Chapter Three
Seamus
I feel a little bit like a kid on Christmas morning waiting for Lucy to arrive the next morning. Not only am I going to be able to achieve a childhood dream of getting a dog, but I’m also looking forward to seeing Lucy again.
The blonde is insanely attractive, and all three of us had taken a turn with her on the dance floor at the wedding reception last night. I was kind of pissed that Cillian snaked in there first, but she didn’t seem to be showing him any favoritism because of it.
Although, conversely, it wasn’t like she was showing me any favoritism, either. She was cordial and sweet with all three of us, making a comment here or there that might have been flirty, but she’s clearly kind of shy and not a big flirt.
Twirling her around the dance floor had been amazing, those full tits pressed against my chest and my hand resting just above her shapely ass. The sweet scent of her skin overwhelms my senses, and I pray she doesn’t feel my prick rising in my pants.
Everything about her turned me on, and all I wanted to do was whisk her away to somewhere private and see how shy she is behind closed doors.
I glance out the window for the millionth time, looking for any sign of Lucy.
“Chill the fuck out,” Barry groans in annoyance, as the light from me opening the blinds again falls across his face. “She said she’d be here around eleven and it’s barely ten thirty.”
He turns a page in his book, and I kind of want to throw his prissy little reading glasses in the garbage disposal.
I ignore him and plunk back into the chair nearest the window. Cillian wanders in with a bowl of cereal in hand and no shirt on, his hair sticking up in a dozen different directions and making him look like he’d stuck his tongue in a light socket.
“Morning, sunshine,” I laughed.
Cillian yawns in reply. Barry and I don’t exactly get up at the crack of dawn, like Keenan and Rowan do, but Cillian is the only one of us that ever sleeps past nine.
But to be fair, he has ongoing issues with insomnia and doesn’t end up going to sleep until long after we’ve been knocked the fuck out.
He plunks down on the couch beside Barry, with all the emotional range of a zombie on his face as he munches on his breakfast. I glance out the window again, this time trying to peek more subtly through the blinds in an attempt not to piss Barry off.
But I still hear him sigh in irritation as I do, and a more childish part of me takes a little satisfaction in continuing to act in my role as annoying younger sibling.
I control my impatience for the next half hour, flipping on the TV and channel surfing. Cillian stares at the TV like he’s intensely focused, but I can tell he’s on another planet. He doesn’t really start acting like a human until he’s been up for at least an hour or more.
Finally, I hear dogs barking and see Lucy walking with a pair of collie puppies on leashes up our walk.
I spring to my feet and bolt to the front door like an over-caffeinated gazelle.
“Holy fuck, Seamus,” Cillian cracks up, “You are the biggest spaz I’ve ever seen.”
I swing the door open with a grin as Lucy is poised to knock. She jumps, startled by my sudden appearance.
“Oh! Um, hi, Seamus.”
“Morning,” I tell her cheerfully, “Come on in.”
The puppies are tangled around her legs, and when she tries to take a step, her ankle catches in a leash and she tumbles forward. I’m quick to catch her, and I can’t say I’m terribly upset when I realize that my hands are directly on her ass.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” she laughs, carefully disentangling herself from my arms and both leashes, “I’m fine, thanks, just a klutz.”
I lead her inside and shut the door behind her. The puppies are tugging at their leashes, sniffing away eagerly and jumping up on my legs. “Mind if I turn them loose?” I ask.
“Of course not, but do so at your own risk,” she says, “They’re always hyper in a new place.”
I wave off her worries. “They’re puppies, I know they’re going to be hyper. How much can a puppy really get into?”
“Those are famous last words, my friend,” she laughs as I kneel down and unhook the pups.
It’s like I’ve taken a leashes off a pair of tornadoes. They tear off into the house and I hear shouts of surprise from the living room.
Grinning, I lead Lucy into the living room, where Cillian is holding the dregs his bowl of cereal above his head out of reach of the beasts bouncing across the couch while Barry laughs and tries to wrangle them.
“Morning, Lucy,” Barry says, as if struggling to maintain some semblance of his dignity while the black and white puppy is trying to stand on his chest and lick his face.
“Morning,” she says, struggling to keep a straight face.
I scoop up the other puppy, with the brown face, and sit on the floor with her. She’s bouncy and wriggly, but I manage to wrestle her down onto her side so I can rub her belly. Her tongue lolls out of her mouth and her back foot twitches like mad.
“So, y’all want me to show you the land?” she asks.
I notice that she’s eyeing Cillian’s bare chest and I wonder if Lucy has taught the puppies “sic ‘em” yet.
“Maybe Cillian should make himself decent for company first,” Barry says.
He’s noticed, too, and I can see my own annoyance echoed in his face.
Cillian wolfs down the last of his breakfast.
“Nothing indecent about showing a little skin,” he says, winking at Lucy.
She blushes and Barry and I roll our eyes.
“Go put a fucking shirt on, Cillian,” Barry snaps, “This is for our business.”
Cillian shoots him an annoyed glare, but he gets up to go get himself dressed.
Sometimes I get the sense that Barry feels like he has to parent us, but Cillian and I agree that he just needs to pull the stick out of his ass and have some more fun with his life.
Although right now, I’m a little grateful for his uptight attitude. He is right: we are trying to talk business with Lucy right now.
I would rather get Lucy alone and do far less boring things with my mouth than talking business, but we really do want to get this resort off the ground, and if she can help us by giving us more space to expand, we really should pull our heads out of our asses and take this seriously.
And maybe I was also just annoyed at Cillian showing off.
He finally trudges downstairs, fully clothed, and we hook the dogs back on leashes so they can come outside with us.
“So the property line is somewhere along here,” Lucy says, gesturing, and runs out through there.”
She points at an area.
“And you say it kind of goes at an angle and your house is over that way?” Barry asks, pointing off in another direction.
I look in that direction. There are acres and acres of relatively empty field, dotted with only a handful of weeds and wildflowers, but further down I see some trees that I’m guessing shield the faraway dot of Lucy’s place from our line of sight.
She nods. “Yeah.”
Cillian lets out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of land. How much would you be interested in selling?”
She looks it over, her chin in her hand.
“I mean, I never really use this whole back half,” she says. “I can kind of show you the area I use and you can see how much you’d need or want?”
We agree and she leads us along, talking over some of the more finicky details with Barry, septic tanks and power lines and how we would get utilities for the place set up.
I sort of half listen, but the majority of my attention is actually on the dogs. Since I’m the one going so bonkers over the idea of having a pet, I figure it’s going to be largely up to me to pick which one of the puppies we want.
It’s also a good distraction to keep my gaze from locking onto Lucy’s ass and the sway of her hips while she walks.
As
we walk, we begin to see an occasional tree dotting the landscape, and looking into the distance, we can finally start to see her house. We get closer and I see that she does have a section of her yard fenced in, corralling a mess of dogs who bark excitedly as we approach.
“See, pretty much everything up to the fenceline never gets used,” Lucy explains, raising her voice over the canine chaos.
Barry nods.
“That’s a fair amount of land,” he says. “Would you really be interested in selling that much?”
Lucy shrug., “Why not? Better than letting it go to waste and just get overgrown.”
“How much would you be asking for it?” Cillian asks.
“I’d probably have to do a little research,” she admits, “But if you guys want to come up with an offer, I think we can work something out. After all,” she gestures off in the direction of our place, “It’s not like I don’t know where to find you,” she smiles.
The four of us start to head back.
“So, Seamus,” Lucy asks, falling into step beside me, “Any idea which of these two might be the right fit for you?” she gestures at the pups.
“Honestly, not yet,” I tell her, “They’re both pretty great.”
She nods in agreement.
“Well, if you’re looking for a companion, the little black and white one might be better for you. She’s sweet and friendly, but she’s definitely a little lazier. She picked up the basics pretty easily, but when I tried to train her on any kind of ranch work, she refused to cooperate.”
The pup seems far from lazy to me, but to be fair, it’s been a day full of exciting new people and smells for her, so her curious energy might only be that of a puppy that would dissipate once the novelty wore off.
“But,” Lucy continues, “if the resort is gonna be sort of a ranch resort where you’re going to have people coming in to try out the life, handling critters and whatnot, you might do better with the other one. She’s not quite on par with Ruckus, he’s actually one of the more cooperative out of his litter, but she catches on quick. She needs a little firmer hand than Ruckus, though, so you’re gonna have to be a little tough with her.”
She gives me a look when she says this, as if she senses that I’m going to be a softie with any dog I own. It’s a struggle, but I manage to maintain a straight face.
“I’m sure that wouldn’t be an issue.”
“Mm-hmm,” she says, while she makes this skeptical face at me and I have to fight not to laugh.
“Maybe the black and white one,” Cillian says from her left, laughing, “Seamus is too much of a marshmallow.”
Lucy nods in agreement.
“I was thinking the same thing,” she laughs with him.
I glare at them both, but there’s no malice in it.
“Maybe I’ll take a bit to think about it,” I say.
And I say that not just because of their taunts, but because I genuinely can’t decide. I do like both of the dogs, and I’m not sure which one is more suited to us. Lucy looks up at me, her giggles fading off.
“Not a problem. It’s a big decision,” she says, “Take your time.”
She kneels down and affectionately tousles the black and white one’s fur. “You’re going to go on a long life journey with a dog,” she says, gazing adoringly at the pup, “It’s not a choice to make lightly.”
I can see the passion in her face. She loves each and every one of these animals she interacts with, and it brings out something vibrant and inviting in her.
If Barry and Cillian weren’t hovering nearby, I might have given into the temptation to kiss her, but even if it would please some smug part of me to stake my claim on her before they do, I feel compelled to do better for her, give her a romantic moment that’s more special somehow.
But that moment, with the sun shining on her face as she gazes adoringly at the collie, makes me sure that I have to have her. She draws me in like a magnet, and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t fight the pull.
She looks up at me and her breath catches as she meets my eyes. Her grin slowly melts away, her gaze locked on mine. For a long moment, the two of us are still, until Cillian, damn him, waves his arm between us.
“Hello? You two on Earth?” he asks.
Lucy snaps out of it and gets to her feet.
“I, uh, I should get on back,” she says, thrusting a hand into her back pocket.
“But here,” she thrusts a card at me, “That’s my cell number, give me a call or come by if you guys decide on a pup or have any questions or anything about the land.”
“We’ll be giving you a call very soon,” Barry says.
She blushes and smiles before gathering up the pups and heading home.
Chapter Four
Cillian
I think I got even less sleep than usual last night. I always sleep like shit, but this was a whole new level of bad.
But at least there was a reason for it this time. I couldn’t get Lucy off my mind. Those tight jeans she’d been wearing yesterday had highlighted an ass that a man could worship, and those buttons around her massive tits looked ready to pop under the swell of her soft flesh.
And damn if I hadn’t wanted to make those buttons pop off. All I wanted to do the entire time she was over was to rip that little white blouse off those tanned shoulders and get a better look at the white lace bra I’d caught a peek at between the buttonholes.
Plus, based on the look on her face when she’d been staring at my bare chest told me that I wasn’t the only one feeling the tension between us. But then Barry had jumped in and cock-blocked me.
It was pretty clear to me that they were both into her, too, and while we’d done a decent job of keeping the jealous rivalry under wraps, once Lucy had headed home, there hadn’t been much conversation in the house for the rest of the day, and what there was was chilly and succinct.
I trudge downstairs with my brain feeling waterlogged, grogginess smothering me under its warm weight. To my surprise, I don’t see Barry or Seamus hanging around downstairs. It’s unusual for either of them to dwell in their bedrooms, so I figure they must be outside.
I throw some bread in the toaster and pour a cup of coffee, and the first whiff of the drink starts waking some of the fuzziest parts of my brain. When I take a long swig of the hot, bitter liquid, it’s like a shock to my system and I start to feel a little more alive.
Seamus comes in from outside, wiping sweat from his face with his arm. His hands and knees are covered in dirt and green stains, to my surprise. He usually hates messing with the gardening-type stuff.
“Cleaned up some of the weeds,” he says gruffly, marching over to the sink and scrubbing his hands.
“Some particular reason?” I ask. “I was gonna take care of those this afternoon.”
He shrugs, shaking his hands dry.
“It needed to get done and I had the time,” he says.
“Well, thanks.”
He nods, pouring himself some juice, and wanders out into the living room, plunking down on the couch and flicking on the television.
“Have you seen Barry?” I call out into the living room, taking my toast out of the toaster and smearing butter on it.
“...Huh,” I hear after a long pause, “I haven’t.”
“He hasn’t come down at all? That’s weird,” I remark.
As if we’ve summoned him, he traipses down the stairs.“So I’ve been working on an offer for Lucy’s land,” he says, in lieu of greeting either of us, “And I think we can swing it, if we budget pretty carefully.”
I gather up my breakfast and join my brothers in the living room, plunking myself down beside Seamus. Barry has a stack of papers and passes one across the table to both of us. “Check this out.”
I lean in and look it over, taking another swig of coffee to clear the cobwebs from my mind and make sense of the numbers on the page. Fortunately, even to my clouded mind, it seems practical and makes sense. I see Seamus nod out of the corner of my eye
.
“Sounds pretty reasonable. You think we can afford the extra materials for that much of an expansion, though?” he asks.
Barry grimaces.
“Honestly? We might be able to scrape by, but it would be pretty tough without some investors of some kind, or taking out a loan. We’d be scraping the bottom of the barrel of all of our savings, which wouldn’t leave us anything to live on or maintain the place in any kind of way,” he sighs.
“Where would we even start to find investors around here?” I muse.
“Not a clue. We might have to talk to Delia about that,” Barry says, “She basically knows everyone in town, she can probably at least send us in the right direction.”
Seamus nods in agreement.
“Plus we should probably fill in Keenan and Rowan, since they’re part of this project.”
Barry and I both nod. But honestly, the idea of going over and talking more business is about the last thing I want.
“You know, maybe we should run this plan by Lucy before we decide how to fund it,” I hedge, angling for another opportunity to see her again.
“Not a bad idea,” Seamus pipes in. “After all, maybe she’s totally changed her mind on the whole thing and we’d just be wasting our time.”
Barry rolls his eyes.
“If you two were any more transparent, Windex would cast you in an ad,” he mutters.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Seamus says, clearly trying (and failing) to play nonchalant.
“You two both just want to go stare at Lucy some more!” he exclaims, “How stupid do you think I am?”
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t want to go admire the hottest woman I’ve ever met,” I say with a shrug. “But that doesn’t make Seamus’ point less valid.”
Barry tosses his papers down onto the table, letting out an exasperated breath, but then he rakes his hand through his long hair and sighs.
“You’re not wrong,” he says, “On either count. She really is something special, isn’t she?”
All Our Luck: Complete Irish Reverse Harem Series Page 11