’t think my mom’s ever done that.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but to give her credit, she’s a pretty damn good
cook, so I think I can give her a break.”
“Yeah, she is,” I said, remembering a few of the dinners that I’d eaten at
the Kent house growing up. There had been a few occasions when, after
being served more than three helpings of chicken and dumplings, I’d thought
that Alice Kent was deliberately trying to make me gain weight. “I’m really
excited for her Christmas Eve dinner.”
“Say what now?” Adam asked, popping an extra onion into his cart.
“Didn’t you know? Your mom invited my parents and me for dinner and
drinks on Christmas Eve. My mom told me a couple of days ago.”
Adam shrugged one incredibly broad shoulder, and I had to take a second
to marvel at the sheer size of him. “My mom doesn’t tell me very much,
unfortunately. But still, this’ll be a great Christmas Eve now that I know
you’re going to be there.”
I had to bite the inside of my cheek at that, and I looked back down at my
cart quickly as I tried to sort through the jumble of emotions that his
statement had caused in my belly.
“What’s next on your list?” he asked.
“Oat milk,” I said, looking down at it.
He blinked. “Okay. I’m not gonna judge, I promise. I’ll even come with
you to grab your weird oat milk.”
“Oh, thanks so much,” I said sarcastically, and the two of us went toward
the refrigerated dairy section. Surprisingly, I managed to find the exact brand
of oat milk that I’d come to love while at college.
We continued making our way through the supermarket, chatting the way
we used to, and I took every opportunity I could to surreptitiously examine
him out of the corner of my eye here and there, so I could assess where my
reaction to what he’d said had come from.
I’d never really thought about Adam in romantic terms. We’d been
friends for so long that whenever I looked at him—I just hadn’t seen him in
that way. It wasn’t to say that I’d ever thought of him as bad looking. He
never had been, not by a long shot.
Though—now… now, he was a completely different story.
The espresso-colored hair—a brown so dark it was almost black—that
had always seemed unruly before, now fell casually over his forehead,
drawing attention to the deep blue eyes that all the brothers shared. As a teen,
Adam had seemed gangly, having sprouted a foot almost overnight when
he’d entered high-school, and he’d spent most of that time as a skinny bean
pole.
Now, his shoulders had broadened—probably from the decade of ranch
work—and he had a confident light in his eyes that had never been there
before. He seemed to have grown into himself.
The way that those slow smiles crept across his face when he looked at
me sent a feeling spreading through my lower stomach that I was eager to
explore. I’d always loved spending time with him when we were younger,
but now, the idea of seeing him again prompted a different degree of
excitement in me.
He grabbed a loaf of bread from the bakery aisle and turned back to me
with a smile. “Ready to check out?”
I didn’t miss the double entendre, and I could only hope that he did.
“Yep.”
He entered the line for one register, and I entered the other, and soon
enough we’d both paid for our groceries, getting through the lines quickly
enough.
“Okay,” Adam said, wheeling the cart over to the same Chevy pickup that
he’d been driving since high school. “I’ll see you on Wednesday, if not
before, right?”
“Wednesday?”
“Christmas Eve.”
“Oh, right.”
He grinned at me, leaning forward, and giving me a hug. “It really is great
to see you back here, Luce.”
I breathed him in and hugged him back, trying to get the feelings in my
belly to calm down once again. “It’s great to see you too.”
7
 ADAM

“W hat are you so happy about?” my mom asked as I walked into the
house, raising an eyebrow as she came forward to take the grocery
bags from me. “I’ve never known you to look this happy when coming back
from the grocery store.”
Seeing Lucy at the market had kept me riding high ever since I’d left the
parking lot, and I felt like I could see her behind my eyelids every time I
blinked; standing in front of the potatoes with that frown on her face that
made her look like she’d accidentally taken a sip from a glass of lukewarm
beer that had been sitting out in the heat for the last five hours.
I blinked a few times, bringing my attention back to my mother who was
still standing in the kitchen and staring at me expectantly. Shrugging a
shoulder, I simply went to the counter and started unloading one of the
grocery bags. “It’s nothing huge. I just ran into Lucy Oliver at the market,
and we wound up doing our shopping together.”
“Oh! Well, that’s nice,” she said, looking up at me as she took the turkey
out of its bag and put it aside to prep. “Did you guys have a lot to catch up
on?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I was happy to hear that she and her parents are coming
over for Christmas Eve. I hadn’t known that you’d invited them.”
“Well, you know that Marge and I have coffee a few times a week,” she
said, and I nodded. “She and I were talking about how Lucy’s come home
from Utah, and how she’s been settling in. They usually do their big
celebration on Christmas Day, so I suggested that they come over for
Christmas Eve.” She raised her eyebrow at me once more as she dumped the
potatoes unceremoniously into the sink. “Why? Are you disappointed?”
 “No! Not at all,” I said hurriedly. “It’s going to be great to have more
time with her to catch up.”
“I know. Andy told me that you and your brothers ran into her when you
boys went out to Spurs the other night,” she said, smiling as she turned on the
water. “It’s good that you’re so excited to catch up with your old friend.
She’s such a sweet girl.”
“Yeah, she is.” I turned back to the bags hurriedly so that my mom
couldn’t see the way that my face had flamed up, turning redder than some of
the twinkle lights that we’d draped over the tree currently standing in my
parents’ living room.
I knew that my mom loved Lucy and her parents, which was partially
why it had been so easy for both sets of parents to be easygoing about a
teenage boy and a teenage girl hanging out together at pretty much every
hour of the day and night. That had been especially true when both of us had
turned out to be painfully shy nerds as teenagers, more comfortable around
horses than we were around other kids our age.
None of that had changed the fact that I’d had a crush on her; it had just
thrown up several barriers of me not asking her out and making things
official. On top of which was the fact that I knew her future lay in college and
veterinary school, and I refused to be one of the obstacles that held her back
from that dream if I knew that I was never going to leave Rock Ledge. The
result was that we’d never been more than friends, even though I knew that
neither set of parents would have been likely to object to us getting together.
In fact, they probably would have thrown a preemptive engagement party.
Well—now, we were both a decade older, with a decade more of life
experience and understanding of the world. And she was still my friend, but
my feelings toward her were decidedly more than friendly.
I didn’t want my mom to find out that I couldn’t stop thinking about her,
and it was in a much more intense way than most friends did.
“Honey,” my mom said, and I turned to look at her, blinking a few times
as she waved in my face to get my attention. I looked at her with interest, and
she thrust the boxes of cereal into my hands. “Will you please take these into
the hallway pantry?”
“Yep,” I said, turning away from her.
I successfully managed to help Mom unload the rest of the groceries without
a mishap and was able to extricate myself from her company with the
excuse of ranch chores that were going undone. Her wry smile told me that I
hadn’t gotten anything past her, but thankfully she didn’t say anything.
Heading outside, I breathed in the biting cold of the bracing December
air, allowing my breath to form a cloud in front of me as I shrugged off the
tension I’d felt in the space with my mom. As much as I loved her, I’d
practically heard the wheels in her mind turning, and I didn’t know how
much longer she’d be able to keep the questions in if I stayed in there with
her.
A hammering from the nearby barn caught my attention, and I made my
way over to the building, sighing in relief at the warmth I felt as soon as I
walked inside. The light from the overhead pendulum lamp glanced off
Andy’s dark blonde hair as he knelt next to one of the stall doors, which he’d
taken off of its hinge and was tweaking.
“Hey bro,” I said, walking over to him. Andy paused in his steady,
practiced motions, looking over at me with one of those smiles that seemed to
dig into the very roots of your soul.
“Hey yourself,” he said. “You get out of the market alive?”
“Barely,” I said, leaning against the table that he’d moved into the middle
of the barn to hold his tools. “You’re doing the shopping next year.”
“No promises,” he said.
I snorted, but just ran my hand through my hair as I looked around the
barn, taking in the horses in the barn and the ones that were missing. “How
are Storm and Phoenix doing?”
Andy looked over at the two stalls in the corner, holding the sister mares
that our parents had gotten when I was fifteen and Andy was sixteen. The two
of them had been great foalers over the years, giving us a lot of healthy
horses that we’d gone on to sell, and they were due to drop their newest
babies soon enough.
“They’re pretty good, as far as I can tell,” said Andy. “They’ve been a
little fidgety, but nothing out of the ordinary for how far along they are.
Austin’s going to look them over later, but he put the rest out to pasture so
that I could get some stuff done in the barn. Ellie, Daisy, and Gwen are all
chilling in their stalls. I think they’re napping.”
“Huh,” I said, going over to the pail of crab apples and pulling some out
as I clicked my tongue to get them to come over to me. They did, taking the
treats from my hand and sticking around for a few nuzzles. “Maybe we
should get someone a little more experienced to come out and take a look at
them.”
“Like Lucy?” he asked, continuing to hammer away at the stall doors that
he had in front of him.
“You read my mind,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice low and
casual as I brought her up. “You know, I actually ran into her at the market.”
He was quiet for a few seconds as his hammer continued to smack against
the wooden door, and I wondered for a second whether or not he’d even
heard what I told him. “Did you guys talk?”
“Yeah. We ended up doing our shopping together,” I said, grinning to
myself as I ran my hand over Phoenix’s velvety neck. “We chatted about a
lot.”
“That sounds nice,” he said, continuing to hammer on the door.
“It was,” I said. “She told me that Mom invited her and her parents over
for Christmas Eve.”
I thought I might’ve heard the hammer slip a little bit, and I turned to
look at him. He had set the tool down and was examining the door closely as
he avoided my gaze. “This Christmas Eve?”
“No, five years from now,” I said sarcastically.
He looked at me for a moment without saying anything.
“I gotta get back to work,” he mumbled, reaching over and pulling out a
couple of tools to keep fixing the doors. “It’ll be good to see Lucy and her
parents when they come over.”
“Yeah, it will,” I said, giving Storm and Phoenix a last pat before I turned
and walked out of the barn.
8
 ANDY

I should’ve known better than to be holding the hammer when thinking

about Lucy. Although, considering the fact that she’d been on my mind
since we’d seen her at Spurs more than a week before, that would make it
almost impossible for me to do my work otherwise. I’d straight-up almost
smashed my thumb when Adam had told me that she and her parents were
coming over for Christmas Eve dinner and had to set the hammer down on
the ground until my hand stopped shaking.
I couldn’t help but think of the look on her face when she’d learned I’d
dropped out of college. Maybe it was just that she’d seen me as a kindred
spirit. Since I was the only one of my siblings to go to college, and she was
the first one in her family to go; maybe it was that she’d seen that as
something the two of us had in common.
Our dreams were too small for Rock Ledge to contain, and the fact that
the same was just not the case with the other people that we knew. No one
else could truly relate to what it was like to not having your needs met by
living in the same town for your entire life, not gaining any further
knowledge or experience of the world than what they could find in their own
backyard. And what Lucy and I shared was a craving to see something
beyond the simple understandings of the world that we’d been raised with.
The thoughts cheered me up as I continued to work on all the doors that
I’d taken off their hinges, rehanging them and making sure that each of them
hung perfectly on the stall hinges.
It hadn’t been an easy decision for me to back out of college and come
back home, especially when I knew that my parents were never going to ask
me to do so. But when I’d come home for Christmas that year, it had become
abundantly clear what a burden it was to my parents. While I was studying in
Boulder, my family needed me back at home.
It had taken a few conversations with my brothers—but particularly with
Aaron, who had the gravity and understanding to ground me while I was
trying to make the decision—before I was able to reach the conclusion that
leaving school was the right choice.
I figured that school would always be there, if I felt the need to go back
down the road and when it came time to do so, I’d actually have the life
experience to balance my decisions more clearly. That way, if I needed to
take out loans, all personal responsibilities and burdens would fall on my
shoulders.
But now that I was faced by someone who had taken her dream and seen
it through from beginning to end, I started to wonder whether I was
underestimating my own abilities to shoulder those burdens back when I’d
had the chance. There had been so many things working in my favor, and I’d
known that at the time.
Thinking back to the way Lucy had looked that night, sitting at Spurs and
that light that had seemed more like disappointment than anything else
shining from her eyes, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was just the
unacknowledged emotions of the last few years that were finally finding an
outlet. After all, I couldn’t know for sure whether she was disappointed that
I’d dropped out. The two of us hadn’t had a single one-on-one conversation
in a decade. So, there was a very distinct probability that I was just projecting
all of my own disappointments onto her.
Finishing the rest of the retrofitting, I left my wood-working tools on the
table in the barn and packed the rest of the tools that I would need to see to
the next task on my to-do list and headed out to the field. There was a tractor
out there that my brothers had told me was having trouble starting.
Trekking out to the field, which was even more shockingly cold now than
the ranch had been this morning, I dropped my toolbox on the ground next to
the tractor and started up the winch that began to heave the old piece of
equipment up, which would allow me to be able to get underneath it and look
around. At the same time, I opened the hood and began to poke around at the
engine, ensuring that I would be able to troubleshoot the problem a little bit
easier.
A soft tongue clicking got my attention, and I turned to look at behind me
at where Austin was seeing to a few of the horses that were milling around
the field, carefully examining their ankles as he went from horse to horse,
pulling up their fetlocks and making sure they were shod well.
I turned away from him, smiling to myself with amusement. I knew that
he did feel some type of way about not having had the opportunity to go to
veterinary school, and that he’d been feeling that type of way about Lucy
ever since she’d been a scrawny little tomboy, coming around the ranch and
dogging his every step, cheerfully proving him wrong about his diagnoses
every second she could.
Turning back to the tractor, I started to get under it making sure that
Adam hadn’t driven over anything that had gotten stuck in the workings. If it
turned out that there was something that gummed up the engine, there was no
chance I’d be able to fix anything else.
Finding nothing under the tractor, I moved on to the engine itself, looking
to make sure that none of the parts inside had finally broken down to the
point of needing replacing. My parents had reinvested most of the money into
the horses, so the equipment was often forgotten about, to their detriment.
“Hey, bro,” I heard from behind me, and I turned around to see that
Austin had come up behind me.
“Hey,” I said, setting my wrenches down on the little grease cloth that I’d
left on the side of the truck. “How are the girls looking?”
The horses from the barn that I’d been working on had all been mares and
given that most of our energy went into our breeding, we always needed to
ensure that our girls consistently had a clean bill of health before we started
breeding any of the mares to some of the neighboring stallions. Austin took
the responsibility extremely seriously and gave his girls’ consistent check-
ups.
“Most of them are looking pretty good, but I’m worried about Sage and
Rosie,” he said, and I was surprised by the anxious look on his face. There
wasn’t much that made Austin nervous, so for him to be looking like that
started to pique my own worry.
“Why? What’s wrong with them?” Sage and Rosie had been with us for a
few years, and each of them had only bred once. They were both gorgeous
Andalusian thoroughbreds and had proven pretty inspirational for some of
my writing in one of the latest short stories that I’d written. If they ended up
being fatally ill and needed to be put down, it would be a huge blow to our
finances, especially after we’d invested so much into them.
“It’s looking like they’re developing founder,” he said.
 “Shit,” I said, turning around and sitting down in the grass. “Shit. What
are we going to do?”
“Well, I’m going to need Doc Boyd to come out and take a look at them
so that he can confirm whether or not it’s true,” he said. “He’s the one who’s
going to need to sign off on the treatment plan for them, after all.”
“Okay,” I said. “Then we’re going to have to call him right away. We
need to start treating them right now.”
“Yeah,” he said, biting down on his lip, before the setting of his eyes
seemed to change imperceptibly and they darkened a bit. “I just hope that
he’s actually the one who comes out, and not Lucy. I don’t know if I’m going
to be able to deal with her if she starts contradicting me now that she’s an
official vet.”
I raised an eyebrow at him, unsure about whether or not I should call him
out on how much of a jerk he sounded like. “Well, you should know then that
she and her parents are coming to Christmas Eve with us.” I shrugged. “Just
figured you should prepare your ego in advance.”
He groaned. “Amazing. Then she can get the outsmarting started right
away, and on a holiday, no less.”
I blinked at him a couple times before turning away from him and turning
back to the engine. “If you say so.”
As much as he might complain about her, there was something about the
set of his jaw that told me he wasn’t that disappointed about the prospect.
9
 AUSTIN

T he hot water sluiced over my shoulders as I thought over my day, thinking

about my work and what I’d discovered about Sage and Rosie. I hadn’t
been able to stop thinking about them since I’d packed up to leave the ranch,
having taken all the pictures I possibly could as I packed them back into their
stalls. I made some temporary padding for their heels out of some extra
saddle blankets that we had on hand so that I could at least stabilize them
until Doc was able to make it out.
I’d sent the pictures to Doc Boyd with a brief explanation as to why, and
then I’d immediately gotten a call back. That was the great thing about Doc
Boyd—you were never in doubt that he cared.

“Y eah Austin, I’m afraid you’re right. It definitely looks like founder,” the
old veterinarian said as I drove back to the small house I shared with
Aaron, half in a daze with my worry for the two mares.
“What should we do, Doc? The usual?” I asked as I ran my hand through
my hair, pulling up to the stop light. “I can get everything ready for you to
come out tomorrow to see to them, if you can.”
“I can’t tomorrow, unfortunately,” he said. “I’ve got a full slate of
appointments in the clinic, but I’ll let Lucy know. She’ll also probably be
better than me at creating a treatment plan; she’s gotten to know all of the
most modern methods for dealing with founder, so you’ll definitely be in
better hands with her there for this.”
I didn’t say anything to him as I pulled into the driveway, killing the
engine and leaning my head into my hand. I was just trying to gauge how it
would be to have her there, at the ranch, for the first time in so long, for an
issue that she was qualified to see to.
“Austin? Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Yeah I am.” I snapped out of my reverie. “I’m sorry. I guess it’s
just going to take some getting used to; having someone other than you come
out to the ranch to look in on the animals.”
“I know. It’s going to be quite an adjustment for me too, but I promise
that with Lucy taking care of you, you’re going to be in very good hands.
Lucy’s been working with me for the last two weeks, and I can’t think of
anyone that I’d rather have taking over the practice for me. Believe me, I
wouldn’t send anyone out that I didn’t have complete confidence in.”
“I know,” I said, the words coming out with a sigh. “I know.”

N ow, as I stood in the shower with hot water coming down over my
shoulders, I felt like I was washing the day off me piece by piece. It was
as if all the worry of the last few hours began to fall away from me like
overripe apples off a branch. I rubbed the shampoo through my hair, washing
off all the dust and grass residue from the last few hours, and allowed myself
to relax into the rest of the week.
The truth was that, as much as I complained about Lucy, I couldn’t deny
that there was a large part of me that was looking forward to seeing her at our
Christmas Eve gathering. And as much I protested about having her
contradict me and, essentially, thwart me at every turn, I also kept picturing
what it would be like to have her back at the ranch the next day.
Surprisingly enough, when I pictured it, it wasn’t with the dread that I’d
been anticipating. Instead, all I could think about was the way the sass
seemed to flow out of her smart mouth without any effort, and the strange
way that it had transformed so intensely from when she’d been a teenager.
After all, when she’d been a kid, it had been nothing but obnoxious and
grating when she’d talked to me about how she worked. The entire time that
she’d been telling that story at the bar about learning about working on the
emu, I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes off her. She’d been so funny as
she’d told the story of treating the animal, and hearing all about what she’d
learned about in school had been fascinating rather than aggravating, the way
that I’d expected it to be.
No, instead of aggravating me, she’d held my eyes the other time, and the
way the light had shone off her stunning golden hair. I’d had the sudden urge
to reach my hand over just one foot and run my thumb down the smooth skin
of her neck, and I’d continuously been drawn in by the bright light of her
green eyes.
I was the first to admit that the way her looks had changed probably had
something to do with the way that my opinion of her had changed. She’d
been a cute enough kid, but her looks then had absolutely nothing on what
she looked like now.
I set my hand on the shower wall, shutting my eyes slowly as the water
continued to run down my back and lower, hitting the backs of my thighs. I
pictured the way she tilted her head to the side, and how the motion made her
ponytail drape over her soft skin as it spread out.
I saw the bottom of her ponytail trail over to where the edge of her tank
top covered her perfect tits, each of which was just the right size to fit into
one of my palms.
The water dripping over my chest and trailing down my front brought a
sharp awareness to the fact that I was currently granite-hard and had barely
noticed when it had happened.
Well, now that I was here, and things were going down this road, I
figured I might as well follow it to its conclusion.
I imagined the way that Lucy would look when we had her back at the
ranch, and we’d finished looking after the horses. I’d be walking her off the
ranch to where she’d parked the car, when she’d turn around and give me that
look. The one that she always gave when there was something that seemed to
intrigue that brilliant mind.
I imagined the way that I would lean forward and capture her lips with
mine.
Her lips would give under mine, opening so easily to me as I then began
to worry her lip with my teeth.
I moved my hand down to my cock, standing ready to be touched and
seeming to beg for some attention. I couldn’t help wincing a little bit as the
sensitive flesh responded to my touch, imagining that it wasn’t me.
Lucy’s small hands had callouses built into them that demonstrated just
exactly how hard she’d worked over the last few years, and they raised every
hair on my body as she moved them down my front, opening the front of my
jeans with a couple of quick moves before she slipped her hand into the gap
made by my open fly. I groaned into her mouth as she started moving her
hand up and down my cock.
I was close. Very close. The idea of Lucy seemed to have a power over
me that I’d never experienced in any of my other fantasies, and it seemed to
have taken me no time at all for me to get from zero to one hundred in less
than five minutes.
I barely cared whether we could be seen from the house as I pushed her
jeans down and lifted her up, wrapping her legs around my waist as I
plunged into her. She gasped into my ear as I seated myself to the hilt,
beginning to thrust inside of her over and over. I moved my thumb down to
her clit. There was no way that I would be able to finish unless I felt her
come, and with the way that she’d responded to me, I knew that she was just
as close as I was.
I groaned as a few more strokes had me spilling all over my hand, and I
practically melted forward, allowing my head to fall against the shower wall
as I relaxed. The waves of the climax rolled through me, and I breathed
deeply as the shuddering began to dissipate. Turning around, I leaned into the
cool tile of the shower.
After I’d dried off and allowed myself to fully relax, I went into my room
to put on the soft grey sweatpants that I’d just pulled out of the dryer that day,
and the old worn tank top that was my favorite to sleep in.
As I sank into my usual preparation for my evening routine, I realized
that I really had let most of the worry of the day go in the shower. I would fix
the mares’ founder, and I knew that Lucy would take great care of the both of
them.
I wandered out to the living room, where Aaron was sitting on the couch
with the TV on. A quick look over at the screen told me that he was watching
one of the rodeos he loved to use to take his mind off the business.
Occasionally, one of the geldings that came out of our farm even appeared in
them, and he loved it when he managed to catch a glimpse of them.
“Hey,” he said, taking a sip from his beer.
“We got any more of those?” I asked, tilting my chin toward the bottle in
his hand.
“Yeah, there should be at least a couple more in the fridge,” he said. “It’s
going to be your turn to replace them when we run out this time.”
 “Fair enough,” I said, heading over to the open-concept kitchen that we
shared and opening the door to the fridge. There was a pathetic assortment on
the shelves, from old pizza to some leftover lasagna that our mom had sent
home with us after one of our Sunday family dinners a week or so back.
“You know, some of these leftovers are starting to look a little sus, bro.”
“If you feel like cleaning out the fridge, have at it,” he said, not taking his
eyes off the TV screen. I smiled a little to myself as I shut the door and
opened my beer with the bottle opener magnet.
Moving in with my brother had originally been meant as a temporary
arrangement after I’d moved out of the house that I’d shared with Katie. He’d
had a spare room, and one night after all four of us had been sitting there,
helping me nurse my feelings with an extra handle of bourbon, he’d
suggested that I take it while I figured out what came next.
“After all,” he’d said with a grin, “I’m gonna be way less likely to judge
if you bring a rebound home than Mom and Dad will.”
That was two years ago. I’d slowly unpacked all the boxes that had been
taking up space in the garage, and we’d fallen into an easier rhythm than
we’d had as kids.
I really liked living with my brother. He’d always been a friend, but he’d
become my rock in the last few years.
I dropped on the couch next to him, not saying much as I took in the
rodeo on the screen. “I haven’t had the chance to tell you,” I said, turning to
him seriously, “but Sage and Rosie are developing founder.”
“Shit,” he said, setting the bottle on the table. “Shit. What are we gonna
do?”
“Lucy’s coming to the ranch tomorrow. She’s gonna talk over a treatment
protocol with us so that we can nip this in the bud and get them better.”
I saw his hands still where they’d been in the process of running over and
over the bottle. “Lucy’s coming over tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I said, raising my eyebrow a little. “And on Christmas Eve, with
her family.”
“Oh,” he said, his voice going just a little higher than it usually did.
“That’s cool. It’ll be good to have her insight.”
His voice seemed just a little too studied, too casual. Especially when
considering how his eyes seemed to light up with an interest that I’d seen all
too rarely when he’d talked about women in the past. Back then, the casual
tones he’d always used to talk about women had always been real.
 The guilt that I hadn’t initially felt after jerking off to my fantasy of Lucy
began to set in. Aaron had a history of putting himself last, and I wasn’t about
to be the reason why he did that again.
10
 AARON

I checked the load of special feed that had just been delivered to the ranch,
checking off every box on my order form to ensure that we’d gotten
everything that we’d ordered. Austin had gone a little bit nuts a few weeks
before, insisting that we start getting better feed with the weather turning, and
with our own stores of home-grown straw having dwindled low, I’d wound
up agreeing that it would be a worthwhile investment.
“Yep, I think that that’s all of it,” I said, signing the invoice before
handing it back to the delivery driver and shaking his hand. I couldn’t help
feeling a little bit nervous whenever I got new food to give the animals,
especially the mares. Keeping these animals happy and healthy was my
ultimate concern, and I just wanted to ensure that our girls got was the best of
the best.
Breeding animals was no joke, especially when some of your clients had
paid money years in advance to have a horse specifically bred, so that they
could enter into the Kentucky Derby, or even overseas at Ascot. And now
that both Sage and Rosie were showing symptoms of founder.
I shook my head as I started loading the feed onto the tractor that Andy
had fixed a few days before. They would be fine. There was no other option.
I was pulled up short at the sound of a vehicle pulling up to the fence, and
my heart gave a painful, echoing thud when I saw Lucy climbing out of the
truck. Her golden hair was in its usual ponytail, but the top of her head was
hidden under the black knit beanie she had on over her ears. She gave me a
smile as she pulled out her veterinary bag. The thudding in my heart was
echoed all the way down to my toes. I tried to keep my smile to a normal size
as I waved back at her in return. I didn’t want to freak her out too badly, as
there was no reason why I should be that happy to see her.
“Did I just see the Green Seeds delivery truck driving away?” she said as
she walked forward, pulling a second heavy bag after her.
I nodded. “Yeah. We’ve never used them before, so I’ve been a little
nervous about trying them out, but Austin persuaded me to go with a new
supplier.”
She smiled at me again, this time a little bit more gently. “You feeling a
little nervous about feeding them something new?”
“Did going to vet school make you a psychic or something?”
She laughed. “No, but you look insanely tense right now. They’re a great
supplier. I actually recommend them to a lot of new livestock owners, so I
don’t think that you could go with anyone better.”
Her words helped soothe the unwanted nervousness that I felt growing in
my belly, and I nodded back at her. “Thanks for saying that.”
“I think it’s just a mark of being a responsible animal owner to be
concerned to try something new. You want to know that your animals are
going to be safe with what you’re going to be feeding them.”
I smiled wider at her when I heard the words and reached around her to
grab the large bag of supplies that she’d brought with her. “These for Sage
and Rosie?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Are they in the close barn?”
“Yep. We set up some blanket supports for their ankles in the meantime
until you could get here.” I loaded the stuff onto the tractor before taking her
by the hand and helping her up into the front seat.
“We can walk, you know,” she said. “I’ve lugged heavier stuff further
distances than this.”
“I’m driving the feed there anyway,” I said. “Plus, this’ll be warmer.”
I could see the shy smile on her face that she was clearly trying to keep
hidden, as well as that faint flush that was beginning to crawl up her delicate,
pale skin, and I couldn’t help thinking of the way that that rich, red flush
must be spreading all over the rest of her body.
I also couldn’t help thinking that there were some other ways that I would
rather keep her warm… and then I shook my head a little bit, trying to get my
mind of the gutter.
“You okay there?”
I turned to look at her, and her face was a cross of concern and
entertainment as she raised her eyebrow at me. “You look like you’re trying
to shake off a gadfly or something.”
“Sorry,” I said, focusing again on the path in front of me that I needed to
keep the tractor to. “I think I might’ve gone somewhere else for a second.”
I pulled up to the barn, stopping the tractor and reaching up for her hand,
which she placed in mine without hesitation before stepping down. Her
fingers were cold, but the small burst of contact sent a rush of heat through
me, spreading out from the hand that she held and radiating from my
fingertips up to the top of my head before rushing down to the tips of my
toes.
With her hand in mine, I completely forgot about the cold of the weather
around me. Pulling the sliding door open, I reached up into the back of the
tractor as I began to unload the bags of feed that had just been delivered.
Austin wasn’t in the barn yet, so I figured that I may as well take the
opportunity to get a little organized. She started reaching for some bags of
feed that had been left there, and I paused to shake my head at her. “You
don’t have to do that.”
“It’s okay. I’d rather not just stand around not doing anything if I’m out
on a call. It just doesn’t feel right to me.”
I shrugged. “If you insist. Austin’ll be down here in a little bit. He had a
few foals that he wanted to look in on this morning before he comes to meet
up with us.”
We worked quickly, stacking up the bags in a small pile in the corner of
the barn. I wasn’t used to being around someone with whom my normal
silence didn’t feel tense and strange. I’d been so grateful to have my brothers
around us at the bar, but now that they weren’t here, I didn’t feel any tension
other than the fierce attraction to Lucy that continued to rise in my gut the
longer that I was around her.
“So,” she said, setting the final bag down in the corner and brushing her
hands off on her jeans, “I heard I’m coming by for Christmas Eve.”
I looked over at her with a grin. “Yep. Think you can handle it after all
this time?”
She laughed, and the sound seemed to rattle every single one of my
nerves. “I think so. Maybe I’ll have a couple of drinks in advance so I can
warm up to the prospect.”
I laughed too, and the two of us continued to chat about all our upcoming
plans for the year. There weren’t many plans coming up that were very
different from what we’d already done, but I was still amazed by how easy it
was for me to talk with her.
“Hey, guys.”
We turned at the same time to face Austin where he stood at the barn
door, wrapped from his toes to the top of his head. He grinned at the two of
us, and I noticed that the corners of his mouth weren’t as tight as I expected
them to be as he started to approach us, peeling off his gloves as he came
forward.
“Hey guys,” Lucy said, leaning forward and picking up her bag before
looking at the two of us. “Is there a surface that I can put this on while I
examine the mares?”
I nodded, heading over to the corner where we had a table mounted on
wheels that we normally kept for the tools that helped us maintain the
animals or the barn itself and rolled it over. I flipped the small brake for the
wheels on the bottom so that the counter wouldn’t roll away, and Lucy gave
me another smile of thanks as she opened the bag on top of the table.
“Thanks,” she said, and I stepped back, simply observing as she and
Austin got down to business. “Which are the affected horses?”
“These,” Austin said, leading her over to the two stalls in the corner
where the two had been kept for the last few days. “Sage and Rosie.”
“Okay,” she said, easing the first stall open before turning around. “Was
it the front ankles?”
“Yes,” he said, and she ran a hand soothingly down Sage’s delicate leg as
she lifted up one of the front hooves and moved it gently.
Sage neighed in protest, and my heart went out to the mare for the
obvious pain she was in.
“Shhh, girl,” she said, her voice toned low as she continued to soothe the
horse with the t-touch method. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.” She turned back
to Austin, her eyes steady. “How have you been exercising them?”
“We run them around the paddock most days,” he said. “Some of them
get jumped, but both Rosie and Sage have been reluctant lately. I noticed that
Rosie was favoring her right leg a little ways back, but initially I thought it
might just have been a strained muscles, since she didn’t have an obvious
abscess or anything.”
“That makes sense,” she said, moving out of the stall carefully before
heading over to Rosie’s stall to examine her feet. “I can’t think of any owners
that jump straight to laminitis at the first sight of some limping.”
She did a little more examining, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her as
she murmured sweetly to Rosie. Her head bent forward as she concentrated
on her work, and I couldn’t help studying the way her face moved as she
thought through next steps. I felt myself getting more and more impressed by
the moment as I heard the questions she asked.
“Okay,” she said, standing up and turning back around to look at the two
of us. “Is there anything that I can give them as a treat?”
Austin picked up the little pail of apples that we kept on hand, and she fed
one to each of them. “So, the good news is that we’ve caught the founder
very early on, so we should be able to reverse it if we take immediate action.”
We both nodded. “Okay,” Austin said, and I could tell that he was a little
bit aggravated by the explanation. “So, what would you suggest?”
“There’s an anti-inflammatory that I can prescribe to the two of them. It
comes in a powder form that you can mix into their feed, and it doesn’t
change the taste. I’d advise against mixing it with their water, though.”
Austin nodded. “Is there anything else we need to do?”
“Actually,” she said, walking back over to me, “I brought these new foam
supports for the two of them. They’ve been proven very successful with a lot
of the ranch owners I’ve seen in reversing founder, and it’ll help their ankles
maintain the correct position while the anti-inflammatories can work.”
Austin bit down on his lip, and he crossed his arms over his chest. “I
don’t know if those supports are necessary,” he said. “They seem like they’re
going to be obstructive.”
She blinked at him once, and then again.
“Doc’s always used heel wedges with our horses when founder comes up,
and it’s worked well. I just don’t understand why we’d need to change
something that seems to work.”
She nodded, holding his gaze steadily, and I had to hide my smile as I
saw the way her weighty gaze began to make him squirm, just a little.
“Heel wedges are a great way to go, but sometimes more freedom of
movement can do more harm than good when it comes to these ankle issues,”
she said, “especially when their connective tissue is at risk. Given Sage and
Rosie’s ages, it’s going to be best to keep them as still as possible for the next
few weeks. I promise that you’ll be happy when you see how quickly they
recover.”
I had to turn away from the two of them at that as I saw Austin’s eyes
practically bug out of his head. Austin was one of the most stubborn people
I’d ever met, and sometimes, putting him in his place was one of my favorite
things to do. So, to see Lucy—petite, shy, nerdy little Lucy—being the one to
practically grow a foot in stature due to sheer pride and knowledge in what
she did….
My respect and attraction seemed to have multiplied exponentially for
her. She was truly something special.
11
 LUCY

“Y ou look beautiful, sweetie.”

I looked at my mother from where I was sitting in the back seat,
giving her a smile as I tucked a strand of hair around my ear. “Thanks,
Mom.”
“Is that a normal thing that you started to do in Utah?” my dad asked,
looking at me in the rearview mirror as he carefully maneuvered the streets
toward the Kents’ ranch.
“What?” I asked, raising my eyebrow at him.
“Matching your sweaters to your makeup,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve
ever seen that before, so I just figured I’d ask about it.”
I rolled my eyes at him, checking the office schedule that I was able to
access through my phone. “No, Dad, it’s not a Utah thing.”
I heard a small smack from the front seat and did my best not to bite
down on my lip and ruin the careful application that I’d had to spend a whole
five minutes on as I’d been doing my makeup for the night.
I wasn’t used to wearing lipstick, so I opened the camera on my phone
and dabbed at the edges of my lips, ensuring that lipstick I put on for the first
time in weeks wasn’t smudged. Lipstick wasn’t exactly part of my every day,
so I needed to ensure that my application looked half-decent. If I did put on
makeup, it consisted of the tried-and-true eyeliner and mascara combination
that I’d discovered in high school, which came in a shade of brown that
seemed to highlight my eyes while not overpowering my pale coloring.
Tonight, though… something had told me to unpack the small bag of
makeup that had been sitting at the bottom of one of my bags since I’d moved
home. Even then, I’d been less than impressed with what I’d found, and had
texted Molly for an emergency trip to the nearest Sephora… which was an
hour away in Boulder.
She’d been thrilled, of course, and I’d come away with a couple of tubes
and little cylinders with names that I’d never heard of in my life.
As a result, my eyes were lined in a kohl black that the girl at the store
had told me would make them “pop like a jack-in-the-box,” and my lips were
coated in a thick, tacky paste that had dried in a crisp matte. The dark red was
a perfect match for the soft sweater I’d pulled out of the back of my closet,
and my long hair was left to hang naturally around my shoulder in a fall of
blonde waves.
The whole look was a major change from my normal appearance. Even
though I was still wearing pretty much the same combination as I always did
—namely a pair of jeans and boots—I felt like a wholly different person.
From the cosmetics on my skin to the excitement that bubbled its way up
from my belly, I felt different.
What was even more confusing to me, though, was that I’d had no idea
who I was getting dressed for as I’d carefully applied the makeup to my eyes
and lips and then dragged the brush through my hair so that it hung thick and
loose over my shoulders, with little wisps floating down to the middle of my
back. I could say that it was simply a desire to fit with the festivities of the
holiday, but the truth was that through almost all my life, I could probably
count the number of times that I’d worn lipstick on one hand… and they’d
almost all had to do with one guy or another that I’d been trying to impress.
The trouble here was that I had no idea which of the four Kent brothers
I’d been thinking of when I decided to put a few extra steps of effort into my
appearance that night. I was excited to see each one of them for one reason or
another and thrilled to have varying conversations with them.
They all looked similar enough for me to clearly see why I found them all
so attractive. As a collective, they were some of the best-looking men I’d
ever seen, but each of them possessed something individual that drew me in
separately, and I had no idea what to make of it.
Over the last few days, I’d found my mind dancing over each one of them
individually, trying to take what I could only describe as an audit of my
attraction to each one of them. I knew that I couldn’t be interested in four
men at once: especially four brothers. The idea just felt so… obscene to me.
And yet, the attraction I felt to each one of them felt so natural, so much
its own entity that, somehow, it didn’t feel like the wrong thing.
 We pulled up to the driveway of the ranch, and I climbed out of the
backseat, unable to help the fluttering that I felt in my belly. I took one of the
pies that my mom handed me from her baking binge earlier that day, quickly
wiping my hand off on my jeans so that the sweat wouldn’t make the pie dish
slip out of my hand.
We weren’t even halfway up the path that led to the Kents’ front door
before it opened and Alice Kent called out to us through the doorway, “Merry
Christmas, Olivers!”
The smile that broke across my face felt huge and freeing, and I ran the
rest of the way up the path, not giving a thought to any potential danger of
slipping on the ice that had formed there from the last rain fall.
“Mrs. Kent!” I called, throwing my arms around the woman with the
stunning black hair that two of her sons had inherited, hanging over her
shoulders in thick, shining waves.
“Lucy Oliver, if you haven’t become one of the most beautiful women
I’ve ever seen, then I must be blind,” she said, wrapping her arms around me
just as tightly.
“Back atcha, Mrs. Kent. You look amazing. I bet wrangling those five is
keeping you young.”
“It’s Alice, love. We’re all adults now. And I’m serious,” she said,
pulling back and reaching over to touch my cheek. “You’re absolutely
gorgeous. Utah did some great things for you.”
I laughed. “It really did. You know, like a veterinary degree.”
She laughed too, reaching forward and taking the pie from me. “I was just
getting there. You’re gonna have to tell me all about school and catch me up.
It’s been way too long.” She looked over my shoulder, calling down to my
mother. “Margie, why didn’t you tell me how gorgeous your daughter is?”
“Alice, you’ve always known how gorgeous my daughter is,” my mother
responded, following us up the steps and reaching around her shoulders as
she pulled her in for a hug. “She’s just come into herself, is all. You weren’t
lying when you said that Utah was good for her.”
I blinked rapidly as my mother’s words settled into me. She might get on
my nerves, but at the end of the day, I really freaking loved that woman. She
was truly the greatest mom.
Alice then pulled my dad in for a hug and shepherded all of us inside into
the warmth. I started shrugging off my coat, heading immediately for the hall
closet that I remembered so well from my high school days.
 “I’ve got that,” I heard a voice say, and I turned around to see Adam right
behind me. I couldn’t deny that my heart had made its way into my throat at
the sight of him in his black button-down, with the sleeves rolled up just
enough to show the defined muscles of his arms, sculpted as they had been
for years of hard labor on the ranch. I felt a curling in the lower muscles of
my stomach as he leaned forward to take the coat, draping it over one of the
spare hangers that they kept in the hall closet for their guest coats.
“You know, I actually could’ve managed that part,” I said, crossing my
arms over my chest.
“Yeah, I know,” he said as he shut the door. “But I never would’ve heard
the end of it from my mom if I’d forgotten to be a gentleman on Christmas
Eve of all nights.”
“Is Christmas Eve a better night to be a gentleman than any other?”
“I have no idea,” he said with a shrug. “It just seems like something that
she’d call me out on.”
I laughed. “Fair enough.”
He paused, seeming to take me in. “You look beautiful, by the way.”
I couldn’t help the heat that began to crawl its way up my neck, and I
knew that my skin was being stained the same deep crimson as my top as I
saw him looking at me.
No, it wasn’t quite that. I’d been looked at by a few guys in my time. It
was just that I wasn’t used to being seen, and Adam was seeing me.
After a good second of silence, Alice poked her head out from the living
room. “Come on, guys. Come join us. Lucy, I don’t think I’ve ever fixed an
actual drink for you. You’re going to have to tell me what your poison is.”
I blinked away from Adam and turned toward the living room, striding
down the hall with purpose. “I’m a bourbon girl, Alice. Always have been. If
there’s no bourbon, I’ll just have a beer.”
“Well, I’ve fixed some festive hot toddies for us, and I used bourbon” she
said. “Will that be all right?”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said, following her into the living room
Once I entered, I felt like the attraction I’d felt for Adam was magnified
to a supersonic level as I looked around.
Andy was the next of the brothers to come greet me, and I had to take a
second to look him over. The dark green Henley he was wearing suited his
coloring to an insane degree, seeming to highlight the blonder coloring of his
hair when compared to the rest of his brothers’ darker hair. “Hey, Luce.
Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas,” I responded, returning his hug just as tightly.
“You’re looking suitably festive,” Austin remarked, looking more
handsome than I’d ever seen him in the crisp white sweater that seemed to sit
around his shoulders, suiting him to the nines. The glint in his warm blue
eyes told me that there wasn’t any acid in what I might’ve otherwise
considered to be a pointed comment. One could never tell with Austin; he
was known to be just as sarcastic as I was. But one thing that I couldn’t
misunderstand was the spark that seemed to shine from behind his gaze as he
leaned forward and gave me a soft peck on the cheek.
“How else should I look for Christmas, Austin?” I said, returning the
gesture and leaning back. “Like I’m going to a funeral?”
A throaty laugh emerged from the far corner of the room, and I looked
over at where Aaron was sitting in the corner in a chair with one foot crossed
over the other as he nursed a beer. He waved at me, and I had to swallow at
the way that his own dark green and charcoal striped shirt seemed to
accentuate every single one of his muscles.
I swallowed loudly as I struggled to maintain a normal smile, not letting
on how tense I was in the presence of these four men who each fascinated me
in equal measure.
“Here’s your drink, dear,” Alice said, pulling my attention back to her as
she handed me my cup. “Now sit with me and tell me everything about
school. It must’ve been so interesting.”
“Parts of it were, but then there were parts of it that were so torturous I
wouldn’t wish them on my worst enemy,” I said, sitting down and taking a
drink as I heard the rest of the Kents and my own parents chattering around
me.
I began to relax as I sipped at my drink, allowing myself to laugh and feel
comfortable in the atmosphere in a way that I hadn’t in years.
Every minute that passed, though, I was still heartily aware of the men
around me, and how I reacted to each one in turn.
12
 ADAM

I nit aalways
lot of ways, having Lucy there in the house with us was just the same as
had been. Both families were chatting amongst themselves, and I
was happily eating plate after plate of my mom’s incredible turkey with the
chestnut stuffing that she was practically famous for county-wide along with
the garlic mashed potatoes that I could willingly spend the rest of my life
eating, even if I never got anything else.
At one point, Andy pulled a deck of cards from his pocket, and he and
Austin immediately began to play a game of Crazy Eights at the coffee table
as Lucy caught up with my mom, filling her in about the last decade and
telling her all about what she’d learned in veterinary school. Both of my
parents listened attentively, and I couldn’t blame them. It was hard enough
for me to look away from her, after all.
Andy and Austin finished their game, hailing me over to join them at the
coffee table. It took a little bit of persuading, but eventually we were able to
get Aaron over to join us for a game of Bullshit.
I hadn’t exactly been thrilled at the prospect of playing this particular
game; I’d never been very good at getting anything over on my brothers, and
they’d always been able to see through my efforts to hide my emotions from
them with no effort whatsoever.
“Jesus, Adam,” Austin said as he called BS on me for approximately the
millionth time. “You really have the worst poker face of anyone I’ve ever
seen.”
I turned to look at Andy, who was trying his best not to smile. “It’s true,
baby bro. You really have to work on that. It’s like everything you think is
scribbled on your face.”
 I rolled my eyes as I dropped the enormous pile of cards on the table.
“I could’ve told all of you that,” our mom called from the corner.
“Adam’s never been able to hide anything, not since he was a little kid and he
tried to pin the blame for eating the Easter cake on Austin.”
Even I had to laugh about that, and, as if on instinct, my gaze was
immediately pulled to where I’d last seen Lucy sitting.
She wasn’t there anymore, though, and as my eyes drifted around the
room, I realized that she wasn’t in the living room at all.
Screw it, I said to myself, getting up from my kneeling spot by the table.
“I’m going to go get another drink. You guys can split my cards; I bet it’ll be
more entertaining for you three bullshitters.”
They chuckled a little, and I heard the occasional request for something as
I got up and went into the hallway, walking down to the kitchen with my
mug.
I hurriedly refilled my cup with the hot, spiced whiskey and headed out
into the hallway, taking a second outside of the hot, crowded living room and
looking around at all the photos that my mom had hanging up on the wall
there. I took in a few photos of the four of us learning how to ride, Aaron
lassoing his first horse and the proud expression on his face as our dad looked
on, and Mom holding Austin on his lap on his eighteenth birthday and him
simply surrendering into her embrace.
And right there, seemingly staring me in the face, was a framed picture of
Lucy and me, sitting on the old bench that still lived on our porch. The two of
us couldn’t have been more than thirteen, as evidenced by the old sweatshirts
with our Junior High’s mascot on the front that we both wore, and the faint
glint of metal shining off Lucy’s teeth. She’d gotten her braces off when we
were fourteen, and I’d remembered staring at her for a good ten minutes after
as she kept running her tongue over her teeth.
The picture had captured one of the rare moments where she’d actually
smiled with her braces on, and I hadn’t been looking directly at the camera.
No, my gaze had been just off center, focused on her, and we’d each held up
the mugs of what had to be my mom’s hot cocoa. Damn, I thought to myself.
My brothers were right; I really couldn’t hide my feelings.
I heard water running, and I turned around to see the bathroom door open
next to me as Lucy came out.
“What are you looking at?” she asked, smiling as she came into the hall.
“This,” I said, gesturing with my chin at the photo. She came closer, and I
couldn’t help breathing deeply as she stood next to me. I inhaled her warm,
fresh scent of lavender and green hay and allowed it to wash over me as she
leaned forward to examine the photo more carefully.
“You know,” she said, turning around to face me once more, “it’s funny.
Your face and the expressions that you make are almost the same, but….”
She tilted her head to look at me, her smile growing across her face, “it’s
almost like you look more like yourself than you ever have.” She shrugged.
“I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It does.” My voice was pitched low, and I was afraid that I would give
everything away just by saying one more word. But in that moment, I didn’t
know if I cared. I would’ve given anything to continue standing there, being
looked at like that by her.
“You don’t live here anymore, do you?”
I blinked at her. “No; I have an apartment in town. Why?”
She shrugged. “I just wanted to see if that Good Morning, Vietnam poster
followed you to your new place.”
I smiled in amazement at her memory. It was hard for me to realize that
she still recalled what my favorite movie had been as a teenager. “It didn’t.
Do you want to see?”
“Sure.”
I led her down the hall to the small room that I’d grown up in, flipping on
the lights as I entered.
Coming in here always caught me just a little bit off guard. Even though I
lived just a few minutes away from my parents and spent almost every day on
their property, I didn’t make it a habit to go into my old room very often. I
wasn’t like Andy, escaping inside at every opportunity to get just a little bit
more writing done.
As a result, the slightly musty smell of my old bedroom always hit me in
the same way, as did all of the posters hanging on the walls. There was an
enormous, framed diagram of several breeds of horses that my grandfather
had given me as a kid, telling me that it was up to me to study as hard as I
could to know my work to the best of my ability.
The aforementioned poster from Good Morning, Vietnam was indeed still
hanging on the wall, with Robin Williams’s smiling face glinting out from
the old, faded poster. There was a good number of other photos hanging on
the wall, one or two of me playing flag football in middle school, and a few
of me standing with my brothers around the ranch.
 “Holy shit,” Lucy said, looking around the room. “It’s just like stepping
into a time capsule.” She looked around at everything, from the pictures
hanging on the walls to the bedspread, which she dragged her hand across as
if in absent thought. She turned back around, leaning against the desk and
setting her small, pert ass on the edge of it as she took me in. “Are all of your
rooms kept like this? Perfectly intact?”
“Yep,” I said with a nod, walking over to sit on the bed. “We’ve been
trying to tell my mom for years to do whatever she wants with the rooms, but
she’s been insisting that the rooms be kept exactly the same. She doesn’t
want to update them at all.” I shrugged. “The result is that no one uses these
rooms for anything… except for Andy, who uses his for exactly the same
thing he did when we were kids.”
“You mean running away from everything he has to get done to write?”
“Yep. That’s exactly it.”
“Why does your mom say she wants to keep them like this?” she said.
“That’s a lot of space going unused in her house.”
“She says that one day, she wants her grandkids to be able to see the
rooms that their dads grew up in so that they can know them for the kids they
were while they were becoming who they are.”
She paused, biting down on those rich, crimson lips. The sudden gesture
made me want to lean forward and add my own mouth to the mix. “That
might just be the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said. “I love how she’s
thinking of her grandchildren that way.”
“Yeah, whenever that’s going to happen,” I said, with a shrug.
“Is that not something that you want?” she asked, blinking at me
curiously. “A family?” She paused. “You know, it’s weird, but I don’t think
we ever talked about this.”
“I don’t think we ever did either,” I said, folding one of my legs
underneath me. “I mean, I do think that it’s something I’d like. It’s always
something I’ve known I wanted, but someday.” I blinked over at her. “What
about you? Do you want kids?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I think so,” she said, and I couldn’t help feeling a
sudden burst of hatred for whichever lucky bastard would be lucky enough to
make her his for life if it wasn’t me. “Or at least I think about it in general
terms, you know? But there’s still so much that I need to do before I’m going
to feel ready to take that step.” She paused, frowning. “Does that make
sense?”
 “Absolutely,” I said. “I completely understand, because that’s the same
way I feel about it.”
She smiled at me, and I felt that heat that flooded through my belly
whenever she looked at me like that. “I think we should probably get back to
the party.”
I nodded, getting up from the bed and walking out into the hall, holding
the door for her to walk out ahead of me. We headed down the hall toward
the living room once more, and as she walked, she missed the little frothy
bundle that hung above us from under the arch that sat randomly in the
middle of the hallway. “Luce,” I said quietly with my hand on her shoulder.
“Look up.”
She did, her mouth parting at the sight. “Mistletoe?” she said, shaking her
head with a little grin on her face. “Your mom is so old-fashioned.”
“Well, it’s bad luck not to kiss underneath the mistletoe,” I said, raising
my eyebrow at her.
She rolled her eyes but smiled wider as she tilted her head up to me. I
leaned down, closing my eyes as I pressed my lips to hers in a soft peck. I
didn’t allow it to go further than that, but I still lingered there, relishing the
feeling of her skin on mine in this way.
I didn’t move away from her immediately, though, and neither did she. I
didn’t know what to do, but I was afraid to move for fear that I would screw
this up.
I couldn’t have predicted the way that her hand would slide up to cup the
back of my neck, pulling me harder against her as she opened her mouth to
me, and I suddenly felt the contact ripple down my back like an electric
current that had been sent running over my skin. I was tempted to pull her
into my arms and back her against the wall so that I could run my hands over
every inch of her. She sighed against me, and the sound electrified me even
more as I drank in her taste of hot, spiced whiskey, and lavender, and
something else that was so very… Lucy.
A burst of laughter emerged from the kitchen, and I pulled away from her
reluctantly, loosening my hands from where they clung to her. As I backed
away from her, I kept my eyes fixed on her, hoping that she felt as much as I
did.
She reached up, smiling faintly, as she wiped a thumb across my lips to
erase the traces of her lipstick there.
“There,” she said. “That’s perfect.”
13
 LUCY

I woke up feeling as though several tendrils of emotion had begun to crawl

over my skin, and I blinked in the light that began to sneak in under my
drapes.
I stretched my arms over my head and wrapped them around the pillow as
I curled in on myself, doing my best to shut down the feelings that had begun
to spark in me the night before. I remembered Adam approaching me in the
hallway and leaning down to kiss me, reaching his hand into the hair that
hung down my back as he held me close to his body, plunging his tongue into
my mouth as if he would devour me whole.
“It’s Christmas morning!” came the happy, slightly shrill voice as my
bedroom door was thrown open, and I groaned just a little bit, pulling the
sheet over my head.
“Come on, Lucy-Goose! Time for you to wake up and come greet the
day!”
I had no warning as the sheet was suddenly tugged back from its position
over my head, and I turned over, raising my hands to cover my face. “Mom,
you are entirely too happy right now.”
“There’s no such thing!” she said as she jumped into the bed with me and
wrapped her arms around me. “How can there be any such thing when I
finally have my baby back, and I get to spoil her for however long you’ll let
me?”
I snorted a little, shutting out any thoughts of Adam as I returned my
mom’s hug, wrapping my own arms around her in turn and setting my head
on her shoulder. “Did you make the plum cake?”
“And the Irish coffee,” she said, leaning down to press a kiss to the top of
my head. The plum cake had always been my favorite Christmas food that
my mother made, and Christmas day had always been one of the only days in
my childhood when I’d be allowed to have dessert for breakfast.
There had been one year during college when I hadn’t been able to leave
campus for Christmas, and I’d done my best not to cry on the phone when I’d
called my mom to tell her. I hadn’t expected what had happened the next
morning, when a knock at my apartment door had pulled me out of bed, and
I’d opened it to find her standing there, a perfect plum cake on the plate in
her hands.
After I’d hugged her and cried into her shoulder a little, the two of us had
gone to a nearby pub that happened to be one of the only places open, and we
each ordered an Irish coffee. It was one of the first times that my mom and I
had been able to go out drinking together, and since then, Irish coffee and
plum cake had become our personal Christmas morning tradition.
I groaned a little as I pushed the hair out of my eyes and opened one eye
to look at my mom. “Okay, fine. You’ve found the magic combination to get
me out of bed. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Good,” she said, kissing my head again. “Because if you don’t get your
little butt down there, I’m gonna have to donate your presents.”
“That threat hasn’t worked on me in years,” I said, groaning as I stretched
my arms over my head. “I’ll be down there in a few.”
She got up and, after blowing me a last kiss, scurried down the stairs. I
sighed, getting up and grabbing the bra from where I’d left it on the desk
chair. I quickly put it on before putting my pajama shirt back on and hurried
out to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Looking at my reflection in the mirror,
I couldn’t stop taking in the hot, hectic flush of my cheeks, and I didn’t know
how I would be able to hide the raging and conflicting feelings that I felt
running through me at the memories of last night.
Heading downstairs, the soft bitterness of the coffee and the sweet
tartness of the cake floated up to me, hitting my nostrils hard as I walked
down the stairs to the living room where I heard my parents talking already.
“Morning,” I said through a yawn as I stretched my arms above my head,
looking around at the festive living room that my mom had spent the last few
days decorating, the way she did every year. I felt a little pang in my stomach
at the sight of the few ornaments that I’d helped to hang.
I’d been so busy with house calls this week that I’d barely taken half an
hour to decorate with her, not that she’d asked me, and yet the living room
looked more beautiful than it ever had. My dad was sitting in the armchair
that he always occupied, wearing the thick knotted sweater with a snowflake
pattern and a reindeer on the front that my mother had gotten him for
Christmas when they first got together. He raised his glass mug to me, the
dollop of cream floating on top of his coffee bobbing as if in greeting.
“Merry Christmas, honey!”
I leaned down to kiss my dad on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Dad.
Don’t you think it’s time for a new sweater yet?”
“It’s still hanging on by a thread. Why would I need new one?”
“Here’s your coffee and cake, sweetie,” my mom said, bringing in my
sweet breakfast. “I’ve got It’s a Wonderful Life queued up on TV, along with
the rest of the usuals.”
“Do you need help with the cooking, Mom?” I said, looking up at her
from where I’d perched on the couch.
“Nope!” she chirped, heading back into the kitchen. “Just start the
movies.”
“But It’s a Wonderful Life is your favorite.”
“Then start with whichever one you want, and then I’ll come in and join
once I finish the veggies,” she called.
I turned on the TV and started flicking through the different movies that
my mom had chosen, sucking in a breath at all of the different options. Dang,
Mom really had thought of everything.
“What do you think, Dad? Should we start with Elf or Nightmare Before
Christmas? Or what about Rent?”
“That’s quite a departure.”
“It still counts as a Christmas movie.”
“Let’s do Elf. I can’t think of anything that would make me feel more
Christmas cheer than Will Ferrell being an idiot.”

A few hours later, I was so stuffed that I could barely move from my spot
on the couch, where I was lying with my head on my mother’s lap, with
her tucking the stray blonde wisps of hair that had escaped from my bun back
from my forehead. We were watching as George Bailey went back to his
family and was told by his little girl about angels getting their wings. As
always, my heart gave a little clench as I watched George put one arm around
his kids and one around Mary, looked on by Clarence the way that we did
every year.
As the movie wrapped up, I dragged myself up to a seated position,
rubbing my painfully expanded belly and groaned a little. “Jeez, Mom. You
outdid yourself.”
“You say that every year,” she said.
“Well, I think every time you use a new marinade, it ups the ante,” I said.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever eat again.”
“Of course, you will,” she said. “You lost too much weight while you
were at school. I’ve been worried about that waistline of yours since you
came home.”
I rolled my eyes as I bit down on my lip. “Okay.”
“Do you like your presents, honey?” my dad asked, leaning forward.
“Doc Boyd said that those were the shoes most recommended by farm
veterinarians.”
“I love them,” I said, grinning widely at them. The expensive, hardy
shoes were sitting in front of me, as if ready for me to jump into at any
moment for work. They’d been recommended to me too when I’d taken off
my shoes one day and set my foot on an ice pack after a long day of
appointments. I was so focused on saving, though, that I knew it would have
to wait at least a few paychecks for me to get them.
Between the shoes and the gift card to Amazon they’d gotten me, I was
feeling pretty dang happy.
“Where are you going?” my mom said as I started getting up, reaching for
my gifts. “Heading over to meet one of the Kent boys?”
I shook my head. “I promised Molly I’d call her. I just need to do it
before I pass out into a food coma.”
“If you say so,” Dad said, reaching for the cup of regular coffee that my
mom had made for him. “Just know that if we can’t find you later—”
“I’ll be passed out in bed from the insane amount of food. You won’t
have far to look. Thank you so much for the presents, guys,” I said, getting up
and wrapping my arms around both of them. “I know I’ve been a little bit
busy since I’ve come home, but I’m so grateful to you guys for everything
that you guys do for me and have been doing for me for the last decade. I
don’t ever want you to think I’m not grateful.”
My mom blinked up at me before turning to my dad, and they took each
other’s hands as they looked up at me.
“Honey,” my mom said slowly, “we’re thankful to you too. We know
how hard you’ve worked over the last few years to get where you are, and we
couldn’t be prouder of you.” She picked up the gift certificate that I’d printed
off the internet, waving it at me. “Seriously. We couldn’t think of a more
amazing daughter than one who spoils us.”
That was the other reason why my shoes had had to wait. I might’ve gone
all out on buying them a voucher to use toward any kind of vacation they
wanted.
“Talk to you later, guys.”
I went to the hallway, where my heavy jacket and boots were waiting for
me to step into them and opened the door. I didn’t want to risk the possibility
that my parents would overhear this part, or they really might freak out.
“Hellooooo, bestie,” Molly crooned into the phone as soon as she
answered, and I immediately heard her turning down some music down in the
background. “How’s Christmas going with Marge and Eddie? They driving
you crazy?”
“Amazingly, not at all. It’s been a great day.”
Molly fell quiet for a few seconds, and I waited for her next sentence,
which I knew was going to tell me that she read me like a book.
“Something’s up with you. You sound weird.”
I sighed, blowing a little bit of air through my nose. “I went to Christmas
Eve with the Kents last night.”
“Okaaaaay,” she said. “I fail to see what’s weird about that. Alice and
your mom are friends, and Adam is your second-best friend.”
I laughed a little. “Well, Adam and I were catching up about stuff. I went
to his room to see whether it looks the same, and we were just talking—”
“I’m not gonna lie, I love where this is going,” she said.
“Shut up and let me talk,” I said, and her laugh over the phone managed
to lessen my stress just a little. But now that I was thinking about the kiss
once again, there was little chance of my thinking of anything other than how
much I was obsessing. “So, we left the room, and went to rejoin the party—”
“DAMMIT,” she called, and the shout caught me so off guard that I had
to laugh.
“—and in the middle of the hallway, he stopped me, and pointed out that
we were standing under mistletoe.”
“Okay, much better,” she said. “I think I can guess where the rest of this
is going.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We kissed. Well, it was more than that. We, like, really
kissed.”
“None of this sounds bad, Luce,” she said. “So, I’m not sure why you
sound so weird.”
“I’m just so confused.”
“About what?” she asked, sounding quite confused. “Lucy, what do you
think of Adam? And don’t think too hard about it. Just say the first thing that
comes to mind.”
“I think he’s a great person. I love him as a friend, and I’ve always
thought that he was cute, even when I didn’t think of him romantically. Now,
when I look at him—” I blew out another breath.
“You can’t stop yourself from thinking dirty, dirty thoughts?” she said.
“You’re evil.”
“I’m also right.”
I laughed a little.
“Hon, there’s nothing wrong with just… exploring,” she said. “As long as
you’re honest with him, then take it one day at a time. There’s no reason why
this can’t become something more.”
I didn’t say anything about the other thoughts that I’d been having, about
Adam’s brothers. It might’ve given her some context about my conflict, but I
tamped it down.
If I didn’t say it, then it wouldn’t be real.
14
 AUSTIN

I was practically radiating with tension as I waited for Lucy to drive up to

the ranch so that she could check in on the horses and their progress. I’d
been so tense at first at the thought of the horses deteriorating further that the
I’d slept in the barn for a few nights to make sure that they weren’t taking a
turn for the worse at any point.
Now, about nine days after the first examination that Lucy had
administered to Rosie and Sage, I was pacing back and forth in front of the
barn as I waited for her to arrive for their follow-up appointment.
The truth was that I had no reason to doubt that this treatment was
perfectly effective. Rock Ledge was a small enough town that whenever I
walked around any general area, I either ran into her or someone who wanted
to talk to me about her.
Our families’ closeness was common knowledge, both because of Lucy’s
old friendship with Adam and our mothers’ friendship. The other thing that
was common knowledge was my less-than-official medical knowledge, and
the fact that I’d shadowed Doc Boyd a good amount as a teenager.
The result was that I could barely avoid any mention of her when I went
out and about, and when I was already trying to just maintain my equilibrium
while ensuring that my horses weren’t getting worse, the mere mention of
Lucy was proving enough to overwhelm me. Not simply her looks, or her
knowledge, or her abilities… but all of it.
It gutted my ego to say so, but she’d been right about the foam supports.
Given what both Sage and Rosie’s bodies had been through in delivering
their foals, they needed the extra help and support for their joints to heal in
the way that they needed to. I’d been so stuck in my ways, convinced that the
things we’d always done were the right way to do things, and there had been
something in me that hadn’t been willing to admit to the resentment that I felt
over her being right… and my lack of knowledge.
I couldn’t just continue lingering around the barn like a bad smell—not
when I knew that she would be here at any moment to do the follow-up
examination. I grabbed some small apples from the bucket next to Rosie’s
stall and held them out to her and Sage, feeling gratified when they went for
them immediately. I was happy that the anti-inflammatory medication hadn’t
adversely affected their appetites too badly, and that they were making a
quick turnaround.
Sliding the barn door open, the cold winter air that came gusting through
the field grounded me so that I could get my head out of my butt and meet
her with professionalism.
Trekking up to the fence, I set my hands against the wooden posts,
watching down the road for her truck. The bracing winter air took my breath
away, and I paused for a second to shut my eyes as I waited for Lucy to
arrive.
I opened my eyes quickly when I heard the truck starting to pull up the
road and immediately pulled away from the fence, standing up completely
straight as if one pole had been stuck across my shoulders and another pole
had been stuck down my back. I didn’t think I’d ever been so stiff as I looked
over at the truck, waiting for Lucy to climb down out of it.
As it had been since I’d first seen her at Spurs that night, her beauty made
me feel like the earth was quaking underneath me. The black knit hat hung
down on her head, covering her forehead and ears, and seemed to bring
attention to the stunning, emerald-green orbs that shone out of her face and,
despite her smile, seemed to cut into me. Her thick, lovely hair, which shone
the same pale gold as the winter sun, hung down over her shoulder in her
usual ponytail, and I couldn’t help following the path that it made down her
beautiful body, the strands clinging to the flannel where it covered her
luscious, generous curves.
I managed to clear my throat before she got close enough to me to hear
the way the breath caught in the back of my mouth. I was hoping that she
hadn’t noticed, but there were no guarantees with the way that that arch little
smile clung to her face. I managed to fix a slightly cold smile to my face—
the sort of face that I gave to almost everyone I worked with.
“Hi, Austin,” she said, coming closer to me and setting down her medical
bag. I couldn’t tell whether she was about to reach out and hug me… and I
wasn’t sure how I would react if she did hug me.
She didn’t, though, and I allowed my posture to relax just a little bit as I
looked down at the bag. “Hey, Lucy.”
“How are the girls doing?”
“They seem to be doing a little better every day,” I said, unwilling to
bring up the success of the foam supports that she’d brought for them to use.
Reaching down, I took hold of her bag, carrying it over to the barn as I felt
the air between us thicken. As if against my will, my mind turned to the
fantasy that I’d given into in the shower the other day, and I felt the tension
between us thickening like the gravy that still sat in the fridge, leftover from
Christmas Eve.
“How’s the rest of your week been?” Lucy asked casually, looking over
at me with friendly interest as we approached the barn. “Have you managed
to get any time off at all?”
“A little,” I said, “but not much. Normally, my brothers and I alternate
taking a few days off at a time, but since Sage and Rosie started getting sick,
I haven’t wanted to go too far away. What about you? Have you managed to
get any days off?”
She shrugged. “A couple here and there, but even when I’ve been off,
I’ve been trying to do a little organization around the house. All my stuff is
still in boxes, and it’s been making my mom crazy.”
I laughed a little bit. And as we entered the barn, Lucy gave a gusty sigh
as the warm air hit her, which seemed to bring all my blood to a very specific
place on my body, so I had to turn away in order to get a grip on myself. She
peeled off the outer layers of her clothing, dropping her coat over the little
pole and unwrapping her scarf from around that delicate, beautiful neck. I
took one more peek at her but watching her stretch in the warm air was still a
little too much for me.
“It’s those two stalls, right?”
I turned around to see her indicating the two stalls at the back of the barn
where we were keeping Sage and Rosie with her chin, and I nodded. “Yep.
Do you need anything from your bag?”
My voice sounded strangely thin and throaty to me, and I cursed myself
internally for sounding so idiotic.
“If you could just bring the bag itself, then I can let you know as I need
it,” she said with a smile as she carefully opened Sage’s stall, easing herself
inside and beginning to speak in the soft, gentle tones that one usually used
when speaking to injured and sick animals. “Hey, beautiful girl,” she said,
fixing her with a smile as she set a hand on the horse’s broad, glossy neck.
“Let’s see how your ankles are doing.” She knelt down and carefully began
maneuvering Sage’s joints, testing out how flexible the ligaments were, and
how much tension they’d regained.
“Have you been giving them both the anti-inflammatory?” she asked, not
looking back at me.
“Twice a day with their feed, just like you ordered,” I answered, doing
my best to keep the sarcasm and attitude out of my tone.
“Good.” After a few more minutes of quiet from Lucy and a few neighs
of protest from Sage, Lucy reached for an apple and fed it to her, patting her
on the top of the head with a quiet “Good girl,” before exiting the stall.
“Sage is looking great,” she said. “We’ll talk more when I finish with
Rosie.”
What followed was much of the same; she entered the stall slowly,
ensuring she didn’t take the mare by surprise, and began her thorough
examination. I did my best to stay calm and not let my frustrated curiosity
break through, but it felt like forever before she stood up to talk to me once
more.
“They’re both looking great,” she said, smiling at me as she came to the
stall door. “See, I especially like the foam supports with horses of this age
because of the shifting collagen in their joints, so maintaining stability is so
critical.” Her grin turned wicked. “Did I make you a believer?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay. I believe.” I couldn’t help the grin that
snuck through. “Do they need anything else right now?”
“If the inflammation hadn’t reduced as much as it has, I would’ve
administered a steroid injection to help reduce it further, but it can be pretty
painful, and I don’t want to give it to them unnecessarily, so I say let’s hold
off on that for another week. If the inflammation gets worse again, then we
can revisit it. In the meantime, just keep giving them the medication I
prescribed and keep them on the supports.”
“Okay. And is there—”
I didn’t have the chance to finish my question before a loud bang went
echoing through the field and the barn making the both of us jump. If I hadn’t
known any better, my automatic assumption would’ve been that someone had
set off a shotgun nearby, but I recognized the sound of the old tractor that
Andy had been trying to repair the week before.
As much as I’d been relatively used to the sound, it was clear that Lucy
wasn’t, and unfortunately Rosie’s usual tempestuous nature had been
exacerbated by her discomfort. She neighed loudly as she began to rear,
standing up on her back legs as she bellowed in shock.
“LUCY!” I yelled, and before I had the chance to think, I reached forward
and wrapped my hands around her waist, pulling her backward and out of the
stall before Rosie’s heavy hooves came down on her head, slamming the stall
door closed before anything else could happen.
Lucy gave a shaky breath as she turned around, staying within the circle
of my arms as she turned to face me. Her delicate hands settled onto my
arms, and I breathed deeply as I settled more comfortably into my pose of
holding her close.
She felt so right in my arms. I didn’t know how I’d never held her before,
with my hands settling into the sweet, lush curves of her waist. All the while,
she was looking up at me, the golden strands of hair falling lightly over her
forehead the only things that interrupted the connection her gaze made with
my face as they skated their way down from my eyes to my mouth.
“I should check Rosie,” she said, her voice impressively steady as she
lowered my hands from her waist with a last, lingering caress. She turned
away from me, her hands raised as she began to click soothingly at Rosie,
allowing the horse to realize that she meant her no harm and that it was safe
to come to her.
For the first time in my life, I couldn’t think about my horse’s safety at
all. All I could think of was the way she’d felt in my arms, and the way that
I’d come so close to kissing her.
15
 ANDY

J ust about every year, I wondered whether I’d ever seen Spurs looking this
good. It was quite possibly the only time of year that I’d ever seen the
floor of the bar without a single beer stain, and the group that normally
frequented the place looking just as polished.
The whole place was festooned with black, gold, and silver decor, from
balloons to streamers, and there were small party poppers dispersed across
the bar for people to grab when the opportunity came. Molly was wearing a
pair of fitted black pants tucked into her tall boots, and a top made of some
silky, shimmery material that draped over her, making her tall frame look
even more elegant than usual.
“Happy New Year, A-Team,” she said as she approached the table that
my brothers and I were all sitting at, setting down the pitcher of beer and
frosted glasses that we’d ordered. “Any resolutions for you guys this year?”
We looked around at each other, Aaron reaching for the pitcher and
starting to pour out the drinks for each of us.
“Not really,” Adam said before looking back at her. “Just trying to keep
the ranch running.” He looked around at the rest of us, raising an eyebrow.
“Anyone got anything else?”
I shrugged. “Same as always, I guess. Just keep plugging away at the
writing until I’ve got something good enough to publish.”
Austin took a sip from his stein and leaned back in his seat. “Like they
said. Just working and keeping the place up and running.”
“Not a bad goal, I’d say,” Molly agreed as she picked up her tray and
made for the bar. “I’ll be by with some champagne a little later.”
“Another year, guys,” Aaron said as he looked around at all of us. “It’s
pretty nuts to think about, right? That we’ve spent our entire lives here in this
town, and the years have gone by around us.”
We were quiet as we looked at each other and then out at the rest of the
bar. This was the same group that we’d been surrounded by every other year
of our lives. I knew that the three of them had never craved something
outside of this tiny pocket of Colorado the way that I had, and I knew that
they couldn’t know what it felt like to want something other than the life we
had.
“Holy shit,” I heard Adam say, and I looked over to see him staring
toward the door with his blue eyes wide and his mouth hanging half-open.
“What are you—” Austin turned to look in the same direction, and his
eyes widened as well. “Holy shit.”
It was my turn to look, and I felt something akin to a balloon swelling
under my ribs as I saw the woman walking into the bar.
Lucy looked as beautiful as she always did, but tonight… I didn’t know
whether there was a star that could outshine her, covered the way she was in
the silver fabric that hugged her curves like it was made just for her.
I’d never seen her in a dress like that. It was short, hitting her just above
the knees, and covered in silver spangles that caught the light every time she
turned. Her long, thick blonde hair was draped down over her back, and the
way it flowed around her captivated my interest.
She had a coat draped over her, and her cowgirl boots came up to just
below her knees, showing off another expanse of skin that looked so
seductively smooth.
I couldn’t help echoing what my brothers had said before me as I took her
in. “Holy shit.”
She walked up to the bar, leaning over to give Molly a hug and turned
around to look in our direction. The smile that lit up her face sent little
tendrils of heat sneaking through every one of my veins, and I couldn’t help
feeling as though the flush was creeping up my neck.
“Oh,” Aaron said, his voice pitched a little lower than usual as he took
her in. “Oh, she’s coming over here. Adam, move over. Make room.”
Adam didn’t say anything, simply sliding over down the bench as he
leaned over his stein and looked into his beer, seeming not to either be
willing or able to say anything as Lucy started walking over, a cautious smile
spreading over her lovely face.
“Hey, Kents,” she said, holding her glass in her small hand as she looked
around the table. “Can I sit with you guys?”
“Of course,” I said, reaching over and patting the spot on the bench next
to me when none of my brothers seemed inclined to say anything. “Come
ring in the new year with us.”
She sat down, and I felt the heat start to rise in me again as her bare leg
pressed up against me. My jeans were thick enough that I couldn’t feel her
skin at all against mine, but the simple knowledge that she was there was
enough to make every single one of the hairs on the back of my neck stand up
straight.
“You look amazing,” I said. “That dress is incredible.” The blush started
rising in her cheeks, and I was entranced by the way the color seemed to
make her pale skin glow under her freckles. It was going to be impossible to
look away from her tonight.
“Thank you,” she said, reaching for her glass and taking a small sip. “I
love New Year’s Eve. It’s my favorite night of the year.”
“Really?” I said, not paying much attention as my brothers began to talk
amongst themselves.
“Yeah,” she said, running her finger around the edge of the glass. “I just
feel like there’s so much hope in the air, so many possibilities. It’s partially
why it’s the one night of the year anyone can get me out of my jeans.”
I blinked once at the words. I wasn’t sure if she’d known the innuendo for
what it was when she’d said it, but I’d certainly heard it, and it had sent my
mind diving straight for the gutter.
At the sight of my raised eyebrow, she immediately began to blush again
and bit down on her lip, turning away from me.
.

T he rest of the night passed pleasantly enough, with all of us talking and
laughing happily amongst the little group at our table. I couldn’t help
noticing that Adam seemed to be a little quieter than usual, consistently
looking down at his glass instead of at any of us, and I made a mental note to
check in with him later. My little brother was usually the most cheerful one
out of all of us, so to see him so introspective and quiet was highly unusual.
All the while, Molly kept the drinks coming, and as the night went on, I
started to feel lighter. The decorations seemed to shimmer more brightly, as
did Lucy’s eyes and dress. The soft heat of her woke me up every time my
hand floated down close to her leg, and I felt her closeness in my belly all
through the night.
At one point, as midnight started to creep closer and closer, I felt the
impact of all the drinks that I’d had in a different way, and I reached over to
tap Lucy on the shoulder. “I need to use the restroom,” I said.
I did my business and washed up, stepping out of the restroom, eager to
get back to the table. I was so eager, in fact, that I wasn’t paying any attention
as I bowled straight into someone in the hall. “Ow!” I heard, feeling the
impact a second later as I stepped back from the woman in front of me.
“Shit,” I said, feeling a sinking in my stomach. “I’m sorry, Luce. My
head was somewhere else.”
“That’s okay,” she said, pausing and leaning back against the wall. “The
drinks have been flowing tonight. Besides—” she said, pointing at the TV
screen that hung right above the bar, “it’s almost a new year.”
Weirdly, in the hallway next to the bathrooms, it was like we were in our
own little world. Everyone else was in the main room, watching the timer on
the TV as it began to count down from ten.
All too soon, the number on the screen read zero, and we were
surrounded by a chorus of shouts of, “Happy New Year!” from all around us.
I looked down at the stunning woman next to me, tempted beyond belief
to do the typical thing, and yet holding myself back. “Happy New Year,
Lucy.”
She looked up at me, not saying anything in response for a moment as she
tilted her head to the side. “You know,” she said softly, “it’s bad luck not to
kiss anyone at midnight on New Years’.”
I couldn’t really believe what I was hearing, and yet, I didn’t want to
second guess the fact that she was saying it. Setting my hand on her shoulder,
I leaned down, pressing my lips to hers as she leaned into me with a sigh.
It wasn’t an explosive, passionate kiss—not one of those ones that led to
ripping clothes off and a tryst against the bar wall… although I wouldn’t have
been opposed. No, it was gentle, and soft, and she reached up to cup her hand
around my cheek as her mouth moved against mine.
And yet, for all its softness, I felt like my entire being was on shifting
sands, feeling as though I might explode in an enormous celebration of light
and color and joy.
Happy New Year, indeed.
16
 AARON

S itting on top of Ember as I looked around the pasture, I felt the heavy
winds gusting toward me as I took in all the horses that I still needed to
round up. The forecast had said that a storm was coming in. And I needed to
round up the horses, so I could get them under cover before it started to snow.
It was one of those beautiful winter evenings where everything had gone
so silent that it echoed inside my soul—my favorite kind, one where I was
able to sit on top of Ember—my gelding of the last twenty years, who I’d
trained practically from birth—and allow my mind to settle as I watched the
sun go down over the hills… or the clouds rolling in.
As I looked out over the pasture, though, I was unsettled to see that the
usual milling horses were all gathered in a cluster in the center, staring down
at one spot.
“Come on, boy,” I said, clicking my tongue a few times as I pulled on
Ember’s reins and turned him toward the center of the paddock. “Come on.
Let’s go see what’s happening.”
As Ember and I trotted up to the cluster of horses and I climbed off his
back, I felt my stomach sink even further as I eased my way through the
animals to find out what they were gathered around. Their neighs of concern
seemed to drag my mind even further down, and when I got to the center, my
alarm bells were going off full blare.
Briar, a sweet, seven-year-old mare that I’d taken a special interest in,
was lying on the ground, her sides heaving in evident pain as she made
sounds that would haunt my dreams. Her burnished mahogany coat was
stained with sticky red patches, and I fell to my knees next to her to take a
careful inventory.
 “No,” I said, looking her over. “Briar, honey. What got to you?”
It couldn’t be anything but an animal attack. The slices into her side were
evidence enough of that, and the blood was still leaking out of them, despite
the fact that it had been slowed by the cold winter air.
I couldn’t fix this on my own, and I didn’t think that Austin would be
able to take care of it himself either. Hands trembling, I pulled out my phone,
barely able to pull up the contact that I’d been dying for an excuse to call, any
excuse.
Any excuse, that is, but this one.
“Lucy Oliver,” the cheerful voice said on the other side of the phone
when the call was answered.
“Lucy,” I said, my voice trembling despite myself. “It’s Aaron Kent.”
The cheerful tone vanished from her voice in a second. “Aaron, what’s
wrong?”
“One of our younger horses was mauled. I’m not sure by what, but I think
it was a mountain lion. I need help right away, but Austin already left for the
night.”
“I’m leaving right now,” she said, and I heard her moving around in the
background, grabbing things and tossing them around. “I can be there in
fifteen minutes. Where are you?”
“I’m in the north pasture.”
“Where are the injuries?”
“From what I can see, there are at least three big gashes on her side—ribs
and abdomen—and a bunch to her legs. She’s lying down, so I can’t tell if
there’s anything on her other side.”
“Okay. Just keep her calm until I get there.”

I did my best, but I was a nervous wreck myself as I traced my hand in small
circles along the uninjured parts of Briar’s head and neck, trying my best to
slow her breathing and my own.
“You’re doing great, girl,” I murmured. “Help is gonna get here so soon.”
I was so immersed in keeping her—and myself calm that I almost missed
it when I heard the truck pulling up.
“Aaron!”
 I looked up to see Lucy’s anxious face running toward us, amazingly not
slowed down by the heavy medical bag that she carried with her. She was
paler than I’d ever seen her, but her breaths were still even and measured
when she skidded to a stop next to me.
“Thank God you’re here,” I said, bringing a shaking hand up to my face.
“Of course, I’m here,” she said, falling to her knees next to Briar and
immediately beginning her examination. “What’s her name?”
“Briar,” I said.
“Hey, Briar,” she said, opening her bag and stroking Briar’s long, elegant
nose at the same time, “Hey, you good, brave girl.” She looked up at me, her
wide, green eyes clear as she took me in. “Aaron, we’re going to need some
way to get her inside. With the storm coming in, I’m not going to be able to
work on her out here, and I need a space that’s at least partly sterile.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood up, my legs shaking a little under me as I made my
way to my feet. “Okay. I’ll get the rest of the horses to the barn, and I’ll come
back with a dozer to get her in too so that we can at least get under cover.”
She nodded, pulling out a few medical supplies and beginning to apply
them to Briar’s wounds. I turned away from her and walked back to Ember,
climbing back into the saddle and turning him around to round up the rest of
the horses.
“Come on, guys,” I said, clicking my tongue. “Come on. Let’s go.” I got
the horses to follow me to the barn, wrangling them into their stalls, and
grabbed the keys to the nearest dozer. I was practically moving on autopilot
as I drove back out to where Lucy was seeing to Briar, working as quickly as
she could to disinfect as much of the more superficial wounds as she could
after having packed the deeper ones.
“That’s perfect,” she said, standing up and walking toward me. “Let’s get
her on and get her to the barn, and then I can do what I need to do to close her
up.”
I lowered the bucket to the ground, and the two of us knelt down,
carefully maneuvering Briar’s fragile form into the container.
“Come on,” I said, cocking my head toward the cab and climbing back
into the driver’s seat. She climbed in with me, and the two of us said nothing
as I drove us toward the closest barn.
I maneuvered the dozer directly into the barn, setting the bucket down on
the floor and helping her get Briar out of the basin.
“What can I do?” I said, kneeling next to her as I watched her steady
hands darting around like moths. “How can I help?”
“First, I need to create as sterile a space as we can,” she said, nodding her
head toward the plastic sheeting that we kept to the side for this purpose, “so
we’re going to need to spread that before I can get started.”
We worked quickly together, getting Briar into the makeshift emergency
center, and Lucy set to work closing the wounds as carefully and efficiently
as she could, injecting the horse with the most powerful painkillers that she
had so that she wouldn’t feel any of the procedure. She didn’t say much as
she worked, simply instructing me to hold my phone light up in a different
angle so that she could make sure that she could see everything she needed
to.
“I wasn’t able to bring out a portable CT scanner,” she said as she
stitched, “or ultrasound machine. I can come back tomorrow with them, but
right now, I’m just going off of what I can see. I don’t think that any of her
organs have been punctured, and there are no signs of internal bleeding. What
there is, I’ve been able to stop.”
“I trust you,” I said, almost at a loss for words as I watched her finish off
yet another row of neat, clean stitches. We’d been there for hours, and almost
all of Briar’s wounds had been closed.
“Okay,” she said. “Just one more to go.”
She finished the last wound before finally setting down the clamps,
sutures, and other tools that had practically been an extension of her fingers
for the last three hours, heaving a sigh of relief. She picked up a bottle of
disinfectant and swabbed it liberally over the stitched wounds before
covering them carefully with gauze. Finally, she injected the horse with an
antibiotic to keep infection from setting in. When she was finished, she sat
back, blinking a little dazedly before turning to look at me.
“Do you have a sink in here?”
I nodded, reaching for her arm to help her up. I recognized the look of an
adrenaline crash, and she didn’t bother to argue as I led her over to the small
sink where she washed her hands in the warm water, courtesy of the second
generator.
“That was amazing,” I said, dousing my own hands with soap. “I’ve
never seen anything like the work you just did.”
She shrugged. “It’s what I’ve trained to do for the last ten years.” She
sighed. “I think she’ll be fine.”
I sighed shakily. “Well, it was still amazing.”
 She looked over at Briar’s sleeping form, her chest now gently rising and
falling, and pursed her lips. “I could stay to observe her overnight—”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll stay with her. But I will take you back to your
truck.”
She nodded, and the two of us went to pack her bag in a state of
exhausted quiet before heading to the barn doors.
As soon as I tried sliding the door open, though, I realized that the storm
I’d completely forgotten about while I’d been so busy watching Lucy’s
amazing hands work on my horse had hit in full force. The snow was coming
down furiously, and it peppered both our faces obnoxiously.
“Shit!” I yelled over the wind, forcing the door closed again and bringing
the bar down so that the door was locked. “Shit. I’m sorry, Luce. I don’t think
either of us are gonna be able to go anywhere tonight.”
Her mouth pursed in disappointment, her teeth pressing delicately into her
lovely, full lip bottom, and she crossed her arms over her chest. “Well,
there’s nothing we can do about it is there?”
She’d been working like crazy for the last few hours, and she had to be
wrecked. The least I could do was help her get comfortable.
“Here,” I said, grabbing a stack of horse blankets from one of the
surfaces. “We’ll get warm. It’ll be comfortable, I promise.”
I laid the blankets out, making a thick, comfortable surface for us to sit on
before heading to one of the cabinets to grab some of the emergency snacks
I’d stowed out here a few months ago.
“Jesus,” she said. “Are you a doomsday prepper or something?”
“Nope,” I said. “I just got caught out here once during a storm like this
with nothing to eat and decided never again. All the barns have snacks in
them.”
“I’ve gotta admit, it’s pretty genius,” she said, sitting down on the blanket
mattress and grabbing a granola bar. I reached for a blanket and spread it out,
so it covered the both of us, and for a moment, I was entirely absorbed by the
way I was drawn to her.
Sitting here, in this little cocoon with the storm raging outside, it was like
nothing else mattered.
“This is pretty comfy,” she said, settling back into the blankets. “Maybe
sleeping in barns is underrated.”
I laughed. “I’m not sure about that. I don’t make a habit of it—only in
emergencies.”
 She shrugged. “You and Austin have both said that you’re willing to
sleep in the barn to ensure that your animals are all right. I don’t know a lot
of people who’d classify that as an emergency. That’s someone who cares.”
I gestured to her. “Listen, I can’t thank you enough for what you did for
us tonight.”
She blushed, and I was captivated by the way the color crept up her neck
even as she looked away from me.
“It’s my job,” she said.
“It’s your calling,” I corrected.
“Thank you for saying that.”
“It’s true,” I said. “You’re incredible.”
She looked back at me, swallowing audibly. “Back atcha,” she said, the
words coming out in a whisper.
The look between us felt as though it was drawing out longer and longer,
and I couldn’t take it anymore.
I leaned forward just as she lifted her face to mine and kissed her.
17
 LUCY

I couldn’t believe that I was the one in my body as Aaron’s big hands made
their way over me, moving down from my neck to my shoulders and
lingering in my sweetest spots for a moment here and there.
I was never that girl who drew little hearts on her notebooks and wrote
“Mrs. Lucy Kent” on them, but that didn’t change the fact that there had
always been a part of me to harbor a secret, burning crush on Aaron. It made
me laugh to think about how Austin always ragged on me for following him
around, trying to undercut him with veterinary facts… when in reality, a huge
part of me had just been trying to reassure Aaron that his horses, which were
just as sacred to him as his family, were safe with me… and that little petty
part of me liked showing Austin up, I had to admit.
Now, as Aaron and I sat on the blankets together, warm in the barn with
the storm raging around us, I felt those big hands move down to my sides and
settle on my waist, and I sighed into his mouth at the touch. I couldn’t really
call it relaxing, not when my heart was speeding along like a racehorse. No;
rather, it was an understanding, a settling into something that felt so right it
was inevitable.
“God, Lucy,” Aaron murmured against me, running his tongue against the
seam of my lips in a request. “You feel amazing.”
I couldn’t help the groan that emerged from my throat at his words, and
opened my mouth to his, allowing his tongue more access as he’d requested.
At the parting, his tongue darted in cautiously as if he were testing my
willingness, and then, when my only response was to reach my hands up into
his hair and pull him closer, he did it again, swirling it around and around my
mouth as if he were trying to taste every part of me.
 Separated from the rest of the world the way we were by the storm, it was
easy to forget about the rest of Rock Ledge, and my responsibilities… and his
brothers. It was easy to fall into him headfirst and know that he was big
enough to catch all of me.
I rose up on my knees and set my hands on his shoulders, relishing the
first time that I’d ever been taller than him as I tilted my head down and
seized control of the kiss. Now it was his turn to groan as he wound his hand
under my hair to wrap his fingers around my neck and pull me closer.
I gasped a little bit as he reached into my hair and pulled out the band that
held the tresses back, letting it fall forward and wrap around us in a thick,
pale blonde curtain that seemed to shelter him and bring him even closer to
me.
He moved his lips down to my neck, gently moving them to my pulse
point where they fixed with an eager concentration as if he wanted to
consume me.
“You’re incredible,” he said into my skin, “everything about you. The
way you smell, the way you fit into my hands….”
I brought his mouth back to mine with an eagerness that surprised me. No
guy I’d ever been with had inspired this kind of hunger in me.
Maybe it was that hunger that made me nip at his lower lip, and he
shuddered powerfully against me in response as he laid me down on the
blankets with fluid gentleness, moving to cover me with his big frame.
“I need more, Lucy,” he said between kisses as he moved his hand up to
bury into my hair, pulling me even harder against him. “I need more of you.”
“Me… too,” I barely managed to get out, and that was enough for him to
start moving his hands down my front again. But this time, rather than gently
exploring, they made a targeted approach toward what they were looking for.
Within seconds, my jacket, plaid, and tank top were off, having been
thrown to the side and abandoned as he ran his hand down my front,
following the path made by his fingers with his lips as he dropped kisses
between my breasts. He lingered over my nipple, pulling it into his mouth
through my plain black bra, using his teeth to make the flesh stand out and
harden. All the while, his hand had been continuing on its way down to the
button that held my jeans closed.
“Aaaaah,” I groaned as my back arched, and I practically felt him smile
against me as his fingers deftly undid the closure on my pants before sliding
underneath the waistband.
 He was everywhere. He was over me; he was on me. The scruff that grew
along his face tickled my skin as his big, soothing fingers found their way
through jeans and panties to my most soft, delicate folds and settled on my
clit, sending waves of energy through me.
His fingers began to move into a circle as he moved his face down
further, bringing his other hand to my pants with an incredible amount of
dexterity, pulling my jeans and panties off in one fluid motion, which left me
entirely naked in front of him, except for that bra he had almost bitten
through.
His kisses were landing on my lower belly now, settling right over where
my muscles were, as I curled in anticipation at the thought of what he was
about to do.
He looked up at me from between my legs, his eyes flicking from my face
to my pussy, and I felt my breath coming thinner and thinner in the tension of
his pause.
“I really need to see if you taste as good as I think you do,” he said, his
voice lowering to a growl.
The sound that emerged from me might’ve been pathetic if I’d had it in
me to care, but at that second, I thought I might explode if he didn’t touch
me.
Aaron smiled and ducked down, parting me with a careful precision that
equal parts infuriated me and aroused me before pressing his tongue against
the sensitive bud.
“Oh!” I cried before bringing my hand up to my mouth and biting into it.
Horses hated loud, high noises, and I didn’t want to spook them. I was
determined not to spook them and potentially derail Briar’s recovery.
But Aaron seemed determined to make me crumble… explode…
implode… transmogrify… and any other synonym for the tendrils of
electricity that were rippling up my spine and muscles from his tongue.
He brought his hands under my thighs and hooked them over his
shoulders so that he could get a better angle and delved even deeper as he
brought his hand up and slipped one of his fingers into me… and then
another.
I felt so full that it was overwhelming, and all the while his tongue was
working over my clit. He feasted on me like he was ravenous, and my hips
kept bucking up to meet him as the sensation built under his hands.
“Aaron—” I said, my voice high and unrecognizable to me. “Aaron, I
can’t stop—”
“Then don’t,” he said, his words vibrating against flesh so sensitive it was
almost painful. “Come for me, Lucy. I want to feel it.”
I don’t know whether it was his commanding tone, or the purposeful
movements of his tongue and fingers, but there was no way I could’ve held
back for a second longer. I dissolved into a puddle of pure sensation, my eyes
fluttering closed as bright light seemed to shatter behind my eyelids and my
muscles clenched around his fingers.
“That’s it,” he said, and I could feel his smile against me.
My eyes opened, and through the gentle aftershocks that rippled through
me, I looked down at where he gazed at my face, his mouth shining with my
juices. As I watched, he lifted his fingers to his lips and licked them clean.
“Even better,” he said. “A thousand times better.”
Just as quickly as I’d fragmented, I felt like I needed him to touch me
again. I sat up, reaching for his face, kissing him hard and tasting myself on
his lips. His mouth opened under mine, and he reached around my waist,
cradling me gently as I reached down to place my hand on the bulge I’d seen
in his jeans.
He groaned at my touch, and I grinned into his mouth as I moved my
hand over the impressive length.
Damn.
“We don’t… I don’t need—”
“Well, I need,” I said, fairly snarling into his mouth as I took my turn
unbuttoning his pants. “You said you needed more? I need all. Don’t leave
me hanging.”
He undressed quickly and pulled me forward so that I was hovering over
his lap, holding my gaze as the tip of his cock gently teasing my entrance,
making me even wetter. I gasped as I reached forward, settling my hands on
his shoulders and sank down onto him, slowly taking every inch of him into
me.
I gasped as I settled into place, allowing myself a second to adjust to his
size, to the unique decadence of Aaron Kent.
I didn’t think I’d ever felt anything that felt as good as this, and as I
pushed him onto his back, I luxuriated in every second of it as I began to ride
him.
He filled me completely, and I suddenly knew that another orgasm wasn’t
far away.
 His hands reached up my back, cradling me as I rode and he bucked his
hips up into me, making me gasp as he filled me even more.
Suddenly, he held my gaze as he pulled me down onto him and held me
there, making me hold him inside of me, making me feel all of him as he
stared at me, with the lights in the barn illuminating the blue of his eyes and
the auburn of his hair. All at once, this became all too much.
The feeling spiraled out from my spine once again, more lush and
complete than the first, and I fell forward with my head on his shoulder as the
aftershocks trailed across my skin, making me shudder in his arms.
I could barely string two thoughts together as he flipped me over, keeping
us close together so that he was still buried in me, and pulled back on my hair
as he thrust into me harder and harder, until finally he froze in my arms.
Dimly, I registered the hot, wet feeling of his climax as he spilled into me
and collapsed onto me, his strong arms finally giving out.
“Holy shit,” he murmured, his lips pressed against my shoulder. “That
was—”
“I know,” I said, running my hands up his back as my legs relaxed, with
him still inside of me. “I know.”

I don’t know how long we lay there, tangled in each other. There didn’t feel
like any rush to get up, not with the storm still going on. We dozed for a
little, his hand settled protectively on my back, and when we woke up, we
pulled on our clothing, item by item, without saying much.
I felt his eyes on me as I went over to Briar, giving her a last look over,
and made my way to the door to look outside. It was still snowing, but it was
coming down in lighter waves.
“You don’t have to go just yet,” Aaron said from behind me.
I shook my head. “I really think I should go home.”
He nodded. “I’ll walk you to your truck.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I know where it is.”
He blinked at me, silent for a long moment before giving me a nod. “Will
you text when you get home?”
“Of course,” I said, smiling at him as I walked out of the barn, barely
feeling my heavy bag as I walked back to my truck on autopilot and got it
started.
On the way home, any brain power that wasn’t being used to safely
maneuver the truck was being used to think about the consequences of what I
was doing.
Holy shit, what was I doing? I’d never gotten involved with this many
guys in a week, and on top of that, they were brothers. This was many, many
degrees of messed up.
I could barely think straight as I pulled into my house and headed inside,
keeping as quiet as possible as I went to the bathroom and stripped off to
shower. I did manage to shoot Aaron a ‘home safe’ text before I collapsed
into bed.
The rest of the night passed in a blur, and in the morning, the first thing I
did was call Molly. I needed her particular brand of best friend wisdom.
“HOLY SHIT YOU DID NOT!” she yelled as soon as I’d finished. “Oh
my God, I’m so jealous! I’d climb Aaron Kent like a tree!”
“Molly, I really don’t need to hear that right now,” I groaned. “I feel so…
conflicted.”
“Why?” she asked. “You’ve never made a commitment to any of them.”
“That doesn’t mean any of them deserve to be played with,” I responded,
biting down on my nail.
“Luce, your sense of honor is admirable, but believe me, they don’t need
you worrying about them. They’re big boys who know that they’re going
after one of the most desirable women in town.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“It’s true,” she responded.
“That doesn’t mean they know they’re competing with their own
brothers.”
“Luce,” she said, “which one was the last boyfriend that really excited
you the way that any of the Kents do?”
“None of them,” I mumbled.
“None of them,” she repeated. “Don’t you think it’s time you actually let
yourself enjoy life, and handsome men, and your own rapturous beauty?”
“What are you, a romantic poet?”
“Pay attention!” she snapped. “You only live once. I say you do what—
and who—makes you happy. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I knew that the certainty in my voice was a complete and
total lie.
18
 AUSTIN

“I gotta say, I wasn’t sure that she’d pull through when you told me what
happened,” I said to Aaron as I ran my hand up Briar’s nose and she
stuck her tongue out to lick my hand, nuzzling me gently. “You’re a survivor,
little one.”
“She really is,” Aaron said, his voice gruff and soft as he looked at Briar
from his spot next to the wall where he was leaning with his foot propped up
against the wooden beam. “I was scared for her.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said, looking over the healing cuts on Briar’s belly.
“Thank God for Lucy.”
“Now, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d hear from you,” a voice said
from behind us, and I stood up quickly to look over at where Lucy was
coming into the barn, holding her medical bag and coming straight toward us.
“It sounds like you might actually mean it, though.”
“Of course, I do,” I said, heading toward her. “If it weren’t for you, we
might’ve lost Briar.”
I reached forward to wrap my arms around her, feeling as though my
body was acting of its own accord. She set the bag down next to her as she
returned the hug, and as stiff as it might’ve started, she wound up relaxing
into my arms.
“There was no way on earth that I was going to let that happen,” she said
as she pulled away from me, squeezing my arm tightly as she cleared her
throat. “No way.”
“Aaron told me about what happened that night, and he said that you had
none of your usual tools, or a CT scanner or anything,” I said as I picked up
the bag and started walking with her toward the back of the barn. “He said
that you were amazing.”
I felt Lucy stiffen next to me, and as we approached the stall where Briar
stood, peacefully munching at the very healthy feed that we’d been buying
for all of our horses, the tension seemed to thicken to the consistency of Jell-
O.
“Hey, Aaron,” she said, smiling at my brother as she put her bag down
next to the stall. I couldn’t tell for sure, but there seemed to be something a
little stiff and strange about the smile that she sent in his direction. “How are
you?”
“I’m good,” he said, his voice low as he looked away from her. I raised
my eyebrow at him, unable to figure out quite why he was being so awkward
around Lucy. There was something between the two of them that just
seemed… off.
Could they have had an argument the night she’d come out to take care of
Briar?
Could he have criticized whatever she was doing? I didn’t think it was
very likely, given how much he’d raved about what she’d done for Briar and
what he thought of her work in general.
“How was your week?” she said, ducking down to begin her examination
of Briar’s belly and the scars that her neat stitches had left there.
“Not bad,” he said, looking down and moving his toe through the straw
on the floor. “Just busy as usual.”
Really. My brother was known to be a man of few words, but this was
ridiculous.
“Actually, I should go check on the horses in the east pasture,” he said,
setting his foot on the ground and walking out of the barn.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for the examination?” I asked as he
headed for the door, my eyes widening. “You’ve been sleeping in here
practically every night.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “She’s in good hands.”
He didn’t say much more as he slammed the door of the barn shut behind
him, and I couldn’t help staring after him in disbelief as I turned back around
to look at where Lucy was already getting to work, running her hand
soothingly over Briar’s nose and neck as she did so.
“I’m sorry about him,” I said, coming closer to her and shaking my head.
“I don’t get what’s going on with him. He’s been acting weird since the night
Briar was attacked.”
 “Well, he cares a lot about his animals,” she said, not looking at me as
she picked up a portable ultrasound machine. Then she turned it on, prepping
the areas on the mare’s belly and chest where she would be administering the
test. I stepped closer to where Lucy worked and ran my hand over the horse’s
nose, grazing the white stripe with my fingers as Lucy pressed the ultrasound
sensor into her belly, and Briar started to dance around in discomfort. “My
dad always tried to make sure we knew that these animals weren’t just
property. They were a calling, and that came with a huge responsibility. I
think that’s one of the reasons why Aaron cares the way he does.”
She blinked up at me. “That’s beautiful.”
I held her gaze for a second before she looked back down at her screen.
“Maybe Albert should write a philosophical treatise for ranchers. I think a lot
of people would read it.”
I snorted. “Really?”
“Well, the ones who’re deserving of their animals would,” she said, and I
laughed.
She did too, and we settled into a comfortable silence as she continued to
examine Briar, checking her for any signs of infection or internal injuries that
she might’ve missed. I was content to observe her as I made sure that Briar
stayed settled in place and wasn’t startled at any of the necessary prodding
that Lucy had to do to ensure that all was well.
Once more, I was amazed by the surety and confidence of her technique,
particularly when paired with the compassion in her hands, her voice… that
seemed to drip from every one of her actions.
“Okay,” she said as she set the ultrasound machine down and brought her
hand up to run through her hair. “Everything looks great with her. Her
incisions are healing cleanly, and she’s not showing any signs of infection or
abscess at the surgical sites, which is a great sign, considering we don’t know
what attacked her. She’s also not showing any signs of lasting injuries to her
internal organs, which is great considering I couldn’t really do more than a
topical exam the last time. For the time being, just keep her on the antibiotic
regimen that I’ve prescribed so that we can make sure her incisions close
without infection. And I have some ointment that I’ve brought with me to
ensure that her scars don’t get irritated, and also so she doesn’t try to bite
them.”
“Perfect,” I said, taking the box that she handed me before I slumped
against the wall in relaxation. “Thank you for everything, Lucy. Seriously. I
couldn’t ask for anyone to take better care of her.”
“It’s not a problem,” she said, pulling her hair out of her ponytail and
bending over to retie it. I was distracted for a second by the view of her
stunning, perfect neck, and the way her hair swished over it so gracefully.
“Really. You don’t have to thank me.”
“I do, though.” I went over the possibilities in my mind, and suddenly I
knew what I needed to do. “Let me take you to Spurs tonight. I’ll by the
beers, and we can dork out over animals.”
She bit down hard on her lip. “Really, it’s not necessary.”
“I feel it is,” I said. “Please, Luce. You saved her. Let me just be grateful
for a minute.”
She looked at me for a second before nodding. “All right. You were my
last call of the day, so just let me head home and get presentable before I go
to the bar.”
I looked her up and down, the irrepressible need to tease her burgeoning
onto my lips. “What’re gonna do? Change your plaid?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Well, yes, actually. But not my jeans. You don’t
rate clean jeans.”
We both burst out laughing at that.

“O f course, you like Stella Artois.”

“What’s wrong with Stella?”
“Nothing. It’s just fancy,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows at her as we sat
in Spurs a few hours later. We were each on our third drink, and I was
amazed by how easy it was to be around her. To talk and laugh the way I
would with any of my best friends.
I’d definitely never found laughter this easy with Katie. No, the laughter
had never really felt like a priority with her. It was more like there was a
pressure there to maintain her and her happiness at all costs. And my own
happiness was the bare minimum she’d felt should be sacrificed in the
balance.
“I liked what you said before,” she said, bringing me out of my moody
reverie, “about your dad and reinforcing responsibilities. Is that why you’ve
all given the ranch your all the way you have?”
 “Yeah,” I said. “Dad always encouraged us to take what we were born
with and make it into something that we could use to make the lives of our
horses better. For Aaron, that’s his overall care. He’s a protector. For Adam,
it’s his heart and the way he manages to figure out his way through any
problem we have.”
“What about Andy, though?” she asked. “How does being a writer fit into
the ranch life?”
“He’s an incredible writer, but he has so many other creative talents,” I
said. “You should see the furniture he makes. I know he’s sacrificed a lot, but
he makes life better and more comfortable for our horses.”
“And then there’s you,” she said, raising her eyebrows at me, “and all
your inclinations.”
I laughed. “You know, you’re actually pretty fun to hang out with.”
“Are you telling me that you’re surprised by that?”
“Yes, actually,” I said, leaning forward with a grin. Her blonde ponytail
hung loosely over her shoulder, and she was in the same outfit I’d seen her in
that first night, when she’d sent an electrical current running over my skin
with one look. “Given how you were as a kid. You ran around undercutting
me like a little know-it-all.”
“Only because I did know it all,” she said without missing a beat or
cracking a smile. I blinked, and then the two of us burst out laughing.
We talked for a while longer, going through a bit more beer before we
both decided to call it a night. She hadn’t stopped sassing me for a second,
and with every pointed word, she’d only become more beautiful.
I walked her out into the winter night and around the corner to where I’d
parked my own truck behind hers.
“I had a really good time tonight,” she said, looking up at me and tilting
her head to the side.
“Me too,” I said, leaning down to give her a good-night kiss on the cheek.
Or, at least, I’d been aiming for her cheek. I didn’t know whether she’d
moved accidentally or on purpose, but my mouth landed on hers, and
suddenly, my friendly peck goodnight had become so much more.
She sucked in a deep breath at the contact but didn’t pull away. Instead,
she relaxed into the kiss, moving her hands up to my shoulders as she did so.
“Luce,” I said into her mouth, and her lips parted under mine as she
pressed her fingers into me. She pressed her teeth gently into my bottom lip
in response, and that was all I needed to drive me into a frenzy.
 I pressed into her, pushing her backward so that she was held between
every line of my body and the hard side of my truck. I reached for her hands,
bringing them up so that I held them tightly as I pressed harder into her. I was
already rock hard, and my jeans were pressing abrasively against my cock.
“Lucy,” I said again, “I want you. Can we—”
“Now. Please,” she said breathily into my mouth.
I reached over her shoulder, pulling on the handle of the passenger side
door as I continued to kiss her. Pulling her forward a little, I ensured the door
didn’t hit her as I pulled it open and lifted her onto the front seat, following
her inside.
19
 LUCY

G irl, are you fucking serious?

This was the mantra of my subconscious as I slid backward into the
front seat of Austin’s truck, watching him as he crawled up and in after me,
prowling like a panther.
Everything had the pleasant, fuzzy haze that a few beers usually brought
to an evening, but I knew that I wasn’t nearly drunk enough to pin tonight’s
choices on how much I’d been drinking.
This wasn’t about a drunken hookup. This wasn’t about a strange,
inherent knowledge that Austin would be just as intense and driven about this
as he was about everything else.
It also wasn’t about the way that Aaron had been acting around me today.
I had no desire to hurt him, or punish him, and I’d known that he’d removed
himself from my vicinity so that we could both act as professionally as
possible.
No, what it came down to was that, somehow, Austin and I had been
heading toward this moment since we’d been kids. Like back when I was
following him around and dogging him with random facts about horses and
sheepdogs, and he’d rolled his eyes at me while barely able to hide the smile
that played around the corner of his lips.
I pushed away all the subconscious voices in my head and pulled him up
so that he covered me completely. He was tall too, but he was narrower in the
shoulders and hips, settling into my frame the way a key settled into a lock.
He groaned as he settled against me, pulling one of my legs up and draping it
over his hip so that he was able to press himself even more tightly to me. I
groaned at the feeling of him pressing into me, and he sucked at the skin on
my neck eagerly, moving his lips down so that he peppered my throat with
kisses.
“Hard—to believe,” I gasped as he kissed me, reaching back and pressing
my hands against the driver’s-side door, “that that little know-it-all and the
guy she annoyed would end up here.”
“I love that you know it all,” he said, his voice pitched so low it was
practically a growl as his mouth hovered over the line where my camisole cut
across my breast. “Your smart mouth is my favorite thing about you.”
I didn’t know whether my blush was from his words or from the truly
wicked things that he was doing with his mouth, but either way, I felt the
blood rush up to my skin, and I gasped harder as I pulled him even tighter
against me.
We were frantic. It might’ve been because of the alcohol that we
consumed, and it could’ve been because of that faintly competitive edge that
had always lain between us, but there was something about our experience
together that made me feel like we were trying to consume each other.
“Do you want me, Luce?” he asked, skimming his hands down my front
as he continued to kiss me eagerly, pressing his lips to mine, to my neck, to
my cheeks in turn. I felt like I was being devoured, like every part of me was
being taken into account and appreciated.
“Do you have to ask?” I gasped, reaching up to run my fingers through
his hair. It didn’t have that auburn color of his older brother’s that reminded
me of a fall day. No, Austin was a study in contrasts, with his black hair and
intense blue eyes. Adam had dark hair too, but Austin’s was darkest, and
when I touched it, I felt like I was running my hands over velvety-soft crow
feathers.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling back. “You can be a little hard to read.”
I raised my eyebrow at him, and he laughed, the sound coming out deep
and throaty as he leaned down to capture my lips in another kiss.
“You really are sometimes,” he said against my mouth. “Don’t worry. I
know how to find out the truth.”
His hand snaked down my front so that he cupped between my legs, and I
gasped at the touch. Amazing, I thought, how denim does absolutely nothing
to prevent me from feeling his hands all over me.
“Do you mind if I see for myself?” he asked, flicking his finger back and
forth against my zipper playfully.
“Please—do,” I said, knowing exactly what he would find once he undid
my pants and felt for himself exactly what I was feeling for him.
“Oh fuck,” he groaned into my mouth, biting down on my lower lip.
“You’re so wet, Lucy.”
I was. I knew that I was practically soaking through my panties right then,
and the soft, gentle grazes he was making against my entrance were only
making it worse.
I straightened my legs with the tension, mewling a little and feeling a bit
pathetic as I did so. I couldn’t remember the last time that I felt this close to
an orgasm and yet so far from getting to it. “Austin,” I said, my voice more
snarly than usual as I leaned up to capture his mouth aggressively, “are you
going to head inside, or are you just going to loiter at the entrance?”
He laughed against my mouth, and without any other preamble, he
plunged in his first two fingers and hooked them, pressing them against that
sensitive spot that he’d seemed to hone in on so easily. I gasped as I felt the
immediate pleasure ripple down my legs, and he pressed into me again,
moving his fingertips in a clever, circular motion as the heel of his hand
pressed against my clit.
“Keep going,” I gasped, grinding into his hand, and oh, he did. He kept
up the speed and momentum, watching my body expertly for any signs of
pending orgasm the way he might watch any of the other animals in heat he
cared for. Something about the comparison struck me as both oddly funny
and oddly tender, and just for a second, I had to cover my face to keep from
laughing. “Don’t stop.” I was still just at the edge.
“No intention to,” he said, and with one casual flick of a fingertip, I fell
headfirst over the cliff, feeling small sparks of sensation explode like
fireworks behind my eyes. I shook a little in the waves of pleasure as he
pulled his fingers out of me, sitting up and pulling me up with me.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Oh honey, I’m not done with you,” he said with a wicked smile.
“Oh,” I said, grinning as I reached forward, undoing the buttons on his
jeans, returning the favor of undressing him the way he’d done it for me.
“Come here,” he said, pulling me over so that now, I was between his
legs. I barely had the chance to spot the thick head of his cock poking out
from his jeans before he was pulling my pants down more, and then pulling
me down too. No more teasing. He was just as desperate for me as I was for
him.
He impaled me in one smooth, quick stroke, and I let out a scream as he
buried himself in me, holding me there as I took every inch of him. He turned
my head before I could shout and captured my mouth in a rough kiss,
sweeping his thumb along my chin, down my neck and under my shirt to cup
my breast.
His rough squeeze of my tit made me moan again, and I moved on him
despite myself, sliding up his length before moving down again. I didn’t
know if I’d ever had anyone this deep, and the feeling was overwhelming.
I threw my head back and gave in to the motion as I continued to ride
him, feeling him thrust so deeply inside of me that I could practically feel
him tickling my belly. His hand snaked down to my clit again, and he began
to rub it in smooth circles, leaning forward at the same time to drag his
tongue and teeth up my neck.
What I felt coming wasn’t an orgasm. It was a nuclear attack of some
kind. It needed to be studied by sex therapists and neurologists so that they
could recreate it.
“Come on my cock, Lucy,” he said into my ear, biting my earlobe gently.
“Come all over me.”
As I sank down onto him, the climax ripped through me, filling me with
white light once more and erasing pretty much every thought I’d ever had.
He gripped my hips tightly and thrust into me a few more times, groaning
as the lingering muscle spasms of my pussy milked the orgasm out of him.
One more thrust, and I could feel the heat of him spilling into me and down
my thighs. I slumped forward, letting my head settle on his shoulder as our
breathing settled and our hearts both slowed down.
“Jesus,” he said, running his hands soothingly up and down my back.
“I don’t think he was anywhere near here,” I mumbled, letting my head
fall to the side and enjoying the feeling of his body shaking me as he
chuckled.
I lifted my head up, looking down at Austin with my hands still propped
on the seat behind him as he reached up to gently cup my neck. His eyes were
soft, and he was still inside of me, his seed leaking out.
Reality came crashing back into me as I realized the position I’d been in
last week with his brother, and I didn’t waste another second in climbing off
him and looking around for my pants.
“I have a really early morning,” I said as I pulled on my underwear and
jeans, finding it hard to look at him directly, “so I should get going.”
“Okay,” he said, and it killed me to hear the unsure tone in his voice as I
pulled away from him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, he’d done
everything so right I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk back to my car.
I turned back to him and cupped his cheek with my hand, leaning in for a
last kiss. He responded eagerly, leaning forward and kissing me in turn.
“Thank you for tonight,” I said, grinning against his mouth. “I had a lot of
fun.”
“Me too.”
I climbed down out of the truck and headed to mine, feeling him with
every step I took. As I drove the familiar route home, I thought about my
rushed exit, and realized the more I thought about it that the guilt I’d
expected to hit me didn’t come.
All I felt was more alive than I ever had.
20
 ADAM

“A dam, honey, have some more chicken,” my mom said, passing me the
platter of roast chicken and veggies. “You’re looking a little skinny
lately.”
I rolled my eyes, taking the platter from her and placing a leg and thigh
on my plate, along with a few potatoes. “Don’t know what you mean. I’ve
been eating approximately a shit load of food every day.”
My mom shut her eyes in a pained wince as my brothers hid a chuckle
behind their hands. It was a running joke among us that Sunday dinners were
more sacred than church in our family. Growing up in a ranch family had
made regular meals a spotty occurrence. We all had our chores and our strict
schedules that we stuck to like glue in order to keep the ranch running.
Still, my mother missed the dinners that we would have as kids who were
too little to keep our own schedule, so she instilled Sunday dinners, which
were meant to be treated with as much respect as church. And attendance was
mandatory, at least in our family. It was the one place and time when we
were asked not to swear.
“Adam,” my dad said sternly from his place at the opposite end of the
table, “come on. You know better.”
I held my hands up, digging into the perfect chicken that my mom had
made for dinner. She’d taken to not cooking much throughout the week,
conserving her energy for the elaborate Sunday feasts when she tried out the
new recipes she’d found online, using us as her all-too-willing guinea pigs.
“Great dinner, Mom,” Austin said, taking a bite of the lemony asparagus
that Mom had set on the table. “Is the chicken a new recipe?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I got it off a blog for Spanish recipes. You know, I
can’t get complacent if I’m going to keep you boys impressed and coming to
Sunday dinner.”
“Come on, Mom,” Aaron said. “You know that we’d come no matter
what the food was like. It’s Sunday dinner.”
“That’s true,” she said, cutting a piece of chicken daintily and chewing on
the bite thoughtfully. “You know, you boys have gotten so predictable over
the last couple of years. It’s nice to know that I can always count on your
reactions, but it’s been so long since I’ve had someone new to try to impress
with my cooking.”
All four of us—well, five including my father—looked back and forth at
each other, at the food… anywhere really but at my mother, who seemed
intent on fixing all of us with that piercing blue gaze that we’d all inherited.
I knew what she was trying to communicate to us, and I knew how
unlikely it was that any of us would bring a girl home in the near future. The
last girl any of us had brought home had been Katie, Austin’s now-ex-wife.
We’d all liked her well enough at first, not to mention throughout their
relationship and engagement, but the second they’d gotten back from their
honeymoon, she’d flipped a one-eighty.
It had taken several years and all our energy to get him out of that
marriage, and I thought that all of us had been a little burned by that, which
made us a little bit reluctant to trust women by the way that she’d changed.
My thoughts drifted to Lucy, and the way that she’d smiled up at me
under the mistletoe that Christmas eve. We’d texted since then, but she’d
been keeping me at arm’s length, and it had made me reluctant to ask her out
on an official date. That New Year’s Eve at Spurs, I’d thought about asking
her to take a walk with me so that I could get her alone around midnight, but
she’d disappeared to the bathroom, and I hadn’t seen her at all after that.
I looked at the space next to me where Lucy had sat during all the time
we spent together as kids. Like back when we were growing up, she’d been
asked to stay for dinner after a day-long study session. It had been so often
that she’d practically been a permanent fixture at the table.
My heart gave an extra-heavy thud as I thought about us now, as adults,
and how it would feel to have her here with me at my side every Sunday.
She’d help my mom in the kitchen with the cooking before dinner the way
she always had, and the two of them could relax after while my brothers and I
tag-teamed to get the dishes washed. Our legs would be pressed against each
other under the table, and even though it was now normal to be able to touch
her, I wouldn’t be able to get over the way her touch made me feel.
I blinked a few times, snapping myself out of my reverie, and looked
around the table at my brothers and Dad. Dad was contentedly digging into
his food, reaching forward to take some more potatoes, but all of my brothers
had looks on their faces that I knew had to be similar to the one that had been
on my own face. They all looked a bit dreamlike as they each stared off into
different directions. Austin’s face held a little more pain the others’ did, but
each of them really did look like they were dreaming of some woman that
evaded them, one that sat just out of reach.
“Yeah, Mom,” Andy said, reaching over me for the rolls. “That would be
nice. We’ll try to work it into the to-do list for the ranch.”
Andy’s tongue-in-cheek statement managed to cut the tension that had
been lingering around the table, and we all relaxed as my mom got up from
her chair and went to get dessert from the kitchen.

A fter we’d finished demolishing every bite of the cake that my mom had
made, we started clearing the table as my parents made their way to the
den with their tea.
My mom had instilled in us from childhood how important it was to do
our parts, particularly since she worked so hard to put those elaborate dinners
together. As soon as we were able to walk and carry, we’d learned to wash
dishes.
To this day, I had my own compulsions about refusing to have dirty
dishes in my apartment.
Between the four of us, we managed to get the dishes done and the
kitchen cleaned in record time. By that point, our parents had long since
headed to bed, my dad living on a farmer’s internal clock the way he did,
leaving the family room empty and available for our use.
Aaron grabbed the pack of beers that he’d brought from the fridge and
tilted his head over his shoulder for us to follow him.
We did, and soon enough, we were all sitting down on the comfortable
couches that had been a fixture of our house since before we could all
remember, taking our usual perches throughout the room.
After reaching for the bottle opener that sat at the ready on the table for us
to use, I sat in my usual spot on the floor, taking a long pull of the cold,
refreshing beer.
“I’ve never understood why you prefer to sit on the floor than on literally
any of the other seats in this room, Adam,” Austin said, taking a gulp of his
own beer. “This isn’t a holiday, and you don’t have to give up your seat for
Mrs. Gunter from church.”
I shrugged, grinning at him. “I just like it down here. Maybe I got used to
it after all the years of sitting on the floor as a kid.”
“Well, you know what I’m not used to?” Andy asked, leaning forward
and setting his elbows on his knees. “How quiet you’ve been over the last
couple of days, especially the way that you went radio silent during dinner.”
All of my brothers looked at me, and I felt pinned under their sharp,
caring gazes.
“What’s going on, baby bro?” Aaron inquired, leaning forward and
setting one of his enormous hands on my shoulder. “What’s been on your
mind lately?”
I shrugged. “Nothing worth talking about.”
“Come on, Adam,” Austin said. “It’s easier to read you than a book.
There’s something going on.”
“I think it has something to do with what Mom said at dinner,” Andy
said, and both of our other brothers looked to him. I felt a sudden relief as
their glances transferred, as if a pressure lifted. “You know, about bringing
someone new to a meal for a change.”
The reprieve ended suddenly when my brothers looked back at me,
raising each of their eyebrows in turn.
“Is he right?” Aaron asked. “Is there some special someone who you’ve
been interested in?”
I said nothing, just taking a slug of my drink and shrugging one of my
shoulders.
“That’s a yes,” Austin said. “Who is she? Come on, lil’ bro. Unburden
yourself.”
“Well, what about you guys?” I said, unable to help the defensive
tendency that had always seized me when I felt like I was being ganged up on
by my brothers. “I don’t think I’m the only one who was thinking of someone
special when Mom said what she did.” I looked right at Austin. “You looked
almost dreamy at the table tonight.”
All of us looked around at each other, saying nothing as we all took sips
from our beers and measured our next few responses. I knew I’d hit the nail
on the head. Aaron seemed a lot less tense, somehow, and Austin seemed to
have a spring in his step. I knew Andy had been writing more lately, too.
“But we’re not the ones who’ve attracted Mom’s notice because of how
much we’ve been pining,” Andy countered.
“Dude, shut up,” I said, unable to help myself. “I am not pining.”
“Wow. Okay, high school,” Andy teased. “Be honest, you are a little. Just
a little bit?”
I looked over at him to see him holding up two fingers half-an-inch apart.
“I’m not saying anything,” I said, reaching for another bottle from the
pack on the floor next to me.
“You don’t need to; your face says it all,” Austin said with a smile. “Have
you thought about talking to this girl? I have to admit, I’m curious to know
about her.”
“I’ve thought about it, but I’m hesitant. She’s really amazing, and I keep
thinking that she’ll realize that she can do better.”
“I don’t know how amazing she can be if she thinks she can do better
than you,” Aaron replied, setting both hands on my shoulders and holding my
gaze with his. “Seriously, if she can’t see what a catch you are, she’s either
blind or stupid, and we don’t need any stupid around here.”
“Agreed,” Andy put in. “Talk to her. You’re not losing anything by
saying it, and right now, you look flat-out miserable.”
I looked around at my brothers, feeling my heart lift as I met their eyes
and saw the warmth there. Molly might use the nickname of A-Team as a
tongue-in-cheek tease, but she had no idea how right she was. I was pretty
fucking lucky.
“You’re right,” I said, nodding. “I’ll talk to her.”
21
 ANDY

T he next day dawned bright and cold. It was the perfect Colorado day, and
the snow was just sticking to the ground enough to have us make tracks
on our way to the barns. I’d gotten to the ranch early that day to do some
maintenance on the insulation in the walls. With the temperatures dropping
the way that they had been, I wasn’t willing to risk any of the mares getting
sick, especially not with some of them being pregnant. It was critical that we
keep them healthy, now of all times.
“Hey, bro,” I heard from behind me, and I turned around to see Adam
standing in the doorway. Aside from the occasional text, I hadn’t spoken to
him much since Sunday, when we’d essentially cornered him and pushed him
into unburdening himself to us. I knew that he hadn’t felt exactly comfortable
sitting there, particularly after our mother had made her extremely unsubtle
remarks about wanting us to meet someone and—horror of horrors—bring
home the woman we met to meet her and our dad.
I was happy to see that since then. Though, it looked like he’d gotten a
few good nights of sleep, not to mention a few square meals, and there
seemed to be a general air of more contentedness around him.
“Hey, lil’ bro,” I said, putting my tools down and starting to head towards
him. “What’s good?”
“I just got the feed delivery in,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder.
“Would you mind helping me unload this barn’s share?”
“Sure,” I said, grabbing my thick wool jacket from the bench where I’d
left it and pulling it on as I headed to the door. Adam was already taking the
cover off the bed of the large truck that we used to go pick up our deliveries
of food, and he’d climbed inside to start pulling out the heavy bags.
 I pulled out the cart and started to load up the bags, ensuring that the
weight was evenly distributed before I began to steer it inside. Between the
two of us, we worked quickly and efficiently, with Adam counting out
according to the invoice and me being the organizational workhorse I was
known to be.
Once we had a neat pile of feed bags stacked in the corner of the barn,
Adam sat down with a sigh, reaching for the bottle of water he kept on hand
and taking a long slug.
“Care to share?” I asked, holding out my hand, and he tossed me the
bottle with a neat flick of his wrist that showed his jock past. I unscrewed it
and took a hydrating sip, wiping the water off my upper lip with the back of
my hand.
“How are you doing, Adam?” I asked, pitching my voice lower and more
gently than it had been in years. It wasn’t like I was typically a deliberate
asshole to my brother, but I hadn’t treated him with kid gloves in years.
“What’s been going on since Sunday?”
“Pretty good, actually,” he said, picking up one of the apples from a
nearby bucket and turning it over and over in his hands as he measured his
words. “I thought a lot about what you all said, and you guys helped me a
ton.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I was worried we upset you. I know you hate it
when we butt in.”
“I do, most of the time,” he said with a grin.
“But this was one of the times when you didn’t?” I returned.
“Exactly,” he said, and we both laughed.
“So, what did you decide,” I asked, leaning forward, “about this girl
who’s so special that she’s got you pining after her?”
He raised his eyebrow at me, and I raised my hands in surrender. “Fine,
fine. Whatever. You’re not pining.”
He held up his hand for the water, and I tossed back to him.
“Well, I texted her,” he said, unscrewing the top of the bottle.
“Okaaaaay,” I said, dragging out the word in that way that we usually
made fun of other people for, since it sounded so dumb. “That’s a step in the
right direction at least.”
He rolled his eyes. “Leave me alone. I can’t help wanting to be sure that
it’s at least the right time to say it, or the right circumstances.” He ran his
hand through his espresso-dark hair, making it stand up straight like a
cockscomb. I bit my lip to keep from telling him. I knew that it wouldn’t
benefit either of us to tell him.
“Adam,” I said, “there’s no such thing as the right time to be happy or
unhappy. Believe me, I should know.”
His eyes flicked up to me, and I shrugged one of my shoulders.
“I’m just saying that when I decided to leave school, I rationalized my
choice by telling myself it wasn’t the right time to do that for myself. I could
be selfish later when I would have more control over the consequences.” I
looked hard at him. “You have all the control over the consequences right
now, Adam. You just have to be brave enough to take the next step.”
He blinked at me a couple of times before taking another gulp of water.
“Did you learn that at college?”
“Nope. I learned it after,” I said. “I’m telling it to you now.”
He nodded, setting his chin in his hand before reaching forward and
picking up a small piece of hay, flipping it through his fingers as he thought.
“What about you, then?” he asked, looking up at me with that charming,
twisty smile. “Who’s this chick who’s got you all twisted?”
My elbow almost slipped off my knee where it had been propped as I
took him in, and his grin spread as if I’d proven what he’d said right. “What
are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the girl who you’re trying to deny exists for some
reason, when I’ve seen you looking at your phone with that goofy-ass smile
on your face,” he said. “You all say that my face is easy to read, but y’all
should try looking in the mirror. It’s pretty obvious that there’s something
there.”
I shook my head. “Nope, that’s not how it works. I’m not just gonna spill
everything if you’re gonna sit there not saying anything.”
He chuckled. “Fair enough. I’ll answer a question about the girl I like if
you answer a question about the girl that you like.”
I snorted but nodded. “All right. You wanna start?”
“Sure,” he said. “What color is her hair?”
“Blonde,” I said, “and it’s long.”
My brother nodded. “We have that taste in common.”
“My turn,” I said. “Does this girl of yours live in Rock Ledge, or is she in
another town nearby?”
“She lives here,” he said.
I furrowed my brow. “Is she tall or short?”
 “She’s not that tall—I’d say she’s on the shorter side of average,” he said.
“You got two in one, jerk.”
“Fine.” I was starting to get a sinking feeling in my stomach that I refused
to acknowledge.
“What does she do for a living?” he asked, leaning forward even more. I
could tell that he was getting into the conversation, thoroughly enjoying
himself as we exchanged bits and pieces of information like we were trading
candy on the playground.
I would be too, if it weren’t for the itch at the back of my brain that told
me about a horrible possibility I couldn’t bear to confront.
At least not right now.
“She works with animals,” I said, trying to keep my voice as steady as I
could.
He blinked once, and then again, and as the blood drained from his face, I
knew that the same possibility—now probability—had entered his mind as
well. A wave of guilt rushed over me, and I brought my hand up to cover my
face as I fought against the shame.
“Is it—” He cleared his throat, struggling to keep a straight face as he
looked back to me. “Is Lucy the girl you like?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. It was hard to look him straight in the eye, but
I did my best.
“Lucy Oliver?” he asked.
“How many other Lucy’s do we know?” I asked, the sarcasm bursting out
without my willing participation. My regret grew as I saw him flinch, and I
immediately backtracked. “Sorry, Adam.”
“It’s okay,” he said, his voice seeming to thin out a little bit.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself for an answer I wasn’t sure I was
prepared to hear. “Do you think that she likes you too?”
“I think she might,” he said. “At least, I think that she did a few weeks
ago.”
“What’s changed between now and then?” I asked, forgetting about my
own conflicting feelings for a second and just wanting to hear from my
brother.
“Christmas Eve,” he answered, “after I showed her my old room, we
stopped in the hallway, and it happened to be under that little bit of mistletoe
that Mom hung. So… I kissed her.”
“Oh,” I said, my stomach twisting even more than it had before. “And…
she liked it?”
“I thought she did. She certainly seemed to,” he said. “But that was
before. We haven’t talked for the last couple of weeks, at least not beyond a
text here or there. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
I bit down on my lip as I thought hard about what to say to my little
brother. It wasn’t like we could both pursue this girl, especially now that I
knew how Adam felt about her. At the end of the day, he was my highest
priority, more important to me than just about anything else in the world.
“You should reach out to her, Adam,” I said. “Text her. Meet up and tell
her how you feel. Like Aaron said, she’ll be crazy if she doesn’t go for you.”
He blinked at me a few times. “What about you?”
I shook my head. “I’ll bow out. Between a girl and you, I’ll choose you
every single time.”
He bit down on his lip again, and I could tell that he was swallowing back
his reaction to what I’d said. It took a minute, but finally, he looked back at
me steadily before shaking his head. “No.”
I had to pause for a second before asking, “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“There’s still Lucy,” he said, “and her feelings. She should be the one to
make the choice. It would be wrong for you to take yourself out of
consideration without even giving her the option.”
I looked back at him, amazed at the man that my little brother had grown
into. Even when presented with the opportunity to try for the most amazing
woman we’d both ever known without threat of competition, he said that it
shouldn’t be up to either of us.
“So, what do we do?” I asked. “Ask her to meet up and just… tell her
together? Offer her the choice?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice steadier than I’d ever heard it. “And no matter
what happens, we won’t let it come between us. At the end of the day, we’ll
still be brothers, and some girl won’t change that.”
“She’s not just some girl, though,” I said, looking at him from under my
eyebrows.
“She’s not,” he said, “but you’re not just some other guy.”
I grinned, standing up. “Do we hug it out now or something?”
“Hell yeah.”
22
 LUCY

“S opath
what do you think of this one?” Molly asked as we walked down the
from the little house that we’d just finished touring. After six
weeks of being back in Rock Ledge, I was hitting my limit of being home
with the parents, as wonderful as they were. With my mom’s consistent
‘gentle nudges’ about unpacking and tidying and generally making my room
more livable, especially when combined with my dad’s irrepressible need to
knock on my door at the most inane times in order to ask the most ridiculous
questions, I was definitely hitting the boiling point of my patience.
Also, the plan that I’d made for living in my parents’ house had been
before I’d gotten the very generous employment offer that I’d gotten from the
clinic. The salary had been a lot higher than I’d been anticipating.
Truthfully, I could make a decision now about a place I liked, sign the
lease for immediate move-in, and still not really feel the pinch.
The only trouble was that none of the places that we’d seen had really
struck me as the right place for me. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but I
hadn’t been able to see myself living in any of the little places that we’d
toured so far.
“I’m not sure,” I said, heading back out to where Molly’s car was parked
by the curb. My best friend had gamely agreed to pick me up and go with me
to the different properties today, and this was the third one that we’d seen.
Once inside the car, I slumped over tiredly. “I’m not sure, Moll. It just
doesn’t feel right to me.”
She looked at me, blinking a few times. “Can you be more specific?”
“I honestly have no idea. It’s just a feeling I have. I don’t want to move
again until I’m ready to actually buy a property, so I really want to love the
place that I’m moving into, you know?”
The corner of her mouth twisted up just a little, and she shrugged a
shoulder. “Yeah, I do.” She tilted her chin to my phone. “How many more
places do we have to see?”
I looked at the emails and sighed in relief. “Just one.”
I read out the email to her, and the two of us drove over to the address
given in it. I fiddled with the radio dial on Molly’s old Camry as we drove,
and we chatted casually as we snacked on the bag of gummy worms that one
could usually find in her car. She didn’t bring up any of my escapades with
the Kent brothers, and neither did I.
I hadn’t seen any of them since my tryst with Austin in his truck outside
of Spurs. Instead, I’d just been biding my time in texting any of them back
about anything remotely personal. Aaron hadn’t really tried to get in touch
with me at all since the night that I’d gone out to the ranch before the storm
hit, and honestly, I felt a little bit better about the fact that I hadn’t had to talk
to him or face any of the feelings that had been wreaking havoc on me for the
last few weeks.
Those feelings had had another enormous wrench tossed in the middle of
them when Austin and I did what we had done in his truck. I didn’t know
what had possessed me; I’d never had sex in a car in my life, not even when
I’d been a teenager and had no other option for privacy.
“Luce,” Molly said as she pulled the car to a stop outside the final
address. She turned it off and turned to look at me. “Where’d you go?”
I bit my lip before shaking my head at her, reminding myself of one of
Aaron’s horses when it was being dogged by flies. “Nowhere,” I said. “I just
got distracted.”
“Yeah, I could tell,” she said. “I just don’t know what you got distracted
by.”
I shrugged one of my shoulders. “Just thinking of all the possibilities once
we actually find the place,” I said.
She raised one of her eyebrows and I bit my lip as what I’d said started to
sink back in, and I turned away from her. I rarely blushed around my best
friend, but this seemed like a worthwhile moment for it.
“Come on, perv,” I said, getting out. “Let’s just look at this place. I kinda
want to go back to the house and take a nap.”
“Wow, you got old,” Molly said. “I have no idea when that happened,
since I didn’t get old.”
 I elbowed her as the two of us started walking up to the house, and as we
approached it, I began to get a much better feeling about this particular house
than the feelings I had about any of the others that we’d seen until now.
“Okay, I like this.”

F ifteen minutes later, we were still looking around the house, checking on
water pressure and a few other things that Molly insisted we become
aware of before leaving, when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket.
Pulling it out, my heart gave a sudden extra little thud, as if in an echo,
when I saw the name flash across the screen, and I bit down on my lip as I
swiped my thumb across the banner to read his text.
“Which one of your men is hailing you?” asked Molly, looking up at me
from under the kitchen sink that she’d been looking into in her ultra-thorough
inspection of the house.
“Adam,” I said, turning away from her. I’d never really hidden anything
from her before now, but with this, I couldn’t help feeling as though I should
have a little more shame… except, I didn’t.
Hey— whatcha up to?
I bit the inside of my cheek as I typed out my response, hoping that it
meant what I thought it might, and then internally smacking myself across the
face for wanting another Kent notch on my belt.
Not much. Just looking around at houses to rent with Molly.
Nice! Found anything yet?
Might’ve! Too early to tell, though.

I waited for his response, watching the three dots appear, then disappear,
then reappear. It was obvious that he was having trouble figuring out what
to say, which I found strangely… endearing. It was as though the old Adam
—the beanpole who’d always been awkward around girls—was still in the
gorgeous man that he’d become.
Finally, the words appeared, and I bit down hard on my lip as I read
through the question, contemplating the ramifications of saying yes.
Finally, his reply came. Do you feel like meeting up at Spurs later? We
could get a beer and catch up over the last few weeks.
I bit down on my cheek again, taking my own turn to tap out a response
and delete it.
“So? What did he say?” Molly asked, coming over to look over my
shoulder. I handed the phone over to her, and her face didn’t change at all as
she read over the texts that we’d exchanged.
“Okay,” she said, handing the phone back. “This is a xxxfgood thing,
isn’t it?”
“Is it?” I asked, going over to sit on the floor by the big bay window that
faced the back. I loved the way that the sunlight streamed into the house
through the glass, and how the yard looked out over the mountains. “I’m not
sure.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” she asked, coming over to sit on the floor next to
me as the sunlight gilded her lovely dark curls.
“It just feels… weird,” I said, wrapping my arms around my knees and
holding them up to my chest. “Like, I keep feeling like I should feel more
guilty about this situation, but I just… don’t.”
“Again, I ask you why,” she said, leaning forward.
I blinked at her. “Dude. Did you forget that I’ve messed around with all
four of them?”
She snorted. “I don’t know how they define ‘messing around’ in Utah,
but a kiss does not count. So, technically, you’ve only messed around with
two brothers.”
I glared at her. “And that makes it better?”
“By your estimation, it evidently does,” she shot back, giving me a sassy
grin as she faced down my glare before sighing. “Look. I happen to believe
that there’s nothing wrong with what you’ve done. Yeah, the fact that they’re
all brothers might be a little different, but it’s not any different from what
thousands of other women do all over the world every day.”
I blinked at her.
She shrugged. “Well, the ones who aren’t in exclusive relationships. Have
any of the brothers said that they want to be exclusive with you?”
“No,” I said, setting my chin on my knee. “We haven’t even talked about
dating. We’ve just been—”
“Making out and screwing your brains out,” she said, nodding. “I get it. If
I had the opportunity, I’d probably do the same exact thing.”
I burst out laughing, grateful for the thousandth time in my life to have
her as my best friend. “I don’t blame you.”
“Good,” she said with a grin that turned more thoughtful. “Have you
thought of going exclusive with any of them? Or how you feel about any of
them in particular?”
“I have no idea,” I said, shrugging. “When I first saw them, it was
honestly like sensory overload. Then, after Adam kissed me on Christmas
Eve, I figured that we should try together. He’s amazing and gorgeous, and I
never expected to fall for my best friend the way I have. And then Andy and I
were together at New Year’s Eve, and I couldn’t resist him. He smelled so
good, and I’ve always found it so easy to be around him. Aaron grounds me,
and I can’t remember a time when I haven’t had a huge crush on him, and
apparently makes me come like a train. Austin gets my competitive edge
going.” I shrugged. “Each one of them seems to meet a different need in me,
and it’s the craziest thing. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
She grinned. “Right now, I don’t think there’s any reason to try to choose
between them, since none of them have asked you to make it exclusive and
you clearly need more time to make your decision. Again, I don’t think
there’s anything wrong with taking some time to make your choice. Just lean
into this and have fun with it, okay?”
I nodded, pulling out my phone again and opening up the thread with
Adam.
Does seven PM work for you?
His reply came back within seconds, and the speed at which he sent it
made me smile once more.
That’s perfect. I’ll see you there and then :)
I tucked my phone away and looked back at Molly with a sigh. “So much
for the rest of my relaxing day at home,” I said. “No nap for me.”
“Thank God,” she said, getting to her feet and stretching her hand down
to me so that she could help me up. “You’re too young and hot to be acting
geriatric. Now go home and get dressed up for your date.”
I rolled my eyes at her, but I couldn’t help the speed of my heart as we
walked out to her car once more.
23
 ANDY

“W hat time is it?” I asked, rubbing my hands against my jeans anxiously.

I was freaked out by the prospect that my hands would be too sweaty,
and Lucy would cringe away from me in disgust.
Adam looked down at his phone, snorted, and looked back at me, rolling
his eyes. “It’s two minutes since the last time you asked me. Just relax. She’ll
be here soon.”
I sighed, leaning back in my chair before reaching out and grabbing my
glass of beer. In my haste to gulp it down, I accidentally inhaled a little bit of
it, beginning to cough and sputter all over myself. I quickly set the glass back
down on the table, dragging my hand back across my mouth as I attempted to
calm down. Adam smacked me on the back, handing me napkins and a glass
of water as he hurried to calm me down.
“You okay there?” he asked, his hand making soothing circles on my
back as he leaned forward, his dark hair flopping into his eyes.
I nodded, wheezing just a little bit as I sipped at the water, looking up at
the lights and letting the little blinking lights fade away from behind my eyes.
“So much for relaxing,” he said, biting down hard on the inside of his
cheek as he did his best to keep from laughing. “You’re about as chill as the
Sahara Desert.”
It took more energy than I had to glare at him as I reached for a napkin to
wipe at my eyes, clearing out the fog that had accrued there as I’d tried to
clear out the beer that I’d been choking on.
I turned to face the front of the bar again, thinking that I would look out
for Lucy, and sucked in a breath as I saw her walk in.
Her long hair was out of its usual ponytail, instead hanging loose and
straight down over her shoulders and halfway down her back. It seemed as
though that golden waterfall drew the lights to it like a magnet, reflecting
little glowing orbs of red and blue from the old stained-glass pendants that
hung from the ceiling. She was still in jeans, but rather than wearing the usual
plaid shirt, she was in a forest-green sweater that perfectly matched the clear
green of her eyes. It came down past her hips, covering the perfect shape of
her ass, but that didn’t change the fact that I knew exactly what was sitting
under the soft fabric that made up her top.
The perfect skin on her face shone under the lights of the bar, and I
genuinely felt as though my breaths were starting to come a bit more
shallowly as I saw her tuck a piece of her soft hair behind her ear, pulling out
her phone to check something briefly.
“You okay there?” Adam asked, and I looked over at him to see him
raising an entertained eyebrow at me.
“I’m great,” I said, the words coming out short and thin. At first, I was
amazed that my little brother, who always wore his heart on his sleeve,
looked as though he was barely affected by her looks.
That was, until I realized that there was more color flushing his cheeks,
and that he’d been biting down on his lip steadily since we’d gotten to the
bar.
He was affected by her; of course, he was. There went any residual hope
that his feelings for her might not be as strong as my own.
Lucy was looking around the room, her eyes skating over us a few times
before finally landing on our table. I saw her blink a few times as if in
surprise, and there was a moment when I wondered why before remembering
that Adam had texted her simply asking her to meet up.
He hadn’t said anything about me being there too.
My heart started to pound in the fear that she would clam up and leave at
the sight of me, having decided that the kiss we’d shared on New Year’s Eve
had just been brought on as a result of too many drinks and the simple fact
that there had been no one else that she’d been able to kiss at midnight.
All those thoughts came crashing to a halt when I saw the smile begin to
spread across her face, and suddenly, I felt a very different kind of cramping
around my solar plexus as I saw the way that her eyes lit up. Without another
second’s deliberation, she started to walk up to the table, each of her steps
filled with purpose, and pulled out the chair, setting her coat over the back of
it and sitting down fluidly.
 “This is a surprise,” she said, looking over at me. “I wasn’t expecting to
see you here, Andy.”
I looked at Adam quickly before swallowing hard at the lump in my
throat. “Is it the… bad kind of surprise?”
“Not at all,” she said, reaching forward to put her hand on mine. “I just
wasn’t expecting to see the both of you guys, but I’m happy you’re both
here.”
“Good,” Adam said. “I think I can speak for both of us when I say that
we’re both happy to see you too.”
She blinked, looking between me and Adam several times.
“What do you want to drink?” Adam asked. “A Stella?”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
Adam went up to the bar to get Lucy’s drink, leaving the two of us to sit
there together, simply taking each other in.
“You haven’t texted,” I said, looking at her straight on, not lifting my
hands from my lap so that she couldn’t see how much they were sweating.
“Neither have you,” she returned, leaning forward and setting her chin in
her hand as she traced small circles on the table with her fingertip.
“You know,” Adam said as he came back to the table, setting the green
bottle in front of her before taking his own seat once more, “it’s crazy
drinking with you now that we’re actually able to drink legally, and we don’t
have to get Austin or Aaron to buy our shitty cheap beers for us.”
Was I imagining it, or was there a strange tightening to her lips when our
older brothers’ names were mentioned?
It barely lasted a second, though, and then she was taking a gulp of beer
as she looked back at him with a smile that rivaled the first one she’d given
us when she’d first walked in. “Oh God,” she said, laughing with a sound that
was deeper and throatier than I’d been expecting. “Do you guys remember
that time that we’d been studying for that chemistry midterm sophomore
year, and Andy, you were working on an essay for English class—”
“And Molly came over to ‘study’ with us,” Adam added, lifting up his
hands to illustrate the air quotes, “even though we weren’t in the same class,
and she had literally no intention of doing any homework?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, feeling the smile starting to spread over my face,
“I think I remember this.”
I did. Molly had said that we’d been working far too hard for far too long,
and that it was time for us to finally take a break. At that point, both Adam
and Lucy had been red eyed from studying, and I’d been staring at the pages
of The Great Gatsby for so long that I was starting to feel cross-eyed with
effort. Once Molly had gotten to the house with that look in her dangerous
brown eyes, I’d known that there was about to be a massive amount of
mischief that would be made.
She’d made a decent argument for cutting loose a little bit, knowing that
we’d all been working hard. She’d been at practice all day, and she deserved
a little bit of fun too, so she’d convinced me to drive us to the Seven Eleven
two towns over so that I could try to get a box of Coors Lights with my shitty
fake ID.
It hadn’t worked, and I’d had to run out of there with my tail tucked
between my legs before jumping back into the truck and heading back to the
house to try to convince Aaron to buy us beer.
He had, but on the condition that I tell Mom I’d gotten stomach flu once I
start puking my guts up. I’d promised that I would, and he’d come back with
a twelve-pack of giant Coors Lights.
Lucy had managed to get down one and a half of her beers before going
straight to the bathroom and throwing up. She hadn’t had anything to eat
since lunch, and her tiny frame hadn’t been able to support the alcohol. Molly
had followed soon after, and much to Adam’s and my shame, we hadn’t
lasted much longer.
“Thank God Mom and Dad were out of the house that day,” Adam said,
looking from one of us to the other, grinning widely. “We would’ve gotten
into so much trouble if they’d caught us.”
“Seriously,” Lucy said, running her hand through her long hair. “And we
would’ve gotten into even more trouble if we’d done half of the shit that
Molly had thought of doing when she’d initially come over.”
I widened my eyes at her, glancing briefly at Adam before turning back to
her. “How do you know that was what she wanted to do?”
“Because when she was drunk on the floor of the bathroom and she was
groaning, she was talking about how cute you guys are and how sad it was
that you guys didn’t think that we were cute also. She also mentioned what a
shame it was that you guys were such gentlemen.”
Adam chuckled. “Mom’s gonna love that.”
“Did you think that too?”
“That’s absolutely none of your business,” she said, taking another sip as
she raised her eyebrows.
 “No, seriously,” I asked, leaning forward with a grin. “Do you wish that
one of us would be… less gentlemanly with you?”
The blush started to creep up her face, but she continued to hold my gaze
as she ran the tip of her finger over the rim of her beer bottle. I felt a small
kick under the table and knew that that might’ve been too much.
“I don’t know,” she said.
She shrugged, bending over and patting me on the thigh. “There’s still
time.”
At the contact, I felt the blood immediately rush to my cock, making me
go harder than the hammer I used to maintain the barns. I looked over at my
brother, hoping the look was steady, but had a feeling it came off a little more
desperate than I’d intended.
“Listen, Luce,” Adam said, and Lucy turned to face him, biting her lip. I
swallowed a little at the sight of her doing that, and I was seized with the
desire to lean in and kiss her. “The reason I asked you to come meet us here
was because we both had something we wanted to talk to you about.”
She looked between the two of us, curious. “Okay….”
“I think we should go somewhere a little more private though,” I said.
“This is kind of a personal talk.”
She looked between us as if trying to figure out what was up. “Okay,” she
said finally.
“Meet us as Adam’s.”

T he soft knock at his door twenty minutes later got our attention, and Adam
went to open it. Again, Lucy seemed to be lit up from behind by the
moonlight as she entered. The tension seemed to thicken as she walked in,
looking between the two of us.
“Do you want another drink?” Adam asked.
“Sure,” she asked, and he went to the fridge, grabbing another beer.
“Come on,” I said, gesturing for her to come to the couch. She sat down,
and the two of us sat down on either side of her, fairly boxing her in. She was
so small compared to the two of us, but her personality seemed to take up the
whole room.
“So,” she said taking a sip, “what did you want to talk about?”
24
 ADAM

H onestly, it had only been in my wildest dreams that I’d thought I would
have Lucy in my apartment, sitting on my couch and having a beer as we
talked about having a potential relationship. The yellow light from my lamp
was shining off her hair, turning it a deeper gold color than it had been in the
bar. The lavender and green-hay smell coming off her hair was intoxicating
to me.
Of course, in those wild dreams, I never could’ve anticipated that my
brother would’ve been with me as we both told her that we’d been having
feelings for her.
That we both hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, and that we
were each happy to pursue something with her.
“So?” she said, looking back and forth between us. “What did you want
to talk about?”
I gave her a wan smile before pushing my hand through my hair, clearing
my throat and doing my best to marshal my words.
“Luce,” I said, the words coming out sounding thin and strangled, “that
night that you were talking about earlier? When we all drank way too much
Coors Light and got sick?”
“Yeah, I remember,” she said, raising her eyebrow as she looked at me.
“Well, I don’t know if you remember that a couple nights later, when we
took our last final and Aaron bought us a case of actual Budweisers to
celebrate, and we took them out into the field.”
“Yeah, I remember,” she said, smiling at the memory. “We took turns
choosing songs to play and drinking.”
“Yeah,” I said, my heart beating so quickly that I was afraid it would run
away with me. “Well, I don’t know if you remember, but I tried to kiss you
that night.”
She stared at me, her mouth dropping open. “I… I don’t remember.”
“You bent forward at the last minute, and I just let it go. I didn’t try to
kiss you again. I figured it didn’t really matter at that point.”
She looked between the two of us as if she was trying to grasp for a
reason that I had brought that up now.
“My point is,” I said, finding a firmer and more certain tone, “that I’ve
always felt you were… special. You’re my best friend, and you always have
been, but there’s always been a sense of something else there, and I’ve never
really been able to shake it.”
She bit down on her lip, hard, and looked down at her knee so that she
didn’t have to face me straight on. It made my throat hurt a little bit to see the
way she turned away from me and swallowed hard, clearly thinking things
through.
“I know that we didn’t really keep in touch all that much over the years,
but ever since you came back into town, I haven’t been able to get you out of
my mind. I haven’t been able to stop seeing you when I close my eyes, and I
haven’t been able to forget that kiss on Christmas Eve. You’re still my best
friend, but I haven’t spoken to you because I realized that I haven’t known
how to tell you that I want more.”
She looked back up at me, her green eyes glowing with a warmth that I’d
rarely seen there.
“Penny for your thoughts, Lu,” I said, reaching forward and running my
thumb over her shoulder the way I had when we were teenagers and she
would confide in me about her fears of not getting her scholarships, or not
getting into school, or not passing her tests. I’d done my best to infuse as
much feeling as possible into the touch, even if she hadn’t been able to
understand that at the time.
She looked down at my hand, reaching up and covering it with her own.
For a second, I was afraid that she was going to remove it from her
shoulder… but then, she wrapped her thumb around my palm, and wove our
fingers together in a tight grasp.
“I’ve always thought the same of you,” she said, sending my heart
spinning off into orbit. “At the time, I don’t think I considered you as a
romantic interest because for some strange reason, my mind just said that
what we had was untouchable. But I can’t deny that since I’ve come home,
I’ve thought a lot about you too, and what you mean to me.”
It took all my self-restraint not to burst into a smile at the words. Hearing
what she’d said felt a bit like the gift that I’d been waiting for my entire life,
since the moment I’d looked at her as a twelve-year-old and realized I
thought of her as more than just the scrawny girl who could outride me,
someone who’d grown up with me into one of the most remarkable people
that I’d ever gotten to know.
She continued to hold my hand, giving me a soft smile as we sat in the
quiet together.
I wasn’t quite sure what I was expecting, but then she turned to look at
Andy, folding one leg over the other and tilting it to the side. She let go of my
hand, and I finally turned to take in my brother’s face.
My stomach twisted as I took in the disappointment that lay behind his
eyes. It was faint, given how hard he’d tried to bolster the mask that he’d held
in place.
“Again,” she said, her voice soft, “not that I’m not happy that you’re here
to witness all of this, but I’m a little confused as to the why.”
“That’s what we needed to discuss with you,” I chimed in, and as she
whipped her head back to look at me, I nodded at my brother.
“The thing is,” he said, sighing a little bit, “I’ve realized that I’ve been
having some feelings for you too. I mean, I was stricken by you when I saw
you, but I wasn’t expecting to feel so much for you until that kiss on New
Year’s Eve.”
Her face went pale, and she looked from him to me and back, and her
mouth popped open, as if she was about to start panicking. “Andy—”
He held up a hand. “We’re not judging you, Luce. That’s not what this is
about, we promise.”
She looked at me, and I shook my head with a smile. “It’s really not.”
“Okay….” Her face went from anxious to confused, and she folded her
hands together as she looked at him steadily.
“We wanted you to know that there’s no pressure here,” I said, reaching
forward and setting my hand on her knee. “It’s not about you choosing one of
us or the other right now—”
“Or ever, if you don’t want to,” Andy added.
“Exactly,” I said. “We just wanted you to know that if and when you did
make your choice, there’s no reason for you to feel bad about it, or any guilt,
or anything like that. We already decided that whatever happens, it’s not
going to come between us. We want you and each other to be happy too
much for that.”
Her eyes started to shine in a different way, and I could see the tears that
were trying to fight their way free.
“Thank you both for saying that. You have no idea how relieved I am to
hear that, and how grateful I am that you’re so close. I’ve already been
feeling pretty guilty over this.”
“I figured,” I said. “There’s no need, Lu.”
She nodded. “There’s another problem that you guys haven’t addressed,
though. To be fair, I’m not sure it’s a possibility that any of us could’ve
anticipated.”
We were both quiet as we waited for her to say what she needed to tell us.
“What if…” she swallowed again, looking from one of us to the other.
“What if I can’t choose?”
All of the air might as well have been sucked out of the room as we tried
to process what she’d just said and take in the way that she was looking at
both of us. Hopeful, and at the same time as if she were a little bit
embarrassed to be asking.
I shut my mouth when I realized that it had been hanging open and felt
like my heart had begun to speed up once more. The implications of what
she’d just asked had smacked into me, and there was a moment when I
couldn’t conceive of it.
But then… why not? If guilt had been ripping her up, it had been
shredding me as I’d been thinking of what the prospect of her choosing me
would do to my brother, to say nothing of what her choosing him would do to
me.
I looked at Andy, hoping against hope that he was thinking along the
same lines that I was… and as soon as I saw his face, I knew that he was.
There was a light in his eyes and a lightness to his shoulders that hadn’t been
there a moment ago.
I reached forward, hooking my fingers around Lucy’s chin and turning
her face gently toward mine. She looked a bit nervous as she bit down on her
lip, but there was a hopeful light in her bright eyes.
“Lucy,” I said, my voice going low and soft like a jungle cat, “what if you
didn’t have to choose?”
She sucked in a breath, her eyes going wide as I leaned in. The kiss
started slow as I caught her surprised mouth with mine. Her taste mingled
with the fresh, cool hoppy taste of the beer she’d been drinking, and her
mouth opened under mine like a flower.
Once her mouth had opened, I dipped my tongue inside before I could
overthink it, and she gasped again, this time ending with a groan that shot
through me. The kiss went from tentative to needy to visceral as we began to
pull each other closer together, her fingers weaving into my hair and me
holding her tighter.
Eventually, she pulled away from me, the two of us panting and staring at
each other hungrily. After a moment, she turned away from me slowly and
looked at Andy, leaning forward.
He met her, pulling her toward him for another devouring kiss. The
moment they connected, I realized that I didn’t have anything to worry about.
I wasn’t jealous of the two of them or their connection; I was just gratified to
see them happy.
Eventually they parted ways, slowly, and Lucy looked at each of us in
turn. Her eyes had a joyful, mischievous light in them, but her face was rosy
with sheer passion.
She stood up, and the two of us got up in tandem with her. She set one
hand on my chest, which I covered with my hand, before she reached out to
take Andy’s hand, and it seemed as though the three of us communicated
without a word.
Turning, I didn’t let go of her as I led the two of them to my bedroom.
25
 LUCY

I could barely believe what was happening as Adam led me down the hall to
his room, my heart practically beating out of my chest as we walked
together in the quiet that filled the apartment. The calm belied my excitement
as Adam pushed open his bedroom door, his breathing not seeming to pick up
beyond the barest hint of excitement. Meanwhile, behind me, Andy had his
hand warmly placed on my lower back.
Once we got into the bedroom, Adam flicked the light switch on the wall,
which turned on the floor lamp in the corner, illuminating the room with a
soft yellow glow that seemed to warm me up on the inside as well.
I exhaled, looking around the room at the bits and pieces of Adam’s life,
and spotted Robin Williams’s familiar face on the wall. I couldn’t help
laughing a little at the sight, and Adam raised an eyebrow at my giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just… the Good Morning, Vietnam poster,” I said, bringing my hand up
to my mouth, smothering my laugh with my palm. “Somehow, it feels full
circle to hook up under that stupid poster.”
He smiled at me, and the grin quickly turned wicked as he reached
forward, pulling me forward with a hard jerk and pressing me against his
groin before leaning in and capturing my mouth with his in a savage kiss. It
was barely comparable to what had happened under the mistletoe a few
weeks before.
Then, I hadn’t known him well enough to realize that he was holding
back, but thinking back on it, I realized how careful he’d been with me as
we’d exchanged our first kiss, giving in to the careful interplay of lip and
tongue. I hadn’t really allowed myself to give into my own increasingly
strong feelings when I was around him—I couldn’t, given the fact that both
his family and mine were in the next room—and had known that if we’d been
alone, things would’ve likely progressed naturally in the way that they had
with Aaron and Austin.
Now, though, it was an entirely different story. The only other person
here was Andy, and I knew that he wouldn’t be opposed to any of my
reactions to his brother. I knew it the way I knew both humans and animals
needed regular hydration in order to survive.
I gasped as Adam opened my mouth with his, dipping his tongue inside
and swallowing the sound of desire that I’d made for him. Even though I’d
been having mixed feelings about Adam, thinking that that initial kiss wasn’t
enough for me to pass judgment on whether I wanted him or not, at least in
the way I wanted his brothers, now I knew I was lost.
At the same time, Andy was behind me, pushing my long hair over my
shoulder so that he could get access to the back of my neck. I sucked in a
breath as I felt his soft lips pressing against my skin, which was already
highly sensitized due to Adam’s steady touches. Now, it was positively
humming with excitement.
I groaned as my soft sweater was pulled gently over my head, exposing
my skin to the warm air of the room and the heat that was coming off of both
brothers.
I reached forward, pushing Adam away from me gently so that I could get
a better look at him. The look of sheer hunger in his blue eyes was enough to
bring me even closer to the edge, and I reached for the edge of his long-
sleeved t-shirt, sliding my hands underneath the hem and playing with the
edge of his cut abs just as Andy had slid his fingers down the front of my
belly to the closure of my pants.
“Fuck, Luce,” Adam said, his voice coming out choked and thin as I
pulled the shirt up and above his head, taking a second to admire the shape of
him as he shed that first layer. His body was beautiful, more lithe than the
bodies of Aaron and Austin. He was still strong, his body still corded with the
muscles that his work had built over the last decade, but they seemed to be
more thinly layered under his skin. “You’re gonna be the death of me, I
swear.”
“Well, we can’t have that,” I said, unbuttoning the button of his jeans
with a quick flick of my fingers and sliding my hand down his belly,
snapping the elastic band of his boxers against his hardened midriff and
feeling just a little bit satisfied when I saw his wince.
Suddenly, a set of fingers that wasn’t Adam’s was making its way into
my panties, catching me off guard. I’d never had a threesome before, much
less one that was almost entirely focused on me, and all of the sensation was
driving me insane. Andy’s fingers worked as deftly as Adam’s had, proving
flexible enough to work under my tight jeans, parting the folds that I knew
were hiding the soaking wet evidence of my arousal.
“Andy—my jeans,” I moaned, reaching back and tugging at the
waistband that had suddenly become far too constricting around my aroused
skin. He took the hint, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of my jeans
and pulling my panties down to the floor with them so that I was completely
bare. As he did, I turned around to look at him; he was beautiful in the dim
lamplight, which had turned the dusky, dark blonde of his hair to bronze. He
smiled, leaning forward to capture my mouth with his as my hands continued
to make their way down Adam’s front.
Without missing a beat, he returned his fingers to my pussy, which had
already begun to feel his neglect. I broke off the kiss, breathing heavily, as I
turned back to Adam, whose eyes were closed and whose tendons were
already standing out on his neck in his tension and arousal.
Leaning forward, I thrust my hips back a little, allowing Andy further
access to me as I pressed my lips to Adam’s chest, allowing my tongue to
flick around his nipple. My hands seemed to play in tandem with my fingers,
and I worked his cock as my mouth worked his hardened nipple.
“Jesus,” he said, panting, and I smiled as I moved my mouth further
down, dropping kisses along his front as I went, all the while being pulled
back to where Andy’s fingers were moving diligently inside me.
Suddenly, a new sensation at my entrance pulled my attention back to my
pussy, and I gasped as I felt Andy’s tongue darting inside of me, flitting
around like a butterfly as his hand came around to my front and began to
move in steady circles over my clit. I couldn’t contain the feeling as it rippled
over me, and I groaned with my mouth still pressed against Adam’s stomach.
Amazing how Andy’s train of thought had echoed mine, I thought as I
tucked my own fingers into Adam’s pants, cupping his ass under his boxers,
before bringing them back around and gently fisting his cock once more
before pulling it out of his pants.
My mouth went a little dry at the sight of him. He wasn’t any bigger than
the others; it was just that every inch of him was perfect to look at. To touch
and feel. It made me even more eager to lean forward and run my tongue
along his length, enjoying the rich, musky taste of him.
All the while, Andy had continued feasting on me like it was his job,
licking up every drop of my arousal as if he was starving for me. I knew I
was getting closer and closer to orgasm, and we’d only just begun.
I took Adam into my mouth, setting one hand on his hip for balance and
fixing my lips around him before dragging them up and down his shaft,
slowly pulling the climax from him just as Andy parted my legs more,
fastening his lips on my clit and sucking hard. I moaned, the sound emerging
from deep inside me, and I knew that it affected Adam based on the way he
shook under my hand.
I couldn’t resist the orgasm anymore, and the wave of pleasure broke over
my body as I continued sucking Adam’s cock, devouring the taste of him the
way Andy had done me.
Andy didn’t give me a moment to relax into the pleasure, though; I knew
he was standing when I felt his hands on my ass once more, but this time, I
felt his cock pressing against my still-shaking muscles. I whimpered, backing
my ass up to him in a wordless plea for him to fuck me. Thankfully, he got
the hint and didn’t keep me waiting any longer before thrusting all the way
in.
Oh, God.
Even without giving me a second to adjust, he fit into me perfectly, and I
groaned into the feeling of him stretching me out. The three of us stood there,
paused in ecstasy, with both men inside of me. My muscles started shaking
first as I started to crave a little bit of friction, just a touch more movement.
Andy felt the trembling in my legs, pulled back, and thrust back into me
again, not holding back at all as he seemed to hit the deepest part of me.
I groaned again, and Adam pulled back from me, removing his cock from
my mouth. I looked up at him, confused, and he smiled at me. “That’s not
where I want to come, Lucy,” he said, leaning down to kiss my swollen lips.
“And if you keep doing that, I’m not going to last.”
I gasped as Andy plunged into me again, a groan coming from deep in his
throat as he reached around me to begin massaging my clit again. I felt the
orgasm rising in me once more as the sensation began to grow and
whimpered softly.
The sound seemed to act like fuel on a fire, and he began to thrust into me
harder just as Adam leaned up on his knees, fixing his mouth to my breast
this time.
It was too much. It was all just too much, and I couldn’t stay standing in
the face of it.
I shattered once again, this time my muscles clenching around Andy as he
plunged all the way into me, rubbing my clit hard as he pulsed.
I continued to shake as I felt the warmth of his cum spilling into me and
down my thighs, his cock barely holding in a flood as he pulled me up to his
chest, pressing his lips to my neck and then my lips.
He only let me go when I’d stopped shaking, and I turned back to look at
Adam, who was still on his knees, looking up at me as if he were enraptured.
I reached down, pulling him to his feet and kissing him, hard, before pulling
him to the bed.
I was wracked with pleasure and my body was shaking with exhaustion,
but I knew I couldn’t let this night pass without having Adam also. In a
strange way, it made sense that the youngest brother, the one who was my
oldest friend, who’d loved me when I was least sure of myself, would be the
last one I had.
I laid down, pulling him on top of me and feeling him shake as he made
sure to support himself in such a way that I wasn’t bearing any of his weight.
I reached down to set him against my entrance, but then I stopped,
hesitating as I started to think about it.
Adam reached between us for my hand, weaving his fingers through mine
and pinning it to the bed above my head before leaning down to kiss me.
“I’m not worried about it, so don’t you worry about it either.”
I sighed, and kissed him as he thrust into me, groaning as I wrapped my
arms and legs around him and held him as close to me as I could. I could tell
that he was shaking just from the effort of holding himself together.
“I never thought—” he said against my ear, pressing his lips to my neck.
“I know,” I said, pushing him away so that I could look at his beautiful
face. “I know.”
He started to move in me, and I felt my heart starting to race again as his
chest pressed against mine. I knew he wasn’t going to last long, and despite
the fatigue in my muscles, I started to feel the heat pooling in my belly once
again.
Seriously? I thought to myself. Three times? I’m never going to top this.
Another hand began to graze down my side, and I gasped at the additional
contact, looking up at where Andy lay across the top of the bed.
 Without warning, Adam pulled my leg up, hooking it over his shoulder,
shortly followed by the other leg. The sudden change in position allowed him
to plow all the way into me, reaching new depths as he seemed to hit my
womb with each stroke of his cock.
Andy leaned in, pulling my face toward his and pressing his lips to mine
in a devouring kiss just as Adam thrust all the way into me. The final climax
rippled over me like rain that was both hot and cold, making every muscle
shake as I clenched around him.
He followed after me, freezing above me as he thrust in me so hard that I
thought he might break me apart. I was still shattering as I felt him lie down
on top of me, still inside me as he held in a flood.
Lying in the afterglow of so much pleasure, I looked from Andy to Adam
as if through a daze, and for a moment I didn’t give a shit about right or
wrong.

“I can’t believe you still keep Rocky Road around,” I said, digging the
spoon into the carton of ice cream as the three of us sat in bed together. I
was dressed in one of Adam’s big t-shirts, my legs still bare, not having
bothered to put underwear back on, and both of the brothers were just in their
boxers.
“I have to,” he said, grinning and reaching over with his spoon. “I
actually have to keep extra around, since that one comes over all the time to
eat it out of my freezer.”
I looked over at Andy, who shrugged shamefacedly. “That’s why I don’t
buy it for myself. Because if I did, I’d eat nothing but that.”
“I’d bet you’d taste pretty damn good then.”
For a second, the insecurity seized me, and I looked over at Adam,
embarrassed. Adam, though, was lying against the pillows as relaxed as could
be as he watched us.
“I think it’s a little late for embarrassment,” he said, leaning forward to
kiss me gently. I smiled against his lips, laying my hand against his cheek.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Both brothers looked at each other, giving identical shrugs. “I want to be
with you, and so does Adam,” Andy said. “We’ve proven that jealousy
doesn’t have to be an issue for us if we don’t let it be. Why don’t we just see
where this goes, and enjoy it?”
I nodded, giving him a tight smile as the truth of my last few escapades
hovered on the tip of my tongue. I wondered whether I should tell them about
what I’d done with Aaron and Austin, about whether they needed to know
that I’d now slept with all four of them… but I thought better of it.
Now wasn’t the time, not now that we were all lying so lovingly together.
Adam reached forward, pulling the ice cream from my hands, holding me
against him. “Andy’s right,” he said, smiling. “Let’s not worry.”
I sighed, reaching my arm out so that it lay across his stomach. I felt the
mattress dipping on my other side and turned around in Adam’s arms,
allowing myself to be spooned by him as I reached forward and placed my
hand on Andy’s shoulder. He covered it with his, bringing it to his mouth for
a kiss before holding it to his chest.
We fell asleep like that—exhausted, sated, and full of love for each other.
26
 AARON

I checked the delivery of the medications against the order number on my

invoice, ensuring that the numbers matched up.
“What are you checking up on now?” Adam asked from the opposite
corner of the barn where he was stacking up feed bags, checking them against
the last invoice that we’d gotten in.
“Medicines,” I responded, unable to keep my thoughts from straying to a
certain blonde veterinarian. We hadn’t talked much since our tryst in the barn
—but any of the words that we did exchange were cool and professional,
with her texting me to check up on Briar and make sure that she was
recovering well. I’d responded as professionally as I could, not saying
anything about the way I wanted to kiss her again… to taste her again. All I
needed was for her to give me the opening.
She didn’t, and that fact made my skin heat up in an entirely new way.
I was annoyed—deeply so—and even a little angry, but I knew that I
couldn’t be angry at her. After all, it wasn’t like it was the easiest situation.
She was friends with all my brothers. Even more than that, her parents were
good friends with my parents, and it made for an all-around complicated
situation that was hell-on-earth to deal with.
Well, not hell on earth. That was next-level exaggeration… or hyperbole,
as Andy would say.
Regardless, our little escapade in the barn had been providing the fodder
for my solo sessions since then, so it was fair to say that she’d been on my
mind if she ever decided to accuse me of not having thought of her since our
last non-professional meeting.
I shook my head, breaking myself out of the reverie, and turned back to
Adam, who’d been whistling in the corner of the barn where he was still
checking on the feed bags.
Strange. Adam was a good whistler—we all were—but he almost never
did it. It was only something he did if he was in a particularly good mood,
and he just hadn’t been over the last few weeks.
Normally I was happy to hear his whistling. Loving my little brother as
much as I did, I was always happy when he was, but today, listening to him
whistle just made my skin itch.
“How’re we looking on feed over there, Adam?” I asked, thankfully
causing a break in the high, piercing tune. “Are we going to be okay with the
delivery, or will we need to put in another order?”
He paused, looking down at the papers in his own hands one more time
before looking back at me. That face was a far cry from the one we’d seen at
Sunday dinner a few weeks before, when our mother had commented on at
least one of us bringing home someone for us to meet. “We should be good,
but I still need to check on the feed in the far barn before I can be sure.”
“I think Austin’s checking on the far barn, so he’ll be able to confirm on
that when he comes in,” I said, looking down at my own clipboard. “The
storm is supposed to hit this weekend, so if we need to order anything else,
we should get it in in ASAP. Do you need to go grab anything from home?”
He blinked at me before closing his eyes tightly, and I could practically
hear the thoughts going through his mind. Oh, shit.
“You forgot your overnight stuff, didn’t you?”
It was our usual modus operandi. Whenever a major storm warning went
into effect, we placed emergency orders of everything that we needed to keep
the horses fed and healthy until the storm had passed, in addition to shopping
for a bunch of food that wouldn’t go bad in case we lost power.
We also all brought our essentials back to our parents’ house and
prepared to stay over until the storm had passed. So that we would all be
together, and we wouldn’t lose track of each other in case a cell phone tower
was knocked out the way it had been a few years before.
Clearly, Adam had been distracted enough to forget our usual routine.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’ve got a couple days. If you hurry, you can get
home, grab your stuff, and get your share of the groceries before the stores
close tonight, and then you can come back in the morning.”
He nodded, giving me a smile. “Is there anything else that we’re going to
need to take inventory of?”
 I shrugged. “Just make sure that everything in here is organized the way it
needs to be, okay? You know the drill.”
He rolled his eyes at me. I knew that he hated my condescending tone,
but he took it on the chin. The two of us kept going over the barn, ensuring
that everything was set up the way it needed to be before the storm rolled in.
Before long, he was whistling again, and it took all my self-control not to
pick up one of the blankets that sat draped over the beams and chuck it at his
head.
He’d thank me more for that than for throwing my clipboard at him.
The barn door slid open then, and I shut my eyes in relief as I heard
Andy’s voice call out to the two of us, “Hello, bookends!”
It had been his nickname for us since he’d been old enough to learn what
bookends were, since I was the oldest and Adam was the youngest. It was
one of those annoying yet endearing Andy quirks. Apparently, everything
seemed to be getting on my nerves today because that aggravated me just as
much as the whistling did.
“Hey, dude,” Adam replied. “What’s good?”
“You know,” he said, walking in with a grin on his face. Seriously, what
the fuck kind of happy chemical had been dumped in the water today, and
why had it missed me?
I looked at Adam, and an identical grin was spread across his face too.
Whatever. I had too much on my plate to deal with strangely happy
younger brothers. And besides, it was way better than the alternative.
“It’s a good thing you’re in here,” I said to Andy. “Do you think that you
can look at the wall between Misty and Liberty’s stalls? The post seems to be
listing to the side a little bit.”
“Sure,” he said, grabbing his toolbox and heading straight over to the
wall. “After that, do you want me to make sure the power lines are forwarded
to the backup generator?”
I nodded. “You got it.”
He immediately got down to work, propping up the wall and beginning to
examine the way that the boards needed to be supported. As he worked, he
began to hum.
“Okay,” I said, walking between the two of them and looking at them as
if my head was mounted on a swivel. “Seriously, what the hell is going on
with the two of you today? Did someone slip some happy pills into your
coffee or something?”
 They looked at each other, surprised, before looking back at me. The two
of them looked so alike it was eerie, with those looks of combined surprise,
happiness, and the slightest touch of embarrassment.
“It’s nothing,” Andy said, the words coming out quickly.
“Yeah, it’s nothing,” Adam repeated, nodding hastily.
“Okay,” I said, looking between them as I raised my eyebrows. “Do you
guys wanna try that again? Without the lie this time?”
They looked at each other again, biting down on their lips.
“Come on, doofuses,” I said. “Barring a dead body, whatever it is
couldn’t possibly be that bad.” I paused. “It’s not a dead body, is it? You
wouldn’t look that happy about that, would you?”
“Oh God, Aaron,” Adam said, looking nauseated. “You’re a sick
asshole.”
“Okay, so we know it’s not that,” I said. “That’s a start.”
They looked at each other again and nodded at each other in tandem
before turning back to me.
“We’re kind of,” they started out by saying at the same time before
laughing awkwardly, and Adam cleared his throat. “We’re kind of seeing
someone.”
I blinked. “That’s it? You guys are in new relationships? Why are you
acting so cagey about it?”
Andy swallowed audibly. “No, Aaron. We’re seeing someone. As in, one
woman.”
At that, I felt like all the muscles in my face must’ve lost their abilities to
move. “Wait a minute. Like, you guys are seeing the same woman?”
They nodded, and I felt a little bit like all the air had been knocked out of
me, but I was doing my best not to let my shock show. As much as I might
not understand it, my little brothers were happy, and I wanted to be happy for
them.
“Yeah, it’s the same woman,” Adam said. “We’ve—” He cleared his
throat. “We’ve been trying something new, and it’s been working really
well.”
“How long has this been going on?” I asked.
“About… a week and a half? Two weeks?” Adam looked at Andy for
confirmation, and Andy nodded. “It’s pretty new, but I think we’re all happy.
We’ve been communicating openly, and there hasn’t been any jealousy so
far.”
 I still felt a little bit like my mind had been blown open with a stick of
dynamite, but the shock had dissipated, and I felt a little bit like I was
beginning to understand it more. I’d heard about polyamory—I’d even met a
few people in polyamorous relationships who made it work and were
incredibly happy—but I’d never imagined it would be the lifestyle for my
brother, much less two of my brothers.
Much less two of my brothers in the same polyamorous triad.
Jesus. Maybe I was judging a little. I would be damned, though, if I’d let
my brothers see that.
I shook my head, slowly, allowing the idea to settle in my mind that this
was their relationship. This was where they were happiest, and I should
accept it.
“Well,” I said, “I hope this girl is really pretty.”
“She is, but why do you say that?” Andy raised an eyebrow.
“Because she must not be that smart, given what she’s getting herself into
with the two of you,” I said, my voice dry.
The two of them rolled their eyes before giving sarcastic laughs. “She’s
gorgeous, and believe me, Lucy’s plenty smart,” Adam said, crossing his
arms as he leaned back against the beam that supported the barn roof.
The words seemed to come to me through a mile of water, and I felt like
my skin had gone numb. My hand felt like it had lost all feeling, and I had
hold my clipboard close to my chest to keep it from falling to the ground.
Lucy? The woman that both of my younger brothers were dating, were
sleeping with, was Lucy?
27
 AUSTIN

I tthehadhorses
taken me a little longer than I’d been expecting to do my checks on
in the far barns, making sure to spend a little bit of extra time
with Briar once I’d done so. With the storm coming in, I didn’t want to take
any chances with potentially leaving her stranded out there while she was still
injured.
She was healing beautifully, though, and had come a long way from
where she’d been the day after she’d been savaged by that mountain lion. She
was back to the sharp personality that she had before the attack, and I’d been
thrilled when she’d come over to me and stuck her nose into my hand to get
the treat that I’d had there for her.
I counted all the supplies that we had in the barn quickly, knowing as
soon as I saw the feed pile that we’d need to bring more bags out here from
the recent delivery and fill all of the troughs ahead of the storm. Depending
on how hard it hit, we might not be able to get out here for a few days.
As I walked up to the barn door, I focused only on the sky and trying to
find any hints of the storm rolling in. There was still a bit of snow sticking to
the ground from the last storm, but I knew that there would be a whole hell of
a lot more in the next few hours.
Given my concentration on the sky, I wasn’t paying attention to what was
going on in the barn until I got right up to the door and heard the raised
voices of all three of my brothers on the other side. I couldn’t hear the exact
words that they were yelling, but it was enough that I could hear them
fighting.
I was shocked. We weren’t a family that fought. We hadn’t had a fight
like this since we’d been kids, and Aaron had saved up for a Nintendo 64 out
of his allowance.
The rest of us, being jealous little shits, hadn’t reacted well, and had acted
like exactly what we were.
I shoved the door open and ran in, looking around to take in Aaron where
he was standing at the far side of the barn, his face beet-red. That in and of
itself should’ve given me a clue that whatever was going on was next-level;
Aaron was the most even-keeled out of all of us, so to see him looking as
furious as that made all of my muscles lock up. I looked over at where Andy
was facing him with, distressingly, a wrench in his hand, and looking
somewhere between screaming and passing out due to sheer fury. My head
whipped around to find Adam, who had his hands clenched into a fist and
looked a bit like he was pulling his arm back to throw a punch.
“Jesus,” I said, striding in and placing myself squarely in between Aaron
and Andy. “I have no clue what the hell is happening, but all of you need to
calm the fuck down.”
None of them looked less angry, but it seemed as though the tension had
been cut by my entrance, like a pair of sheers through some hay.
I looked around at all of my brothers and breathed in deeply. “I have no
idea what got all of your panties so wadded up that it made you act like this,
but in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got a storm to finish prepping for. We
need to focus.”
I looked at Aaron, who normally steered us so fiercely that we knew
exactly who ran this ship with a focus that could make the Hubble telescope
jealous. His breathing had lengthened and deepened, despite the fury that was
still written across his face. I raised an eyebrow at him, and his expression
barely changed except for the slight dipping of his cheek, where he was
biting down on his cheek with a ferocity that made me think he was about to
bite off a piece of his face.
“It’s kinda hard to focus on prepping for a storm when you realize that
you and your brothers are all sleeping with the same woman.”
I stopped, and my mouth dropped open as the full impact of his words hit
me full force. That had not been what I’d been expecting, to say the least. I
might’ve expected one of the younger brothers to be upset because of being
expected to do more… probably Andy, who wanted more time to write. But
the fact that all of my brothers had hooked up with the same girl….
Whoa. Just whoa.
“No.”
 “Yep.” I turned to look at Adam, who’d emphasized the ‘p’ sound in his
response. His face also hadn’t gained any color.
“Seriously?” I looked from one of them to the rest, waiting for them to
tell me that they were messing with me. “You’re not pulling a prank on me?
The three of you are really all plowing the same broad?”
“She’s not a broad,” Andy snapped, and I turned a wary glance to his
hand, which still held the wrench. I looked up at his face, staring into his eyes
steadily until he calmed down. “But… yeah. Apparently.”
I looked at the rest of them, still in shock over the news. It was just too
much for me though, and I couldn’t help the crack that formed in my
seriousness.
I started to laugh. The laughter began to burble out of my belly, emerging
as a loud cackle that flooded out of me. Once it began, the floodgates were
opened, and I just couldn’t stop.
“It’s not funny, man,” Aaron said through gritted teeth. His hands seemed
to tighten on the clipboard he was holding.
“No, it’s not,” I said, wiping my eyes. “But it kind of is, you know?”
“No,” Andy replied flatly, and I shrugged.
“Fine, whatever,” I said. “You can’t see it now, and that’s fine. Who is
this girl, anyway?”
“Lucy,” all three of them said, sounding equally out of sorts, and I
immediately felt the blood drain from my face, ears, neck….
Pretty much all my upper extremities had gone numb, and my laughter
stopped abruptly as the word settled.
Lucy? Lucy?
Of all the women in Colorado, the single woman that all of my brothers
happened to be sleeping with was the single woman that I hadn’t been able to
get out of my mind since she’d first come back to town and sunk into my
head with her sass and beauty.
We hadn’t spoken much since the culmination of our night in my truck,
but I hadn’t found it easy to get her out of my mind. She always seemed to be
there. Sometimes, I even thought I smelled her scent in the front seat of the
truck.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Wait, back up.” I couldn’t come up with
anything to say, though, other than, “What?”
“All three of us are sleeping with Lucy,” Aaron said stiffly, as if the
words caused him physical pain coming out. It felt that way as the words
came at me. “Or, at least, all three of us have slept with her. At least once.”
Another laugh escaped from me, this one choked and filled with disbelief.
“Make that all four of us.”
All of them had vastly different reactions to my words. Aaron broke the
clipboard completely, Andy dropped the tool to the floor, its impact muffled
by the hay and packed earth of the ground, and Adam froze completely. I
nodded, unable to help the sarcastic little shrug of my shoulder as they all
stared at me.
“Say that again,” Adam said, his voice going as dead as the rest of him.
“All four of us,” I spoke with measured words, “have slept with Lucy.”
I didn’t think I’d felt a heavier silence in a cemetery.
“So,” Andy said, breaking the seal on the quiet, “do you still think it’s
funny, Austin?”
“Shut the fuck up, Andrew,” I said, hurling the words in his direction.
“Y’all at least have the benefit of having a head start on this information.”
“First of all, don’t talk to him like that,” Aaron said, his voice
dangerously calm. “Secondly, that head start was fifteen minutes, so don’t
start in with that whole ‘woe is me’ thing because I found out before you that
our baby brothers have some polyamorous threesome with the girl I slept
with.”
I turned to face Adam and Andy, my eyes feeling as wide as horseshoes.
“What. The. Fuck. Guys.”
You could practically hear the period between each word.
“Don’t judge what you don’t understand,” Andy snapped.
“Of course, you would defend any way to get your needs met,” I said, my
voice taking on an acid tone. “Still holding onto the past, aren’t we, Andy?”
“You’re one to talk.” Andy hurled the words back at me.
I ignored the nausea rising in me at the way that my brothers and I were
speaking to each other, but I couldn’t stop. It was like I couldn’t hold the
words back.
Strong hands pulled me around, and suddenly, I was facing Aaron, who
was looking at me with a face like thunder. “Stop it, Austin.”
“And you of all people are going to lecture me on how I’m going to talk
to them, after I just heard you screaming your head off from out there?” I
said, another dry laugh coming out like a cough.
“Stop it.”
The firm voice came from Adam, of all people. He stepped forward, this
time putting himself in the middle of the group.
“Stop it. All of you.” He looked around at us, his face stony. “None of us
knew. Andy and I found out how we each felt by accident, and things
happened from there. There was no reason for us to tell each other until it
came up naturally. Lucy was the only one who knew what she was doing
with all of us.”
He looked into each of our faces, a hint of more fiery anger piercing the
icy facade that had dropped over him.
“There’s no reason for us to be pissed at each other. We should be pissed
at Lucy.”
28
 LUCY

M yinformation
phone buzzed as I sat at my desk
into the clinic computer.
the next day, entering chart

I didn’t hate paperwork as much as most vets. There were some days
when I found it a little bit soothing. But on days like today, when my charts
had backed up to an alarming degree because I’d been on so many house
calls over the last week that I’d barely had a second to sit at my desk in my
own office, the thought of my to-do list got me down.
Knowing how I felt about the mountain of work I had ahead of me, I
decided not to check my text until I’d finished the chart I was currently
working on.
When I finally finished the chart and uploaded it to the family drive, I
turned my phone over and saw that the text banner on the front had Andy’s
name on it. I smiled at the sight of his name, biting down on my lip slightly
as I remembered everything that we’d done during that first night together.
Since then, our texts to each other had been filled with jokes and loving
comments. The two of us had a thread with Adam where we giggled and
laughed like kids, but I still maintained my private conversations with each
one of them. They knew, and when we’d woken up after our first night
together, we’d all eaten breakfast and chatted about some ground rules,
stating that good communication was a must and that we had to be able to tell
each other the truth about what we were thinking and feeling.
After, I felt wracked with guilt over not having told them about their
older brothers, but I really had no clue how I was going to open up that can of
worms right now. I knew how very ironic it was that we were making
honesty a cornerstone of our relationship, and I couldn’t be honest about what
I’d done.
I pressed my thumb to Andy’s text, feeling my heart flutter just a little
and opened the chat.
Hey, there. Watcha up to tonight?
I smiled, thinking about how I might answer. As much fun as that first
night with him and Adam had been, I was excited to have some time with
them one on one, where I could focus all of my attention on each of them
individually.
Well, originally, I was just going to binge Netflix and eat popcorn in bed,
unless you have a better plan. ;)
There was a decent pause in his text, and I could tell that Andy was
weighing his words carefully. Andy, who always knew what to say, was
having trouble figuring out what to say to me. I felt my face fall as I stared at
the screen, waiting for him to say whatever it was that he wanted to tell me.
Could you come by my place? Say around 7?
I felt my belly flop around a little bit as I searched for the words to craft
my own response.
Sure. I’m excited to see you…
Me too.
The words were a bit cooler than I was used to, but I saw no reason to
overthink it. After all, there were some crazy storm warnings coming up, and
all our clients were canceling and rescheduling their appointments so that
they could buckle down for the weather. I figured the same thing was
happening with them, and he didn’t have a ton of time to reflect on the texts
he was sending.
Looking back at my computer, I drummed my fingers on my desk,
thinking hard about the circumstances with the guys that I’d found myself in.
No, that wasn’t quite right. I’d put myself in this situation, and I now had
to figure out the best way to get myself out of it. It was up to me to figure this
out, one way or another.
Tonight would have to be the time when it all came out. I didn’t know
how I would say the words to him, how I would come clean about my history
with all of his brothers, or whether he would understand about what I’d done.
I shook my head to myself. No. No, that wasn’t my business. I had
absolutely no control over how he felt toward me after I came clean, and I
would just have to weather it.
I was so lost in thought that I barely heard when someone said my name
over my shoulder. I blinked, jumping a little in my seat as I swiveled around
to see Doc Boyd standing behind me, a look of concern on his weathered
face.
“You okay?” he asked, his voice soft with concern. “You seemed pretty
far away.”
“Yeah, I’m good,” I said, reaching up and rubbing my temple. “Just
puzzling out a personal problem.”
“Oh,” he said, sounding a little lost for how to respond. I smiled up at
him, shrugging a shoulder. “I’m okay, Doc. Don’t worry about me.”
“You know that you can always talk to me if you need to, right, Lucy?
I’ve been around the block a few times; I know a thing or two about personal
problems.”
I laughed, knowing that, as much as I valued Doc’s advice, this would
likely be the one thing that I would never discuss with him, under any
circumstances.
“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate that.” I stood up, stretching my arms over my
head. “Was there something I could help with?”
He nodded. “The Chamberlains brought in their Border Collie. She hasn’t
been eating as much lately, and she’s been limping a lot.”
I sighed, knowing what I’d probably see when I walked out there. Bella,
the Chamberlains’ geriatric Collie, had been around since I was a teenager,
and it was frankly amazing that I hadn’t seen her until now.
“I’m guessing you want me to take her?”
“Yes, if you can.”
I got up from my chair, stretching. “Okay.”

I drove to Andy’s place after work, having showered and changed after
leaving the clinic. Bella hadn’t been as bad as I’d expected, other than
showing some signs of arthritis. She was okay for the moment, though, and I
gave Mrs. Chamberlain some anti-inflammatory meds for her to take when
she had her food.
That and the single other walk-in for the day had been decent distractions
from what I’d known was coming that night, but the stress kept wracking me
over what I knew was going to have to happen next.
 My mind had buzzed constantly with different potential ways to address
this with the guys after I’d gone home and taken my shower, before sitting on
my bed wrapped in my towel and hair wrap and texting Molly for some
insight.
Coming clean to Andy tonight.
It took less than a minute for Molly’s response to come through.
OMG. About Austin and Aaron???
Yeppp. No freaking clue how he’s gonna take it.
She was quiet for a few minutes, and I waited for her trusted assessment
of the situation to come through.
Honey, I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I can promise that
whatever it is, I’ll be here. I’m on hand for whatever comes, okay? If you
want to get together later and drink, we can do that. If you want to call me to
gloat about sexy times, that’s okay.
I laughed at her words.
You’re a weirdo, and I love you for it.
I know. Love you too.
I set my phone to the side and got up from the bed to get dressed. For a
second, I thought about playing up my looks as much as I could, trying to
make myself sexier than usual… but as I stood at my closet, I thought better
of it. If I showed up dressed to the nines when I was practically genetically
required to wear jeans and a plaid, he would definitely know that I was trying
to turn the situation to my favor.
I wanted him to be willing to forgive me, and I wanted him to want to
keep me around, but not enough to manipulate him.
My stomach was in knots as I walked out to my truck and unlocked the
door, driving over to Andy’s practically on autopilot. I was still consumed
with thoughts of what I was going to say to him, how I would be able to
explain this, when I pulled up to his address and felt a jolt at the sight of the
cars on the street in front of me.
All four of the brothers’ cars were parked on the street in front of Andy’s
place, making my stomach twist even more.
Fuck. Fuck. So they already knew what was going on. They’d talked
amongst themselves and had found out that I’d been screwing them all
behind each other’s backs, both literally and figuratively. Well, in for a
penny, in for a pound, I thought to myself grimly. I might as well come clean
to all of them at once and face the consequences of my actions.
 I took a second after I’d parked to take a few deep breaths, calming
myself down and attempting to slow down my heart, which was threatening
to beat its way out of my chest. Whatever happened, I was going to be fine. I
knew I would be fine. We all would be.
I had Molly, and even though I couldn’t control how the men would react
to me, I would find my way forward.
Grounding myself, I climbed out of the driver’s seat and walked up the
path to Andy’s front door, feeling my hands shaking a little bit as I
approached. Knocking cautiously, I waited for a response, thinking of what I
would say when he opened the door.
When the door was opened, I had a smile on my face to greet him, but it
grew wooden as I saw his expression. It was much sterner than usual as he
stared at me impassively, not saying anything to me as I stood outside on the
porch. Looking behind him, I saw the rest of the Kent siblings standing
inside, each of them with identical expressions of upset and disappointment
on their faces.
I swallowed, the sound of it deafening in my own ears, and licked my
lips, which felt so dry it was almost impossible for me to talk. “Can I come
in?”
“Might as well,” he said, standing aside and letting me into the front room
before shutting the door.
I stood in the silence, looking around at all of them, and said in a hoarse
voice that didn’t sound like mine, “Actually, I’m glad you’re all here.”
Austin snorted, his face wearing the dry, derisive expression I was used
to. “That’s interesting, considering what we need to discuss with you.”
“Agreed,” Adam put in, raising an eyebrow. “We need to talk about your
definition of trust and honesty.”
The rest of them started to talk, their words all overlapping each other,
and all the talking rapidly became overwhelming to me.
I held up my hands in surrender and was shocked at the immediate silence
that fell over all of them. The tension didn’t dissipate, but at least I could hear
myself think now.
“Please. Let me go first,” I said, willing as much strength into my voice
as possible.
29
 AARON

A big misunderstanding among most people was that just because I didn’t
say much, it meant I wasn’t feeling much of anything. People typically
looked at me and thought that my lack of reaction meant that I just didn’t
care, when if they would just ask, they’d learn that the opposite was, in fact,
true. I was just never that person who would immediately show what I was
thinking. The situation with my little brothers was the single notable
exception.
Right now, though….
Right now, I wished I could be that person who yelled and screamed,
giving way to every single thing that I felt.
Half of me wanted to take the glass of water that I was currently holding
in my hand and throw it across the room, soaking the wall with it and letting
the shattered glass fly everywhere, though I knew that wasn’t very likely to
make me feel better.
I stood still with my back against the wall, my knee bent, and my foot
placed against the wall as I turned the glass over in my hand again and again,
doing my best to keep my eyes on the floor. I didn’t know what I would do if
I looked Lucy in the eye.
“So,” she started out by saying, looking around at each of us in turn, “I’m
guessing you all know what’s gone on with me and each of you.”
So much for me keeping my eyes on the floor. My eyes snapped up to her
at her statement, surprised at how she’d stated it so baldly. I had to admit that
I found her willingness to own exactly what she’d done respectable.
“I know I owe each of you an apology and an explanation,” she said,
taking a deep breath and exhaling loudly through her mouth.
 We all just stared at her, waiting for her to go on.
“Um, can I get a glass of water first, please?”
Andy nodded tersely and stepped into the kitchen.
“To be honest, I never expected one of you, much less all four of you. I
had no idea what would happen when I moved back here, but I was so happy
when I saw the four of you at Spurs, and to be completely honest, I was
blown away by how attracted I was to all four of you for completely different
reasons. I couldn’t make sense of how I was feeling at the time, which was
why I just decided to take it by the day.”
She accepted the glass that Andy gave her before going over to sit next to
Adam, and she looked at them steadily. I wouldn’t have known how nervous
she was if I hadn’t seen how much her hands were shaking.
“Adam, Andy,” she said, maintaining her steady breathing, “I’m so sorry
I didn’t tell you about what happened with Aaron and Austin. I wasn’t
expecting anything that happened that night, and I’d never been as happy as I
was after we talked. I didn’t want to do anything that would ruin it. But part
of that was because I had no idea where either Aaron or Austin stood, or
where I stood with them.”
The anger, residual shock, and general feeling of betrayal that I’d felt
when I’d first found out what my brothers had told me was beginning to fade,
and I found myself newly mesmerized by her face, the way that I had been
when I first saw her that night at Spurs. The feeling that was beginning to
replace that was starting to remind me of the way I’d felt toward her after
we’d slept together that night, and I’d gone to sleep in the barn feeling that
much more complete.
I tried to shut down the feeling and hold onto the rage that I’d been
feeling for the last day, but it was starting to slip through my fingers.
“Aaron,” she said, and I started a little as I looked into those eyes that
reminded me of our lush, green fields on an early summer day, “after we—
um….”
“Fucked,” I said, my voice not nearly as stern as I’d expected it to be.
“Yeah, that,” she said. “After we slept together, I had no idea what you
were feeling for me, much less what I was feeling for you. We didn’t talk at
all after, and I had no idea how to broach it with you.”
I was quiet as I processed what she said. It annoyed me, but she did have
a point. I couldn’t blame her for not reaching out to me when I hadn’t done
anything to bridge that gap myself.
 “The same goes for you, Austin,” she said, looking Austin directly in the
eye as she addressed him, “and believe me, you were the most unexpected
out of all four of you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her, and I had to bite down on my lip, hard, to
keep my laughter in. Adam gave a small snort that he turned into a really
unconvincing cough.
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. You can’t pretend that what happened
could’ve been predicted.”
“I don’t know,” he said, and I could tell that he was fighting a smile.
“Stranger things have happened.”
A small, throaty laugh escaped from her, and I knew that she was barely
holding onto her tears. “Since neither of you said anything after the fact about
feelings, I figured I would be better off just letting it go. I assumed that
neither of you guys wanted anything serious, so I just….” She shrugged and
took another long sip of her water to fill the silence.
None of us spoke for a while as we each tried to process what she’d told
us. I looked at each of my brothers in turn, seeing my own feelings mirrored
on their faces.
“You’re right,” I said, my voice soft, but the room was silent enough that
it got everyone’s attention like a firework going off inside. Everyone turned
to look at me, and I couldn’t tell whether or not that was cautious hope I saw
in Lucy’s eyes. “I didn’t want anything serious, not at first.” I didn’t
approach her, even though I itched too. “But then again, I had no idea what I
wanted at all.” I swallowed hard, but I didn’t shut down the words that
seemed desperate to come out of me. “I know now, though, that what I want
is you, despite whatever else has happened.”
She bit down hard on her lip, looking at me straight on as she blinked
rapidly, and I knew that she was fighting back tears as she heard my words
and took them in.
“Me too,” Austin agreed, pulling all our attention to where he stood in the
back of the living room. “I’ve had deeper feelings for you than I’d like to
admit from the jump. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been burned before—”
He paused, and we all gave the statement space as we remembered
everything that his shitty ex-wife had put him through. It was no wonder he
had trouble letting people in after everything that had happened.
“—but that’s neither here nor there. Our new dynamic, the way that
we’ve been playing off each other since you’ve come home. I haven’t been
able to get you out of my head. It just got worse—or better, I guess—after the
night that we slept together. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before now: I feel like
we could’ve avoided a lot of this if I’d just opened up to you, and I feel like a
dumbass.”
She sighed heavily, her entire body seeming to let go of the tension that
she’d been carrying since she walked in as she stepped forward and set her
glass on the table. As for the rest of us… it wasn’t really as though we let go
of the tension, but we were definitely a little more at ease than we had been
before we’d all begun to talk to each other. It was a little bit like the tension
in the room had changed.
Looking around at all of us, she shrugged her shoulders. “So… where
should we go from here?” she said. “I have feelings for every one of you.
Strong feelings.” She swallowed hard. “Every one of you affects me
differently.”
I looked around at my brothers, blinking a few times. I could see the
longing in their faces as they looked at her, and I knew that I felt it too. I
didn’t want to force a single one of them to give her up, not when they were
looking at her like that.
I also knew just how hard it would be for me to surrender her, as much as
I loved all of them and wanted them to be happy.
Immediately, and with all the clarity of a lightning strike, the final piece
fell into place, clarifying exactly why Adam and Andy had made the decision
that they had.
I understood all of it completely.
I cleared my throat, getting the attention of everyone in the room, which
felt like it had landed on me with physical weight.
“You know,” I said, each word coming out of me in a slow, measured
way, “I’m thinking that maybe… maybe our little brothers were right.”
Her eyes went wide as she stared at me, her mouth opening just a little at
my words.
“What if you didn’t have to choose?” I asked, looking around at each of
my brothers in turn once more. All of them had started a little bit in response
to my question, but now they were settling into the possibility behind my
question, and they all nodded in turn.
My heart began to speed up at the possibility of getting exactly what I
wanted in this very unexpected way; of coming away from this with the
woman who’d turned my world upside down, and with each of my brothers
getting what they wanted too.
Selfishly, I felt wonder at the way that everything seemed to have fallen
into place for me, and I took a step toward her.
30
 LUCY

I wasLike,
not prepared.
not even a little bit for the words, the looks in their eyes, or the
influx of emotions that I felt as Aaron spoke.
I’d been girding my loins for them to start shaming me; for them to call
me a whore, to yell at me in disgust and for every single one of them to turn
away from me when they realized that they wanted nothing more to do with
me.
I couldn’t have predicted—not in a million years—that they would give
me another chance, or that they would look at me with anything other than
contempt. I’d been expecting at least a few more glares than the ones I’d
already gotten.
Not this. Not this acceptance. Not this love.
I’d prepared myself to have every hateful statement you could imagine
hurled my way, but I hadn’t prepared myself for this. It got into the crevices
of my armor and sank into where I was vulnerable. The stinging behind my
eyes was the first clue that I wouldn’t be lasting much longer, and then—
seemingly without warning to the guys—I burst out crying.
I was so relieved that all the wind seemed to be knocked out of me in one
blow, and I heaved a sigh as I brought my hands up to cover my face, crying
into them.
“Lucy.”
The voice was Aaron’s, as were the big hands on my upper arms. I
collapsed bonelessly against him, his strong arms going around me
automatically as he held me against his chest. I could feel the steady beat of
his heart against me as I cried.
 “Luce, it’s okay,” Adam said as he came forward, grabbing onto my hand
and pulling it to his mouth so he could press a kiss to my palm. “You’re
okay.”
“What’s wrong?” Austin asked. “I thought this was a good thing.”
The only one missing was Andy, but it wasn’t missing for long as he
stepped into my line of sight and set his hand on my back.
I gave a watery laugh in response, and my sobs hiccupped into steady
tears. They continued streaming down my face as I looked around into all of
these faces that I loved so dearly.
“It is a good thing,” I said, smiling shakily. “I just… wasn’t expecting it.”
“So…” Andy said, tilting his head to the side, “these are good tears?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling wider as I brought my hand up to wipe my face. “I
didn’t think that I’d hear this from you guys, and there’s so much that I’m
feeling for all four of you.”
Adam reached out, pulling me toward him and pressing his lips to mine.
The kiss was softer than any of the others we’d shared until he opened my
mouth with his as if he wanted to swallow the last remnants of my tears. I
reached up, pressing my hand to his cheek and running my thumb along his
cheekbone.
The kiss soothed me, and when I pulled away from him, I felt much
better. The face I saw when I pulled away was the face that I’d always loved
as my best friend, and even though it felt like a wrench to pull my gaze from
him, I found three other faces that felt just as close to me.
Heat rushed through me at the sight at every one of their faces. I got up
on my knees and reached my hand out toward Austin, who stood in front of
me. He pulled me forward so that I could meet his kiss.
I brought my hand up, running my fingers through his thick curls and
relishing the silky feeling of his hair as I carded my fingers through it. I
hugged him tightly to me, lining my body up with his and pressing myself
into him as I opened my mouth to him. I drew my hand down to the collar of
his shirt and twisted my fingers into it.
I broke off the kiss, panting as I pulled away from him, but he just moved
his lips down to my neck, sucking the skin right over my pulse point as I
gasped, closing my eyes and giving over to the way the feelings spread over
my body.
Andy turned me so that I could kiss him as Austin moved his hands up to
cup my ass, unbuttoning my jeans as he went and tugging my shirt out from
where I’d tucked it in, sneaking his hands up under my shirt and skating his
fingertips over my belly.
As he touched me, I continued to kiss Andy, moving my own hands down
to where his cock was creating an impressive bulge in his pants and cupping
him there, feeling his groan reverberate down his body as I caressed him.
Meanwhile, my pants had been pulled down, and Austin had wasted no
time in parting my legs with an almost ferocious need, not stopping as he
dropped to his knees, bent forward and began to lick every inch of my
throbbing pussy.
I gasped at the feeling of his tongue on me, at the knowledge that he was
so hungry for me that he either had no willpower or inclination for patience.
My legs began to shake as I stood there, with Austin devouring me, and
my breathing growing shallower and shallower. I opened my eyes briefly,
looking off to the side to see that Aaron and Adam were both staring at me,
their gaze pinned on me as the looks on their faces grew hungrier.
At the same time, a pair of hands came around to my front, quickly
moving over the buttons on my shirt and pulling it down so that my shoulders
were bare and ready for attention. Andy had been the one to take off my
plaid, and he set about pulling my tank top above my head, throwing it to the
side and wrapping his arms around me so that he could cup one breast in each
hand, kneading them expertly between his artistic fingers.
I was a mess of feeling, with every nerve ending in my body having been
activated by their attentions.
Speaking of fingers, Austin had reached his up between my legs, running
the tip of his index finger teasingly along my drenched slit before thrusting it
in, all at once, and curving it up to press it hard against my most sensitive
point.
Everything grew to be too much for me. Too much sensation. Too much
stimulation. And as Austin’s talented fingers brushed up against the softest,
most sensitive part of me, I felt a cracking in the wave of tension as it crested
over me, breaking and shattering over my head in a million pieces. I
would’ve fallen over, collapsing on top of his head, if a pair of arms hadn’t
been there at that moment, waiting to catch me as my legs lost all strength
and the muscles in them began to shake uncontrollably.
Austin guided me to the floor, reaching down to take my hands in his and
pinning them over my head as he brought his mouth up to mine. I tasted
myself on his lips, moaning in desire as he thrust into me.
 Austin and I made love the way that we shared every other interaction,
with bites, and the occasional scratch, and pure need for dominance. As he
pushed into me, I felt the eyes of all the others on us, knowing that they only
felt gratification by what I was sharing with Austin in that moment.
He lifted my leg, curling it up over his hip so he could thrust into me at a
deeper angle, and the residual aftershocks of my first orgasm began to
lengthen as I felt another approaching with every stroke of his cock inside of
me.
Reaching down, I cupped my hands around his ass, pulling him up so his
hips were flush with mine and holding him there, so he was pressing so
deeply into me that I didn’t know how we’d ever separate.
“Luce,” he groaned, and I knew what was about to happen. I wrapped my
legs around his waist, locking him into place so that he was fitted perfectly
into me.
He spasmed, closing his eyes as the climax broke over him. Watching
him dissolve had a ridiculously arousing effect on me as well, and I came
again with him still inside of me, feeling his seed spilling out of me and down
my thighs.
We lay there for a second, him pressing a kiss to my neck before getting
up and pulling me up to stand on shaky legs.
Standing there, ready to catch me, was Andy. He wrapped his arms
around me, bending his head to mine and capturing my mouth in a kiss as he
pulled me forward to press against him. He’d shed his jeans, and his cock,
now only covered by the soft fabric of his boxers, was pressing into my belly.
At the first indication of his arousal, I felt my own grow once more,
despite how thoroughly I’d just been fucked, so I reached my fingers up to
wrap around the back of his neck.
He reached down, picking me up with an ease that made me laugh against
his mouth, and carried me over to the couch, where he laid me down with a
sweet reverence that made my heart dissolve a little bit more.
When he made to get down next to me, though, I got up, making him sit
up on the couch, and straddled him, running my hands down his chest as he
ran his up my back, under my hair. I wanted access to that beautiful heart that
I’d started learning so well, and that I was so deeply grateful for, and I
reached down to the hem of his long-sleeved shirt, which was a deep blue
cotton that perfectly matched his eyes and tugged it over his head.
“I can’t wait, Lucy.”
 “Then don’t,” I said, reaching down and holding myself up as he pulled
his boxers off deftly, freeing himself from the fabric enclosure. I looked
down between us, feeling a drying in my throat as his cock sprang free,
poised right at my entrance and skimming right over me as if begging.
I couldn’t stand to tease him anymore, much less myself, and I sank down
onto him, lying fully against him as I felt him filling me up completely.
“Oh, fuck,” he said into my ear, and I set my hands against the couch
over his shoulders, attempting to stifle the shaking in my hands as I began to
move up and down on top of him.
He flipped me over, taking me by surprise and shaking a small sound out
of me as he began to thrust deeper into me, at a more punishing rhythm.
“Give me everything,” I said, my voice coming out in a soft, breathy
sound I barely recognized, and I ran my toes over the bulge of his calf to spur
him along.
He did give me everything, and I received all of it, groaning loudly as I
felt my internal muscles tensing around him, as if against my will.
He groaned before collapsing on top of me, his hand in my hair as he
trailed a few lazy kisses down my breasts. He sighed as he got up, and I
scooted back, wincing a little bit as he withdrew from me, practically
releasing a flood.
I looked at him, and his eyes were wide as he stared at me, breathing
heavily. I leaned over to kiss him, hard, before I stood up and teetered on
shaky, newborn Bambi feet to where Aaron and Adam were both standing,
watching.
“Take me to bed,” I said, amazed at what I was saying. I could barely
believe the words were coming out of my mouth, given how dead I felt
already.
“Lucy—” Adam said, sounding skeptical, “we don’t all have to tonight.”
“I want to,” I said. “Now that I can have you all, don’t make me wait.”
He grinned at me, reaching out and tugging me toward him before kissing
me deeply, intimately. It was a kiss that contained all of our shared history,
and when he let me go, he led me by the hand to Andy’s bedroom. We eyed
the others and knew that they were right behind us.
When we were in the bedroom, Adam stood in front of me, stripping his
clothes off quickly. There was a hurried quality to him, but not like he
wanted to get it over with; it was more like he was conscious of how much
my body had already been through, and as much as he wanted me, he wanted
to remember that.
He stood behind me, scooping my hair off to the side and kneeling down
to place his lips against my neck, kissing the skin there gently as he shucked
off his own shirt and jeans.
When he was undressed, he pulled me backwards, and for a moment, I
felt a little bit like I’d lost my equilibrium as I was balanced against him,
unable to see where I was going.
Then, suddenly, I felt my legs hit against a hard surface, and I realized
that he’d lain down on the bed. Without any communication, I understood
exactly what he’d intended, and sat down so that I was practically sitting on
his lap, with my lower lips pressed against the cock that was already standing
at attention.
Placing my hands on either side of him, I sank backwards, groaning
loudly as I felt him fill me and stroke me exactly as I needed him to.
Reaching down, I pulled up his hand and placed it squarely on the bundle of
nerves at the juncture of my thighs. Placing my own hand over it, I showed
him how to move his fingertips in a circular motion on my clit as I rode him.
Opening my eyes, I saw that the others were standing there, watching us.
Watching as their youngest brother pleasured me in a way unlike any of the
rest of them had. In a way that spoke to our friendship, to the way he’d
known me for our entire lives, and how much I trusted him with every part of
me.
Especially my heart.
Turning my head back, I looked into his eyes just before he sat up and
caught my lips with his in a smoldering kiss.
Just then, he thrust all the way into me and rubbed my clit agonizingly
hard, making me come a fourth time. He didn’t last much longer, spilling into
me with a few hard, quick bursts as he filled me yet again.
He turned me over, setting me on my side on the bed and getting up
before leaning down and kissing me softly on the ribs. I clutched his hand
tightly before letting him go, before turning to look at Aaron. He was already
naked, and he had a wary look on his face as he came to lay down on the bed
next to me.
“We don’t need to,” he said. “I could just hold you.”
I looked up at him, at the beautiful, strong body that covered mine and
kept me safe, and the warm, quiet eyes that kept me grounded.
“Or,” I said, reaching up to touch his face, “you could hold me while you
make love to me?”
His facial expression stayed quiet, but his eyes blazed as he pressed up
behind me.
“I can do that,” he said, and slid into me.
This was slower, but it wasn’t any less intense. If anything, the sheer
amount of what Aaron felt and how little he allowed it to surface increased
the intensity between us as he moved slow and hard, moving my hair to the
side so he could run his lips down the side of my neck and over my
shoulders.
All the while, he moved slowly and deeply inside of me as he trailed his
fingers down my ribs, allowing them to find their way to my clit.
Reaching my hand back, I ran my fingers up his neck, relishing the feel of
him around me as he pressed deeper into me, his warmth everywhere.
It was right that tonight should end like this, with me feeling this sense of
protection and safety in his arms, feeling grounded in the ecstasy that he gave
me as he brought me to the edge for the final time.
“Aaron,” I said, his name a gasp as I threw my head back. Without
warning, I knew he hadn’t brought me to the edge so much as I’d thrown
myself over it.
The lights shattered behind my eyes, and my entire body began to shake
as I fell apart in his arms yet again.
“I’m right behind you,” he said, his mouth pressed against my skin as he
thrust into me once more, groaning as he emptied himself into me. We lay
there for a second, allowing ourselves a moment to enjoy the aftershocks.
He pulled out of me, turning me gently onto my back and kissing my
cheek before pulling a sheet up to cover me.
The others came over and lay in the bed with us, every one of us sharing a
little bit of skin as we formed our pile. This seemed to be our final position
for the evening as we settled with a sigh, murmuring a little here and there.
I’d never felt so much pleasure in my life, and as I looked from face to face
before I drifted off, I felt a last overwhelming sense of gratitude for these four
men.
EPILOGUE
 LUCY - FIVE WEEKS LATER

I usually hated Valentine’s Day.

Even on years when I’d been in a relationship, I’d never particularly
enjoyed celebrating the over-embellished holiday and had preferred doing
something more low-key.
Tonight, though, I was actually excited for the romantic plans that I had
with my someone. Well, not someone. Four someones.
We’d fallen into our relationship with more ease than I ever could’ve
predicted, spending every evening in some combination of two, three or all
five of us. I always fell asleep in one of their beds, feeling spent and like I’d
never been fucked like that, and never would be again.
At least, until the next night.
To say that our parents had taken some time to adjust was an
understatement.
We’d told them separately, but I’d been at their house when we’d decided
to let them know. Their parents had blinked at me slowly, before turning and
looking at each of their children in turn. I didn’t think I’d ever seen Alice
Kent shocked into silence before; that woman always had something to say.
As it turned out, she definitely did have something to say. She’d had a ton
of questions, both for her sons and for me, and we’d all weathered the
interrogation for a while, having sat up in Adam’s living room the night
before with a few boxes of Chinese takeout, strategizing different ways for us
to tell them what we’d decided would be our future.
After a few rounds of answering questions, Alice had finally gone quiet
once more, and all of us sat in silence as we waited for her or Albert to say
something in response.
 They’d looked at each other for a long minute before Alice had gotten up
off the couch and walked straight toward me, reaching down for my hands
and taking them into her own before pulling me up out of my chair. I stood
there in silence, waiting for her to say something—anything—in response.
“I’ve always thought of you as a daughter,” she said, her eyes pricking
with tears as she looked into my face, “and I won’t deny that I’ve always
hoped that I’d get you for a daughter-in-law. This just… isn’t how I thought
it would happen.”
“Believe me, Alice,” I said, my face spreading into a wide smile, “I didn’t
expect it either. This is quite possibly the last thing I could’ve predicted.”
“Do you love our sons?” Albert asked, standing up and looking straight at
me, holding eye contact for an uncomfortably long time.
I swallowed, looking around at each of them in turn. I hadn’t told them
outright yet, but I knew that they knew how I felt, and I also knew how they
felt about me. It hadn’t had to be said yet.
“I do,” I said, “and not just as a unit, or as a result of them being members
of the same family, or because of some arbitrary inability to choose between
them. Each one of them fills a different need for me, and somehow, I’m the
one that they want.” I shook my head, a little laugh escaping from me. “I
know how lucky anyone would be to get just one of your sons. Imagine how I
feel, being loved by all four.”
Alice gathered me into her arms at that, giving me the warmest hug that I
ever could’ve wanted, and allowing me to breathe in her fresh, clean smell of
eucalyptus and snow. A smell that I’d known since I was a little girl, that had
always reminded me of home.
“Then I guess there’s nothing left to say,” Albert said as he walked
toward us.
“Well, that’s not exactly true, honey,” Alice said as she let go of me, just
long enough to loop her arm through mine. “The only thing left for us to do is
find out what her favorite dinner is.”
The rest of the night had been filled with laughter and hugs, and both of
them had told me that there was no need for me to be shy about showing my
affection for their boys.
My parents had been just a little more shocked when they’d found out
about my new relationship. They’d been positively dumbfounded as we’d sat
in the kitchen that night, drinking tea, before my mom had gotten up from the
table and gone to get the bottle of bourbon from the liquor cabinet along with
three glasses and sat back down.
“So, you’re with four men,” she’d said, clearing her throat a little bit as
she poured our drinks, not waiting for the rest of us as she tossed back the
bourbon.
“Yeah,” I responded, looking at her in a little bit of alarm. “You okay?
You’re not usually a drinker.”
“I’m fine,” she said, wincing as the whiskey hit the back of her throat,
“and I’m sure I’ll be fine with this too. I just… think I need some time to
adjust to the idea.”
Meanwhile, my dad just sat by her side, looking like he’d been struck by
lightning.
“Drink your bourbon, dear,” my mom said, patting him on the hand. “I
promise it’ll help.”
The rest of the conversation had passed in much the same way as the one
with Albert and Alice, but with more bourbon. I couldn’t be convinced that
they were really okay with the concept by the time that we all stumbled up to
bed, but when I came back downstairs in the morning, my mom simply asked
me whether the protocol was to have them over for dinner one at a time, or to
have them all come over together.
“You’ve already met them, Mom,” I said, drinking my coffee as I rolled
my eyes.
“Yes, but now they’re your….” She trailed off, looking unsure of how
exactly she should refer to them around me.
“Partners,” I said, setting my mug on the table.
“Partners,” she repeated, rolling the word around in her mouth as if
testing out the feel of it. “I like that, actually.”
“Good, because they like you, and I’m thinking I’m gonna keep them
around for a while.”
We talked more throughout the day, and the next week, and within a few
days we’d planned a dinner for both of our families to get together and meet
up once more as the parents of partners and the partners who were all in a
really unusual situation.
When we sat down for dinner, though, it had been just like every other
family gathering we’d had… but this time, there had been more PDA.
When I’d gotten off of work for the day, I had gone on my quick errand at
the end of the day alone. It had felt strange going on my own, but I’d known
that Molly would not be able to keep her big mouth shut. I loved her, and her
big mouth, but this was one time when I didn’t need it to complicate things.
I drove to Aaron and Austin’s house on autopilot, looking forward to the
night ahead. I was excited, that was for sure, but the excitement writhing in
my stomach was mixed with a frisson of tension that I’d never felt before
meeting up with the guys.
At least, not for a while.
When I pulled up to the house, I was able to put my nerves aside enough
to get out and walk in, hoping with all my heart that they hadn’t gone all out
and decorated the house in some stupid pink and red color scheme.
Letting myself inside, I was immediately caressed with the smells of
butter, garlic, and fresh bread, and I breathed deeply. “Hello! Kent crew!”
I’d needed to find a better name for them than “the A-Team.”
“Hey, babe,” Andy said, getting up from where he was sitting on the
couch and coming over to greet me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and
leaned into him, kissing him deeply as I caressed the short, bronze hairs on
the back of his neck.
“What’re you working on?” I asked. “Something new?”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “I actually got some more work done on my
new college application.”
I smiled widely at him. “That’s amazing, honey. I can’t wait for you to
submit it.”
“Me neither, actually.”
The conversation had come up naturally one night, when Andy and I had
had some one-on-one time and I’d been able to finally talk to him about
whether he’d considered going back to school. He’d said yes, but he didn’t
want to leave Rock Ledge now that we were starting to see each other. I’d
suggested checking out his old school to see if he could do his classes partly
online, and he’d found them to be a lot more supportive than he’d thought
they would be.
When he’d brought it up to the rest of the brothers, they’d all rallied
around him, and we’d thrown our support behind him so that he knew he
could still have his job while he went to school.
“Stop hogging our girlfriend, Andy,” I heard just as a set of hands looped
its way around my waist, and I felt a bit of scruff tickling my neck. Turning
around with a grin, I kissed Austin deeply as he lifted me off the floor.
“What’d you do today? Any cool surgeries to tell me about?”
“Just one,” I said, smiling into his mouth.
 “God, you guys are weird,” Adam said from the kitchen, where he and
Aaron were both standing at the stove. I let go of Austin, caressing his face
one more time before heading inside to say hello.
“You like it that way,” I said, kissing him on the shoulder as I hugged
him, and then on the lips, in the sweet and casual way we’d done everything
growing up. When we parted, I looked at the stove and took a deep breath.
“Something smells amazing.”
“That’s true, I do,” he said, smiling as he dipped his finger into a pot and
lifted it up, coated in what looked like a smooth, dark sauce. “Taste.”
I opened my mouth and licked the chocolate off his finger, closing my
mouth around it. “That’s incredible.”
“Wait until you taste the rest,” Aaron said, turning away from two pans
that he was watching and grabbing me, pulling me toward him for a kiss. His
was almost an exploration of my mouth, and I giggled a little bit as he
nibbled at my lips before breaking away.
“You’re right, that is amazing,” he said when he finally pulled away.
“Good job, Adam.”
I laughed before asking if they had anything that they wanted me to do.
“Almost set,” Aaron said. “If you want something to drink, one of those
slackers out there can grab you a glass of wine.”
“Shut up,” Austin replied with no venom, and about ten minutes later, we
were all sitting down at the table.
As I was served rib-eye, garlic mashed potatoes, and asparagus, I looked
around at all of them, feeling an immense sense of gratitude.
“Luce,” Aaron said, quieting down the general chatter around the table,
“we have a surprise for you.”
Just then, Austin took an envelope out of some mysterious locale and slid
it over to me. It was heavier than the typical envelope, and as I opened it, an
average bronze key slid out of it.
Only one.
I looked around, raising an eyebrow at them in search of explanation.
“We found a place that’s big enough for all of us to live together,” Andy
said, smiling one of his sweet, tentative smiles that warmed my soul. “If
that’s what you want.”
I gasped a little, emitting a sound that was almost a startled laugh, and felt
like I’d lost my voice to the emotion. I looked around into each of their faces,
every single one prompting a different feeling of love and fulfillment in me.
 “I hope it’s got enough rooms,” I said, my throat coming out hoarse.
“There’s one for each of us,” Adam said, “including you. You need to
have your own space.”
I reached down and took his hand, threading my fingers through his.
“That’s so lovely and thoughtful,” I said, looking at him with gratitude. “I
hope it’s a big room, though. It’ll need to accommodate a bed and a crib.”
Silence. Dead silence.
I really couldn’t have predicted how they’d take the news, since our
situation was so new that we hadn’t even discussed kids appearing on the
timeline, despite me knowing it was what I wanted.
But now, given their reaction… I couldn’t be sure that I hadn’t
miscalculated.
“Are you pregnant?” Aaron asked, looking at me with a stunned look on
his face. As I looked around, I realized that what I’d assumed was
disappointed shock was actually confusion, which was gradually lifting.
I nodded, swallowing as I smiled.
Austin let out a whoop and picked me up, swinging me around in a circle
before kissing me. “This is incredible.”
“Good surprise?” I asked, looking around.
“Do you need to ask?” Adam answered, taking his turn to get up and lean
down, folding his hands over my belly as I turned my head back to kiss him
over my shoulder.
“We don’t need to know who the exact father is,” Aaron added, coming
over with his deep, rumbling voice and tilting my face up to meet his lips.
“We’re all biologically related, after all. This is our baby, and we’ll all be his
or her dads.”
“Good lord,” I said, rolling my eyes. “God bless this kid.”
They laughed, and the cheering continued as all of them took it in turns
wondering about who the baby would be and contributing different name
ideas.
Like I’d told their parents, I truly didn’t know how I’d gotten to be the
one lucky enough to be loved by all four of these men, but the extreme
happiness I felt as I looked around the room overwhelmed every part of me.
Maybe it wasn’t the typical life, but it was mine, and I wouldn’t have it
any other way.
The End
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1
 HAWK

Eight years ago…

“O n your marks! Set!”

The cadence was always the same. The actual whistle wasn’t all
that important. If you knew the cadence, you had that split second of a head
start. Coach Burke always had the same cadence.
The sound of the whistle blowing as I took off was secondary in my
mind. Faded into the background, like it was behind a glass door. I was alone
in my mind, quiet and relaxed. In my element. One of my elements, at least.
Track was the one thing I enjoyed in school. Mostly because I saw it as a
competition with myself. A connection with my ancestors who would race
through the woods, barefoot and panting, proving themselves to their tribe. It
was corny, but I felt like I could sense them. Their blood ran through my
veins. Our lives were so different, but the elements could be similar. Where
they ran to prove their spot in the pecking order, I ran for sport. The desire to
win was the same.
Cadence. It was always the cadence. The cadence of the starting shout
and whistle. The cadence of my feet hitting the clay. The cadence of my
breath, inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth. It didn’t
matter if someone was ahead of me for a moment. I would catch them. I
always did.
I disappeared into the motions, the rhythm of it all. I didn’t pay much
attention to the other people in the race. They weren’t my concern. The only
thing in focus was my breathing and the clock on the far ends of the field. I
counted the seconds as I ran. It was going to be close.
 Three steps ahead of the next person, I crossed the finish line. I was
almost angry at how close it was. Ricky had never run that well, and I was
suspecting he had been holding out, keeping that fifth gear in his back pocket
for the qualifiers. He wanted my spot.
He wasn’t going to get it.
I was bent over, breathing deeply, a few feet from the collection of other
students from Ashford High. I used the strap of my shirt to wipe sweat from
my nose. A clap on my back made me turn toward it, and I saw Ricky,
beaming.
“Hell of a run, right?” he said, clearly pleased with himself. “I almost got
you!”
“You did,” I said, forcing a smile. “Almost.” He laughed. “Where did that
come from?”
“Just been training a lot,” he said. “Lots of cardio. Lots of quad work.
Learning from the best.”
This time the smile was genuine. I stood up and shook his hand. Ricky
was a good kid, if a little dim. But he wanted to be like me, and the
compliment was nice.
“Good job, man,” I said. “Maybe next time.”
“There won’t be one,” he said, his smile faltering. “You’re a senior. This
was my shot.”
“Ah, right.”
As he jogged off, I thought about what he said. It hadn’t really occurred
to me that this was my final qualifier. It was like any other race for me.
Maybe that was why I was better at it than anyone else. I always treated each
race the same.
But there wouldn’t be another race after I graduated. Not unless I wanted
to do track in college. But what was the point of that? I wasn’t an Olympian.
I had no desire to be one, at that. I was fast, but not Usain Bolt fast. I was
content with winning trophies in high school and moving on to what I really
wanted to do in college.
That was a few months away, though. I had time. For now, I wanted to
enjoy what I could about my last year in high school.
Like the girl in the stands that had been watching me.
I knew who she was. She was a bit younger than I was, but smart. We had
a class together, since she was testing above her grade level. I didn’t know
much about her, other than she was gorgeous. How other people didn’t seem
to see it baffled me, but she tended to fade into the wallpaper. All I knew of
her was that she wanted to be a nurse one day.
She had the biggest brown eyes I had ever seen, and they were watching
me. Only me. I noticed her before the first warm-up run and then again just
before I took my mark. Now that I was doing the post-run walk, I saw her
again, watching me. Our eyes met, and her cheeks went red. I smiled.
She turned away.
Deana Killen. That was her name. Deana, the pretty girl from the back of
the classroom. The one with the blue sweater she wore at least once a week.
It was fuzzy and looked comfortable. But it also accentuated her body, and
every time I saw her in it, I had to shift uncomfortably in my seat.
I kept staring at her, and she turned back to look at me again, this time
pretending to scan the field. I laughed. She was too shy to flirt, apparently.
I could fix that.
“Hawk,” someone called from behind me before I could make my way to
Deana in the stands. I turned to look and saw Billy coming toward me again.
“Yeah?” I asked.
Hawk had been my nickname since high school started. I could have
taken it poorly but chose not to. Ostensibly, it was a reference to me being
taller than everyone else when we were fifteen. At six foot four, I was still
among the taller people in our school but no longer the tallest. Still, the name
stuck, and its vague reference to my heritage wasn’t nearly as bad as the
school the next town over. Or their wildly offensive team sport nickname, the
Scalpers. Part of me wanted to blame it on being in the south, but I knew
better. This kind of thing was everywhere.
“I wanted to know if you were going to the party this Saturday? Zach’s
parents are out of town for the whole weekend, and Hannah says she can raid
her dad’s bar,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll get back to you, though.”
“It would be cool for you to come, man,” he said. “At least to one.”
I nodded.
“Maybe.”
With that, Billy took off, heading back to the pack of other kids that made
up the track team. I shrugged. Maybe I would go to a party. Probably not,
though. It wasn’t really my scene. I much preferred to be alone or at home.
Or in the company of a pretty girl.
When I turned back to the stands, Deana was gone. I cursed under my
breath and scanned the stands, wondering if she was still around. I was
surprised to see her having moved all the way down to the railing in front of
the stands, separating spectator from competition. Her big brown eyes were
looking at me, and she brushed a wisp of her thick, black hair behind her ear.
She kept it short in the back, but longer on top, like she was going to audition
for a girl-punk band.
It was hot.
“Deana, right?” I asked.
“Dee. Everybody calls me Dee.”
“Dee,” I repeated. “Big track and field fan?”
“Yup,” she said, not taking her eyes from mine. The streak of red on her
cheeks was adorable, though.
“Really? I didn’t think anyone in Ashford gave a crap about it other than
the people on the team. It’s nice to look out and see a pretty girl in the
stands.”
The streak of red was now burning hot and flushing down her neck. I
grinned, and she looked away, the smile stretched so far across her face that
her teeth shined in the sunlight. When she looked back at me, I felt like I
could lose myself in those chocolate-brown eyes forever.
“Are you going this weekend?” she asked.
“What?”
“The party,” she said. “The one Ricky was talking about. Are you
going?”
“Oh. Maybe. Probably not. The party stuff… it’s not really my kind of
thing.”
“Me either.”
There was a pause. I felt like I was smiling too much. She was so damn
cute, and I was getting the signals that she was into me too. But she was also
younger than me. Suddenly, an idea popped into my head and was out of my
mouth before I could stop it.
“We’re only a couple weeks from Homecoming,” I said. “Who’s bringing
you?”
“No one yet,” she said.
My blood started pumping so hard in my chest that I felt like it might
explode through the front of my shirt. I wiped sweat from my brow and
huffed a laugh.
“No way. You? No one has asked you yet?” I asked.
 “Not yet,” she said, the lilt at the end of her voice almost like a question.
I licked my lips. The shiny gloss on hers made them look so tempting. I
wanted to taste her kiss. I wanted to do a lot more than that.
“Dee?” a voice asked from beside her, and she turned.
It was a guy, a little smaller than me but athletic looking. He had short,
spiky blonde hair and a letterman’s jacket. I sort of recognized him as one of
the guys from the football team but couldn’t place him. None of those guys
were terribly friendly with me aside from the ones on the track team and one
guy named Carlos. He was cool. This guy, on the other hand, had “dumb
jock” written all over him.
“Hey, Greg,” she said.
Ahh, Greg. That was right. I remembered him now. I saw him with Dee
every once in a while when I passed her in the hall.
“Well, I have to go,” I said. “Got another race in about twenty. See you
around.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, turning back to me. Her eyes seemed sad, and the
smile that had been so bright on her lips faltered.
“Bye,” Greg said sternly. It was probably supposed to sound menacing or
protective. It just came off squeaky and fake.
“Later.” I turned my back and headed back to the group of guys back at
the start line.
Coach was waiting for me, looking at his watch and then at me. Usually, I
made my way right back over after a race to get a rundown on what he saw.
Taking a detour was unusual, and I could see the confusion on his face.
Behind me, I barely caught the sounds of conversation between Greg and
Dee. It sounded flirty. Oh well. If she had a boyfriend, that was all that
mattered. He would ask her to Homecoming, and that was that.
That just meant I either went stag or asked one of the gaggle of girls I had
gone out with once or twice and who made it clear they were still available.
None of them interested me, though. They were all the same girl, it seemed.
For one, they all seemed to be named some variation of Emily. Emily or
Emma or the real fancy ones were Emile. All blonde, short, and completely
devoid of any personality that didn’t fit with whatever was socially
acceptable, which at the moment was booty shorts, combat boots, and T-
shirts with writing on them. No, thank you.
I continued on with my day and tried not to think about Dee anymore.
When I glanced over at the sidelines, she wasn’t there. She had left with
Greg. I figured I’d see her around again, maybe after Homecoming. Maybe
after she dumped the jock.
Or maybe she wouldn’t. I decided to be fine with that idea too.
2
 DEE

Eight years ago…

G reg was a good guy. He really was. He might not be the brightest guy,
and he was kind of dismissive in that way that jocks tend to be of anyone
who isn’t also a jock, but he was always very sweet with me. Considering I
had been, essentially, a wallflower for the first two years of high school, the
fact that he acknowledged my existence at all felt like an eighties movie win.
But he wasn’t Hawk.
As a junior, I wasn’t in many of Hawk’s classes. Only one, actually, and
that was because I was advanced in the subject. But I saw Hawk on my first
day of classes as a freshman and had developed an insanely hard crush on
him since that moment. He had been leaning against a locker, wearing a jean
jacket and an Iron Maiden T-shirt with dark jeans and his hair at his
shoulders. His square jaw relaxed into a grin when I passed, and I pulled my
books tight against me and blushed. He probably didn’t even remember it,
but I did.
Then, I didn’t see him again for a week. It wasn’t until Monday morning
classes rolled back again that I realized I was going to pass him every
Monday at his locker. Purely the happenstance of our class schedules. The
vast majority of the time, he never saw me, and if he did, he didn’t notice me.
Not that year.
The next year, I found him after third period on Wednesday and Friday,
passing by if I got out of the classroom fast enough. I always did. Again, he
either wouldn’t see me or would pass right by without noticing me. Until one
day I dropped a notebook as I rushed out of the room and he happened to be
there already. He picked it up and handed it to me, grinning like he did that
first day. I nearly swooned.
So, when I got a class with him my junior year, I made sure to make eye
contact with him every day. When roll was called, I tried to see if he was
paying attention. I couldn’t tell if it worked.
Then, today, I heard that the track team was doing some qualifying meets
and that Hawk was running in them. Something came over me. I knew he
was graduating at the end of the year, and I already was kind of seeing
someone, but I had to give him the chance. If he asked me to Homecoming,
there wasn’t anything that was going to stop me. Quasi-boyfriend or not.
Then he noticed me watching him from the stands, and when I went down
to the railing, he talked to me. It wasn’t the first time we had spoken, but it
was certainly the flirtiest. I felt like he was just about to ask me out, and my
breath was so short I thought I might pass out, when Greg showed up.
It was my fault, really. I’d casually mentioned to him that I was going
down to the stands after school. When he asked why, I told him I had some
homework to do, and it was a nice day. Both of those things were true. They
just weren’t why I was down there.
When Greg showed up, Hawk left, and I realized I might have misjudged
the whole situation. Maybe he wasn’t flirting with me. Maybe I was just
seeing and hearing what I wanted to be true. If he really liked me, he would
have asked me to Homecoming when he’d brought it up. I knew he didn’t
have a date yet. His ex-girlfriend Amanda was very clear on the subject. She
was angling to get asked herself. Apparently, she had done everything she
could to drop the hint short of asking him herself.
Now, I was watching him jog away, heading back toward his coach. Greg
put his arm around my shoulders, and I didn’t resist as he pulled me toward
the exit. The moment had passed.
“I thought you were doing homework,” he said, a tad bit of suspicion in
his voice.
“I did.” Again, not a lie. I had done a multiple-choice take-home quiz.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, it works out, I guess. I didn’t want to do this while
we were in school and make a big spectacle out of it.”
“Didn’t want to do what?” I asked.
 “Well, you know,” he said. “We’ve been on a few dates and all. I just
kind of assumed you’d want to go to Homecoming with me.”
I blinked and waited for more words to come out of his mouth. When
they didn’t, I searched for ones to put in my own.
“Did you just ask me to Homecoming, or…?”
“What, it’s not like you have a date already,” he said. “Right?”
It was an offensive way of going about all this, but honestly, that was just
how Greg did everything. All thoughts in his head seemed to start with
“Well, I…” and continued on from there. Of course, he thought I was just
going to fall all over myself and basically ask myself to Homecoming with
him. Greg
“I don’t,” I said. “Yet.”

U nfortunately, he had me cornered under the bleachers, away from the rest
of the school. I kind of got the feeling he was just enough of a coward to
have done that just in case I said no.
He sighed dramatically and then tried a grin. It didn’t have hardly any of
the smoldering sexual charisma that Hawk’s grin had, but at least it was an
attempt. for effort, I supposed.
“Dee, will you go to Homecoming with me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Since you asked.”
“Why do you have to be so difficult?” he joked.
“Why do you have to be so evasive?” I shot back. “Why did you bring me
down here? Afraid I would say no in front of your friends?”
“Hey, leave them out of it,” he said. “I’m bringing you to Homecoming in
front of all of them, okay?”
“Thank you for your sacrifice,” I said. “I’ll be sure to write you a thank-
you note.”
“Hey,” he said to my back as I turned and headed toward the school
again.
“Don’t worry, I’m still going with you,” I said, still trying to figure out
who the hell I had turned into in the last five minutes. It was as if Hawk
showing me attention made me drunk with confidence.
“Oh,” he said from somewhere behind me. “Good.”
I sighed and kept moving. He wasn’t going to come catch up with me and
try to apologize or right the wrong of how he structured his dumb sentences.
That was fine. He wasn’t a long-term prospect. He was a cute guy who was
going to at least do all the traditional things and bring me to Homecoming in
a limousine and buy me a corsage and try to make out with me on the dance
floor and grab my ass. For those things, he was functional.
I just would have rather it been Hawk.

H omecoming day was nearly a disaster. My sister, Malia, was having

another one of her many, many fights with our mother, and neither of
them was talking to the other. That was problematic since I needed someone
to help me get ready. Wendy was at her place getting ready and was coming
over just before the boys were supposed to pick us up, but I needed to be
ready by then.
With only sporadic help, I was getting frantic as the time ticked away.
When Wendy arrived, I still hadn’t gotten into my dress, and she ended up
breaking a nail helping me get it on. By the time the boys showed up, Wendy
and I were alternating blotting each other’s tears and trying to pose in the
mirror to make sure we hadn’t completely destroyed our look.
Greg and Naveen were perfect gentlemen. Naveen was very sweet on
Wendy, but Wendy wasn’t particularly interested in him. She only said yes
because she wanted to go to the dance, and he was a nice guy. They took us
to dinner, and there was the awkward, forced conversation of four people,
two of whom didn’t really fit with the other two or each other.
When we finally made it to the school, things seemed to be going
smoothly. Greg was on his best behavior, and Naveen was seemingly making
some headway with Wendy. The look on some of the varsity cheerleaders’
faces when they saw me on Greg’s arm was almost enough on its own to put
up with his occasional inability to not act like a spoiled frat boy.
Then, I saw Hawk.
He was standing by the refreshment table, refilling his drink and laughing
while he spoke to another guy I didn’t know. I knew he was on the track
team, but only because I had seen him when I went to watch Hawk. He
brushed his hand through his hair, which he had cut so it was shaggy on top
but short in the back.
My knees nearly buckled, and I felt my skin grow hot. I didn’t even
realize I had dropped Greg’s arm until he pulled it back up, and I shook my
head. I focused on Greg, and we walked over to a corner and found a few
seats and a small table.
Casually, Hawk and I met eyes a few times through the night as Greg and
I mingled and occasionally did something that resembled dancing. Gerry
might have been light on his feet on the gridiron, but he was no Fred Astaire.
My toes were going to be throbbing in the next day or two, not just from the
heels, but because he kept stepping on them.
I was just about to say something about it when I caught Hawk’s gaze. He
was standing across from me, the champagne glass full of bubbly soda held
near his hip and a grin on his face. I almost tripped, and Greg caught me,
suddenly breaking my eye contact with Hawk by getting between us.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
He moved a little, trying his best to manage a box step, and I saw Hawk
again. He was grinning harder, and I tried not to smile back. It didn’t work.
When the dance ended, we went back to our table, and Greg started a
conversation with one of his friends from the team. I noticed his drink was
empty, and I poked his arm, motioning to it.
“Want another drink?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said.
I took his glass, shaking my head at how any boy could let his date go get
their drinks at a dance but glad he did. It let me work up the nerve as I headed
directly to where I had seen Hawk. We had been making eye contact all
night, and I had already decided my relationship with Greg was doomed.
Hawk was gone.
So was Amanda.
My shoulders dropped, and I stood there, staring into the gaggle of kids
still on the dance floor, the empty glass still in my hand. Why would he do
that? Why would he make eye contact with me all night and grin at me and
be all stupidly sexy in my direction if he was just going to leave with his ex-
girlfriend?
I had no right to be, but I was upset at him for it. He led me on. Now I
was standing, embarrassed, with my feet hurting, in the middle of all my
classmates. Grunting with anger, I turned to the table, slopped soda into the
glasses, and headed back to Greg, forcing a smile back onto my face.
 **End of Preview**

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 A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Thank for you taking the time to read my latest release.

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- Natasha L. Black
 B O O K S B Y N ATA S H A L . B L A C K

Men of ALPHAbet Mountain Series:

A is for Aiden
B is for Brett
C is for Carter

The King Brothers Series:

Forbidden
Off-Limits

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Hot Cop
My Fake Husband
The Lumberjack’s Nanny
I Hate You
Falling in Love

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Rockford Falls Romance: A Secret Baby Romance Collection

The Anderson Brother Series:

Second Chance Baby

 Taboo Boss
His Best Friend’s Sister
Boss Daddy
The Marriage Contract

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The Anderson Brothers: A Secret Baby Romance Collection

Freeman Brother Series:

Millionaire Boss
Millionaire Daddy
Millionaire Crush
Millionaire Hero
Millionaire Best Friend

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The Freeman Brothers: A Secret Baby Romance Collection

Forbidden Lovers Series:

Billionaire Boss
Date Your Brother’s Best Friend
Falling for my Enemy
Forbidden Crush
Damaged

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Forbidden Lovers: A Contemporary Romance Collection
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His Secret Baby
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Boss's Secret Baby for Christmas
Daddy’s Secret Baby
My Ex’s Secret Baby
Bad Boy’s Secret Baby

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Secret Daddies: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

Alpha Male Collection:

Forbidden Daddy
Redemption
Protecting Her
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Double Dirty
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Faking It

Complete box set here: Playing Pretend

Other stories you may enjoy:

Back To You
Brother’s Best Friend
Forbidden Protector
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 C O N N E C T W I T H N ATA S H A L . B L A C K

Natasha L. Black is an Amazon Top 100 bestselling author. Dreaming and fantasizing ever since she
was a young teenager, her love of writing flourished from a very early age. After working for 15 years
as a veterinarian, she now follows her passion in writing for a living. She currently resides in a lovely
country home in a rural area of Dallas, writing steamy novels to fulfill her readers' desires.

Want to contact me? Please e-mail me at: [email protected]

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