Three to Ride

by Sophie Oak

  Rye shook his head. “I’m leaving tonight. I’ll pack a couple of things and stay at Stefan’s until I can find an apartment.”

  “Don’t.” She was horrified at the thought. “I’ll leave. This is your home. I never meant to cause this much trouble.”

  Rye smiled slightly, but it was a sad thing. “I can’t watch you and Max. I’ll get to the point where I can be friendly and we can pretend to be some sort of normal family, but I’ll never stop wanting you. I can’t live in the same house and watch you settle in with my brother. Do you understand the relationship I want?”

  “You want to share me with Max.” The statement came out in a low, breathy voice. She had meant to sound matter-of-fact, not sultry.

  “I want you between us, Rachel. I want you to be our wife and our lover and the mother of our children. I want you to sleep in between us. I want you screaming your pleasure when we take you at the same time. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.” Her mouth was dry as she thought about it. She could have both of them. Two gorgeous men, loving her, wanting her. It was the fantasy of a lifetime.

  “Max doesn’t want that anymore. I have to choose between pursuing the woman I think I was meant to be with or honoring the brother I’ve shared a life with from the moment we were conceived. Know this, Rach, if he weren’t already madly in love with you, if you hadn’t already chosen him, I would be all over you. That’s why I have to leave.”

  “Rye,” she started, but couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  He turned. His chest was still slick from the shower. “And change, Rachel. That’s my shirt. Max won’t like you running around in my shirt. He keeps his extra T-shirts on the right side of the dresser.”

  He started to leave, but all of a sudden, he stumbled. His knees hit the wood of the floor, and he gasped. Rachel hurried to his side to try to help him up. He was shaking. His hands trembled slightly as he held his head.

  “It’s Max,” he said in obvious distress. “Oh god, Rachel, he’s hurt.”

  * * * *

  Max breathed in the early morning air, aware of a sense of contentment he’d never felt before. Rachel was still asleep in their bed. Her sweet, soft body was curled up under the quilts. He’d slept wrapped around that body. Their arms and legs had tangled in the night, and when he woke up, her hair was all over his face. He’d grinned and managed to find his way out of the web her strawberry blonde hair had woven around him. He’d watched her sleep for a while, then rose quietly to get his work for the morning done.

  He had to pay attention to work now. Like force himself to. Before he’d met Rachel, work had been all that mattered. Now he had to tell himself to get his ass up. He had to make some money since he had a woman to support now. Rachel might not know it, but she was his top priority. He would get her comfortable living with him and then move her gently toward marriage.

  He made sure the saddle on Maverick was cinched tight, then mounted with the ease of a true horseman. The big horse beneath him nickered and waited for a command. Now that the morning’s maintenance was done, it was time for some exercise. The stall for Sunflower was ready. She would be arriving tomorrow, and he was eager to get to work with her. For now, he would settle for riding the pasture and making sure the fences were solid.

  Quigley followed the quarter horse as Max let Maverick trot out of the yard toward the big pasture where he’d be able to gallop. Max’s mind wandered as they made their way down the road.

  He wanted to marry Rachel, but there was one thing marring the vision. It was hard for him to think of marrying a woman without his brother at his side. He knew Rye was attracted to Rachel, probably at least half in love with her. They had always wanted the same women. Perhaps, if they had grown up in a more conventional town, they would have been shamed into giving up their instincts. Everything in Max told him to share with his brother. They were happier that way. If they had been told how wrong and perverse they were, maybe they would have been able to deny that part of themselves.

  But they had grown up in Bliss. Their mother had accepted them, and their father had been far too busy drinking to care what they did. The town itself was so full of hippies and free spirits that when Max and Rye asked one girl to be their date to the winter festival when they were sixteen, everyone had smiled indulgently and talked about how comfortable the boys were in their own skins.

  Rachel hadn’t grown up in Bliss. Rachel had grown up in suburban Texas, according to her stories from childhood. She’d been raised conventionally, and she would probably walk out if he even suggested that they experiment. She would be shocked if she knew what he really wanted.

  She wasn’t some girl Rye had picked up in a bar who wanted to have some fun and play out a few fantasies. Max had enjoyed the long-term relationships they’d had with women like that, but, unlike his brother, he’d known those relationships wouldn’t end in happily ever after. Max was more cynical than Rye. He knew there wasn’t a woman out there who wanted to put up with two men. They were too demanding.

  It wasn’t like they hadn’t had sex separately before. They had both had many relationships that didn’t involve the other brother. It was just anything even vaguely serious had been a ménage. When Rye had really fallen for someone, Max had inevitably fallen a little, too.

  He thought about how tired Rye had looked this morning. He’d been up and drinking coffee when Max had come through the kitchen. Their conversation had been polite, but there was a distance between them that put Max on edge.

  “You look like hell, brother,” Max said, pouring coffee into his thermos. “Late night?”

  Rye shook his head. He was wearing a pair of sweats and his running shoes. Max knew that Rye ran off his problems. He would run for miles when he was upset. From the sweat covering his brother’s body, Max knew he’d been running all morning. “It was fine, but I think I’ll take off for a few days. Stef wants to go fishing before the Founder’s Day picnic.”

  Max turned and studied his brother. “I don’t want to run you off. I want you to be okay with Rachel staying here.”

  Rye’s laugh was short and sharp. “I’m okay with it. But I do think the two of you need some time to yourselves, and then we need to figure some stuff out.”

  Max found himself getting upset. He could sense Rye’s anxiety. “Figure out what?”

  Rye looked frustrated as he dumped his coffee in the sink. “Well, I’m not going to be your and Rachel’s roommate. Do you think I want to watch that? Do you think that’s how I want to spend the rest of my life?”

  “Ryan,” Max said, trying to stop his brother.

  “Don’t.” Rye shook his head. “I’m happy for you, man. I really am. This just isn’t what I thought our lives would be like, and I need time to adjust. We’ll figure it all out in the end. Besides, you can’t want me around. I make Rachel nervous.”

  “She’ll get used to you.” Max needed to believe that.

  “No, she won’t,” Rye replied sadly. “She’s not that girl, and maybe we were fooling ourselves. I can see now that Nina was never going to make both of us happy. Hell, she wouldn’t have made me happy. I proposed to her because I wanted to get married. She said yes because she didn’t have anything better to do. It was stupid. Rachel is the type of girl you marry and raise a family with, and she’s also the type who would never accept a ménage.”

  “Come on, Rye.” He couldn’t think of anything else. Rye wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t thought of already.

  “I’m going to take a shower. I’ll see you later,” Rye said in a voice that told Max he was done for now. Then Rye had disappeared down the hall and Max had gotten to work.

  He tried to put his brother out of his mind as he turned Maverick down the short slope marking the change between yard and pasture. He could already see a place in the fence that he needed to fix. He would have to figure out how to solve the mess with his brother at a later date.

  Max heard a sound like a car backfiring.
For the briefest of moments, he felt his anger flare. Someone was up at the house at this time of the morning? It was Saturday. Couldn’t they be left in peace on a Saturday morning?

  Then he felt the pain bloom along his left arm. He looked down. There was blood starting to spread on his shirt.

  Shock hit him hard and fast as he realized what had happened. Shot. He’d been shot.

  It had finally happened. Some damn hunter had let a bullet go wild.

  Max turned Maverick, who was antsy now, and started to move toward the woods. He would show that hunter a thing or two. Damn asshole probably didn’t even realize he’d hit someone.

  The sound came again, and Maverick bucked wildly. Max had to pull hard on the reins and hunker down to stay on the horse. There was a third shot. Maverick took off as he completely panicked. Max was thrown to the side. His own panic set in as he realized his boot was stuck in the stirrup. He tried to pull free as he was dragged along the ground, but he couldn’t make it.

  Max heard Quigley barking frantically. The dog raced to keep up with his master. Max gave his boot one last tug and then felt his head hit something hard. The whole world went black.

  * * * *

  Rachel didn’t stop to think when Rye made the announcement that Max was hurt. She ran. He wasn’t in the house so that meant he was out in the field working. At this time of day, he would be doing any number of odd jobs around the place, but almost all of those jobs would be outside. She ran out the door and down the porch steps. She didn’t think about the fact that she was barefoot with only Rye’s T-shirt to cover her. All she could think about was Max. She suddenly knew that Rye was right, and he needed them.

  “The stables.” Rye ran up behind her. He pointed behind the house and started sprinting.

  He was barefoot, too, but had slipped into sweatpants. He raced toward the back of the house, his long legs eating up the distance. As Rachel followed, she saw something that terrified her.

  Maverick was standing perfectly still in the yard. The horse looked down at Max, who was on the ground. His boot was still in the stirrup, and his big body was completely still. Quigley danced around him anxiously. The enormous dog whined in obvious distress.

  Her heart seized. He wasn’t moving. God, please let him move. Let him be alive. Rye made it to his brother’s side, dropping to the ground as he felt for a pulse. She got to her knees, reaching out for his still hand.

  “Call an ambulance,” Rye said urgently.

  She needed to touch him, to hold him, to assure herself that he was alive.

  “Rachel, call 911 now!” Rye’s voice broke through her fear.

  She raced back to the house and called. Every second she prayed she hadn’t seen him alive for the last time.

  Chapter Ten

  The next several hours were the worst of her life. She’d gone through plenty of stuff on her own, but knowing Max was in pain and danger was worse. She and Rye sat out in the waiting room of the hospital in Del Norte while Max was in surgery. According to the doctor, Max had been hit by two stray bullets. It wasn’t something that happened every day, but it also wasn’t unheard of. There was a hunting rifle slug in his left arm and another in his leg. That was the easy part. The bullets hadn’t hit any major organs. His brain, on the other hand, had taken a beating from being dragged by his horse. He had a concussion, and they weren’t sure about the severity of it.

  By the time Rye and Rachel reached the hospital, several of the brothers’ friends and family members were already on their way. Within minutes of speaking to the nurses and settling in to wait, Rachel heard someone call out Rye’s name. Callie Sheppard and Stefan Talbot rushed in and immediately assaulted Rye with questions.

  Rye had calmed everyone down by the time the doctor came out to explain that Max’s head trauma wasn’t as bad as they’d first believed. He was still in surgery for the bullet wounds and would need to stay in the hospital overnight, but the doctors were sure he would pull through.

  “Which one of you is Rachel?” The doctor looked at the two women in the group with an amused smile on his face.

  Rachel held up her hand, feeling super self-conscious. “That’s me.”

  The doctor grinned. “Well, Mr. Harper came to while we were taking the CT scan. He’s not a pleasant man.”

  Stefan and Rye laughed.

  “He was insistent about seeing you, young lady,” the doctor said. “We had to promise that you would be in his ICU room when he came out of surgery. He was very difficult.”

  “I can imagine.” Rye’s shoulders, which had been bunched around his neck for hours, finally settled into a more normal position. “You won’t want to keep him here more than a day.”

  She promised the doctor she wasn’t going anywhere. She could feel Rye calming down now that he knew his brother was out of real danger. If Max was bitching, then he was okay. If Max was okay, she could breathe again and so could Rye.

  She had no idea how she would have gotten through those hours without Rye at her side.

  “They could sedate him,” Stefan said helpfully. Rachel looked at the handsome artist. From what Stella had told her, he was famous and extremely reclusive. He was quiet every time he came into the diner. This was the first time Rachel could remember seeing him smile.

  “They’ll probably have to at some point,” Callie remarked. Rye’s admin looked comfortable with the two men, each of whom had a foot and a hundred pounds on her.

  The doctor chuckled. “He’s already made the nurses’ naughty list.”

  “He’s all right, then?” a soft voice asked.

  Rachel turned around to see a gorgeous brunette with large blue eyes looking at the crowd. She was stark white, as though all the blood had left her body, and there was a sheen of tears coating her eyes.

  “He’s going to be fine, sweetheart.” Rye’s face lit up, and he opened his arms. The young woman rushed into them. He wrapped her in a bear hug, kissing the top of her hair. Rachel had no doubt who the girl was.

  “You must be Brooke.” Rachel took in the young woman who was Rye’s and Max’s baby sister. She looked like a willowy female version of them.

  Rye kept an arm around his little sister’s shoulders and reached out to grab Rachel’s hand with the other. “This is Rachel Swift. Rachel, this is our sister, Brooke Harper.”

  “Rachel is Max’s girlfriend.” Stefan enunciated each word as he looked at Brooke.

  Brooke glanced from Stefan to Rye and back again. “What do you mean Max’s girlfriend? I thought you always took the cover role.”

  Rye seemed eager to avoid his sister’s question. He turned to the doctor. “How long do you think it will be before we can see him?”

  “Oh, a couple of hours,” the doctor informed them. He told the group to wait and they would be called in one at a time to see him.

  Rachel felt Brooke’s eyes on her as they settled in.

  * * * *

  Rachel felt alone and awkward any time Rye got up to go somewhere. After the doctor came out to announce that Max had come through his surgery with flying colors, Rye decided his appetite had come back. Neither one of them had eaten breakfast that morning, but she still couldn’t stand the thought of food. Rye ambled off toward the cafeteria with Callie in tow. Rachel immediately wished she had gone with him. All during the long morning, Rye had been the one supporting her. He’d held her close while she cried and wrapped his arm around her shoulder as they waited. She’d found herself holding on to his hand even after Max had been declared in the clear.

  It was easy to depend on Rye Harper. He wasn’t in his uniform, so she was forced to see past the trappings of his office. Rye wasn’t anything like Tommy. He didn’t use his position to get things or intimidate people. He served the people around him, and they loved him for it. She could even forgive him for running a trace on her. If she had the resources, she would probably do the same for someone she cared about.

  She wished Rye was here now.

  “So, you’r
e dating Max.” Brooke Harper sat on the sofa across from her, looking directly at her. Now that her brother was all right, she was calm and collected, incredibly mature for her age.

  The nineteen-year-old beauty tapped her foot impatiently against the carpet. She was dressed in jeans and a chic silk shirt. Though Rachel was thirty, she found herself strangely intimidated. Stefan Talbot did nothing to help her out. He sat beside Brooke, though saying Stefan sat didn’t do him justice. Stefan occupied space with an authoritative presence. The look on his aristocratic face told Rachel he was concerned.

  “I don’t know if I would say we’re dating.” Rachel forced herself to look Brooke and Stefan in the eyes. She might be intimidated, but she wasn’t about to let them know. “I suppose it’s casual.”

  It wasn’t. Her heart was fully engaged, but they didn’t need to know that, either. It seemed to Rachel like she was about to get the “leave my brothers alone” lecture. What was she supposed to say? I’m crazy about them both but I’ll likely have to leave town on short notice to get away from the crazy man stalking me. It wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have.

  Brooke’s laugh was anything but humorous. “Bullshit. If it was a casual relationship, then Rye would be the cover. That’s the way they work in the outside world.”

  Stefan leaned forward in his seat. His gray eyes were serious as he explained some things to her. “When Max and Rye are at home in Bliss, they’re completely open about their relationships with women. It’s different in the outside world. When they leave the county, Rye tends to pose as the current female’s boyfriend, and Max is the supportive brother.”

  Brooke’s arms came across her chest. “Rye is always the boyfriend. Max is always the one in the closet. He likes it that way. Max doesn’t want the responsibility.” She turned a saucy stare to her older companion. “A bit like some other people I know, or has Jen finally gotten you to top her?”