Romeo (Payne Brothers Romance Book 6)

by Sosie Frost

  My life existed in a tempest of anxiety, dread, and worst-case scenarios.

  And yet nothing scared me as much as what I felt for this woman.

  What the hell was I doing with her? When she smiled, I froze. When she reached for me, I sweated. And when she’d given herself—all of herself—to me…

  I fell for her.

  And I damned myself with a single pathetically useless thought…

  What if…

  What if I kept her close?

  Fucking her once had been a privilege a guy like me didn’t deserve. Taking her twice was a blessing. The third, fourth, and fifth times had been pure selfishness. A blur of fantasy and decadence and utter disregard for my own self-preservation.

  I didn’t understand these feelings. And that was fine. They weren’t mine to comprehend. But I’d stolen those moments with Lady, and now that heart-pounding, brain-melting, gut-punching desire trapped me in a personal hell.

  Was this overjoyed torment what my brothers had found in their women?

  Was this guilt-ridden pleasure what Lady had waited for so long to enjoy?

  Why didn’t anyone ever warn me about those stomach-curdling fears laced within these feelings? Sure as shit, my brothers hadn’t said a goddamned thing about how terrifyingly perfect they felt with their women.

  Maybe it was cowardice.

  Maybe I was just a realist.

  But I lived each day according to my own expectations. It was all I could do when every goddamned bite of food became a risk and my own fucking body attacked itself from the inside.

  I knew sleeping with a random girl in a bar would get me through the night.

  I knew I could eat a bagel for breakfast, but the orange juice would fuck me over.

  I knew that my disease would cost me time, money, and years off my life. Cancer. Heart disease. Every breath I took spun that genetic wheel.

  I was the last Payne born. I’d be the first to die.

  I never planned for shit, but I had a good feeling for what awaited me. More needles. More doctors. Amputated feet. Hardened arteries.

  And it was fine as long as I knew what to expect.

  With Lady?

  I had no goddamned clue what would happen next.

  But that hope would tear me apart.

  The park slowly filled with people. Umbrellas and folding chairs, coolers and illegal grills plunked onto the embankment overlooking the soccer field that now housed a growing contingent of old, drunken men wielding antique guns. If we were lucky, Lady and I could sneak out of the show before a drunken Raymond Adamski ultimately staged a coup in the ranks and did his best to alter history to include beers, brats, and babes in the trenches.

  As was tradition.

  I glanced through the trees. Clear path to the parking lot. I could have this woman in her bed in ten minutes—five if she’d get on her knees in my barn.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I’m sure there’s some dirty fantasy you’re just itching to act out.”

  I loved how her gaze teased over my body. “You mean…besides having toe-curling, mind-blowing, utterly deviant sex every night?”

  It’d been one hell of a week, but Lady was still far more virgin than vixen.

  “We’ve got so many fun activities to try…” I kissed her. “Start with the basics. Hard and fast. Gentle and slow. Rough and…well, that might be too much for you.”

  Lady’s eyebrow arched. “I’m braver than I look.”

  “And I’m stronger than you can imagine.”

  “I can bend.”

  “And I could break you.”

  “Maybe I’d like that.”

  “Oh, you’d fucking love it.”

  Her words trembled with eager delight. “Then I’m all yours.”

  Forget the reenactment.

  I’d fuck her like an animal right there.

  “Get on your knees,” I ordered.

  Lady gently returned to her own feet, but she didn’t heed the command. She pointed to the soccer field and pouted.

  “But this was your plan, Quint. We shouldn’t leave now.”

  “This is why you can’t trust me to make any decision that doesn’t involve my cock.”

  Lady checked over her shoulder, ensuring our little liaison was still hidden from the growing crowds beyond the trees.

  “This might be our best chance to get our families to talk,” she said. “Especially out in the open…near witnesses. They can’t fight in front of children.”

  And I couldn’t step forward into the daylight with the goddamned cavalry in my pants preparing to charge. I kissed her hand.

  “Too risky,” I said. “Let’s head back and plan it out some more.”

  “You hate planning.”

  “Not when I do it naked.”

  “Naked is more fun,” she said.

  She had to concede that point now. I’d proven it to her dozen times.

  I couldn’t move fast enough. “I’ll get the car.”

  But Lady grabbed my arm before I sprinted through the damned woods like a mad man. She dragged me to the tree line, cautiously peeking around the trunk of an old oak to stare toward the fields. I caught her before she leaned too close to a tendril of poison ivy.

  “I thought this was a World War II reenactment?” she asked.

  “It is.”

  “Then…” Her head tilted. “Why is the Confederacy here?”

  My bayonet was fixed, but Lady was on the move.

  No one had ever warned me that getting close to a woman would mean dreading the moments when she slipped away.

  I kept a respectable distance while maintaining a perfect view of her bubble butt—an ass so fucking tight and round it should have been criminal for her to wear those short-shorts.

  Over the fields, two very different armies from two very different centuries lined up to wage war. A dozen confederate soldiers mingled amid a squadron of Nazis. The battlefield loaded with machine guns and snipers as well as cannons and horses.

  Most of the audience appeared confused. This wasn’t unusual. Most of Butterpond’s reenactments tended to borrow from history in lieu of faithful retellings. Still, this scenario befuddled even the most seasoned of reenactors, including the soldiers who had been present for the World War I Battle of Verdun in which Dumbledore and Harry Potter saved the French from the Orcs of Mordor.

  Never a dull moment in Butterpond.

  Lady was crazy to want to leave.

  “Well, shit…” I laughed. “We can’t leave now. Clive McDonald just left to grab his wizard robes. We gotta see how this plays out.”

  “It’s not this battle that worries me…” Lady pointed up the hill, at section the Paynes had claimed with blankets, picnic baskets, and enough rugrats to make our own army. “Why are my brothers marching up that path to your family?”

  It’d been a while since Butterpond saw real bloodshed.

  “This was not part of the plan…” I said. “Stay here.”

  “Yeah, right. Then it’ll be five against two.” Lady chased me as I sprinted through the field and raced up the hill. “I’m coming too.”

  For the past week, I’d loved those words. Now? The last thing I needed was more Barlows to funnel toward an already irritated pack of Paynes. Fortunately, a wayward church member nabbed Duke and Marquis before they blindsided my brothers. Lady joined her family and began damage control.

  Wished I could do the same, but the Paynes had a way of self-sabotaging any chance we got.

  My brother, Julian, was beloved by all—but he’d practically sold his soul to become the golden boy of Butterpond. He had his reasons. Without schmoozing his way into the hearts and minds of all corners of society, he wouldn’t have secured the variance to rebuild our barn. Also wouldn’t have scored with the town’s zoning officer or knocked her up or got married.

  The good thing about chaos was that it didn’t always end badly.

  His wife, Micah, forced him to stand up straight as she ad
justed the collar button on his Confederate regalia.

  “You look handsome.” She tucked the grey cap over his head and traced the line of his jaw with her meticulously manicured nails. “Never thought I’d like you in uniform, cowboy.”

  Cassi snorted. Varius paged through his Bible, searching for any sort of sermon that might have forgiven the events which were about to unfold in our town.

  If he hadn’t found any divine explanation for Butterpond yet, he wouldn’t get it now.

  Julian squirmed, an unusual sight for a man with so many rods and screws imbedded in his spine that he’d become as much metal as bone.

  “This…isn’t a good idea,” Julian said. “Doesn’t feel right at all.”

  Micah dropped her designer purse into the dirt so she could hoist their son onto her hip. The little guy gave a slobbery grin of three teeth and waved at his daddy.

  “Oh, what’s wrong?” Micah asked. “You promised Nick’s N’Actors you’d do this.”

  Jules tugged at his uniform. “Yeah…but…I thought I’d be…”

  “What?”

  “They put me on the Confederacy.” He hissed at his beautiful black wife. “And I’m a…and you’re…”

  “Oh, you big baby.” Micah frowned. “This is for the town. It’s an examination of history. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “We already got the barn. Why do I gotta keep doing all this weird shit?”

  Micah handed off her son, positioning him in Julian’s arms so she could take a picture.

  “You just make everything so difficult, Jules.”

  “Pot meet kettle.”

  “All you gotta do is go out in the field and be Wounded Soldier Number 2. You get shot. You die. It’s all very dramatic—you should love it.”

  Julian appealed to Varius for help. “You hearing this?”

  The good minister offered his best advice. “Thou shalt not win arguments with your wife.”

  Micah huffed. “All I’m asking is that you smile in your Confederate uniform while holding your biracial son for a photograph.”

  I lived for this shit.

  “Looking good, Jules,” I said. “Should have taken the picture back on the plantation.”

  Julian growled. “Shut up. Don’t see you out there in uniform.”

  “At least I’d know to wear the right one.”

  Julian scowled at Micah. “See, princess? Dad was always Union.”

  “Wrong war, General Lee,” I said. “Why the hell are you dressed for the Civil War?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s World War II today, dipshit.”

  Julian ripped the buttons off his tunic and started to strip. “Thank God. Micah, delete those pictures now.”

  She cackled. “Already uploaded to Instagram, cowboy.”

  “Jesus.” Julian wove a hand through his hair. He was too young to get this aggravated, but at least it entertained the rest of us. Unfortunately, his frown only darkened. He glared behind me. “What the hell do they want?”

  The crowds parted, but the Paynes knew when to circle the wagons. My family bound together—Julian and Micah, Rem and Cassi and the kids, Varius and Glory with Lulu. None of them seemed very happy to greet Duke and Marquis Barlow.

  While Julian rocked an ensemble one hundred years too early, Duke and Marquis chose to attend the reenactment in their usual formal attire. Pressed suits. Dress shoes. Little prim pocket squares of red and blue silks. And yet, not a spec of dirt had dared to scuff their polished shoes.

  Duke buttoned his jacket and declined a greeting. Lady chased behind Marquis, but she could do little to enforce any space between her brothers and Julian.

  “Can you explain the incident at the market this morning?” Duke didn’t ask a question—he demanded an answer. A very poor choice of tone when interacting with my family.

  Fortunately, Julian’s musket was only made of Styrofoam. “Thought you paid your lawyer a couple hundred bucks an hour to talk for you?”

  Marquis snorted. “This isn’t about Spencer Townsend’s vandalism. You know what you did this morning.”

  Julian only shrugged. He glanced to me.

  “I’m gonna need more information,” I said. “I pull a lot of shit every day…though I might have an alibi for this morning.”

  Lady’s eyes widened. Even her shock was too damned cute.

  Duke stood proud—all the easier to knock him down. “We had hoped the Paynes might explain why a group of five drunken Nazi soldiers piled into our market this morning to pick up an order of fifty pounds of pasta salad on behalf of the Paynes.”

  To my surprise, it was Lady who laughed. “Why the hell would they do that?”

  Her brother scowled. “So that an entire squad of Nazis could pose in front of our deli counter in order to take multiple publicity shots for the Historical Society.” He glared at Julian. “Under your order, I now have dozens of photographs of Nazis loitering in my store—buying all of our pasta and macaroni salads, racing each other in shopping carts down the toilet tissue aisles, and purchasing all of their items in the express line while insisting they had nien or less.” Duke held his arms out. “So, I have you to blame for a viral marketing campaign spreading through Twitter calling it #BlitzkriegBogo.”

  Wrong thing to say in front of my family.

  Julian howled. “Are you kidding me?”

  “As if you didn’t plan it?” Duke asked.

  “Wasn’t me.” Julian laughed. “But I’d like to shake the hand of the man who did.”

  Cassi glared at me. “Quint?”

  To my shame, I had to deny it. “I wish it had been me.”

  Duke frowned. “Well, it wasn’t the preacher.”

  Varius nodded. “The church outlawed pasta salad during the picnic of 2015.”

  Duke glanced at his twin and returned his attention to Julian. “Aren’t we getting a little old for pranks?”

  “Told you before. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “You expect me to believe that?”

  “Never believed us before,” I said. “Why start now?”

  “Someone will answer for this. This sort of viral propaganda is grounds for slander or libel or—”

  My brother, Marius, called from behind us, doing his best to hide his limp as he scaled the hill. He clapped a burly hand on Duke’s shoulder, and, with a deliberate pressure, guided him away from the family.

  “Good,” Marius said. “My pasta salad got here on time.”

  His girlfriend’s border collie burst from under his good leg and nearly tumbled him down the hill. Fortunately, Gretchen seemed adapt at balancing both the lumbering, one-legged veteran and the car seat carrying their daughter, the cutest baby girl to grace Butterpond.

  I respected Marius.

  I loved Marius.

  But I had no idea why the idiot was wearing his old SEAL uniform.

  Julian stared at the camo. Marius frowned at his greys.

  “The hell are you wearing?” Marius asked.

  Julian swore. “What war are you reenacting?”

  “The email said to dress in uniform…I figured that meant my old one. Why are you a rebel?”

  “Why are you buying fifty pounds of pasta salad?”

  Lady slipped away from her brothers to search her phone. She studied the various Instagram posts from town and glanced at the soldiers below, forming ranks between the Third Reich and Pickett’s Charge.

  “There were two emails sent,” she said. “We’ve had a bit of a mix-up.”

  Micah laughed. “I’ll say. Confederates versus Nazis versus one Navy SEAL.”

  Marius shrugged. Even without a leg, the man stood imposing enough to back Duke and Marquis away.

  “I like my odds,” Marius said.

  Gretchen scolded him. “You’re not participating. You’ve gotta deliver the pasta salad to the reenactors just in time to kiss three babies and get your photo taken at the podium.” She’d stuffed their campaign schedule in th
e diaper bag, but handed Duke the spare wipes and diapers as she fished in the pocket for her clipboard. “Sorry, sailor. But I need your one good leg hoofing it around to schmooze people before the debate.”

  Micah hummed. “If he’s not participating…then do we root for the Nazis or the Confederacy?”

  Varius sighed. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Gandalf or Princess Elsa will save the day.”

  I took the phone from Lady, comparing both emails.

  And I realized pretty quickly where I’d fucked up.

  “So, you thought it’d be funny to send the Nazi’s into the store?” Duke asked.

  Sure, Marius lacked charisma, but he had a good head on his monster shoulders. He grinned.

  “We’re banned from the store, remember?” he asked. “But I wanted to donate lunch to our faithful reenactors. The men and women who work so diligently each and every performance to honor our armed forces and present the history of Butterpond to its…its…” He snapped his fingers at Gretchen. “What about its citizens?”

  “Hard-working and patriotic citizens.” Gretchen shoved the script at his chest. “You promised me you memorized the speech.”

  “Claudia kept me up half the night.”

  “Don’t you blame your baby.”

  He winked. “You kept me up the other half.”

  “Enough!” Duke said. “I’ve got a market full of Nazis, no pasta salad left for the rest of my customers, and one mayoral candidate to blame.”

  I handed the phone back to Lady.

  “Shit.” My profanity earned a cascade of shushes from the new parents in my family. “I think I know what happened.”

  Lady crossed her arms. “What did you do?”

  “Confused a hell of a lot of people…” I laughed. “And, consequently, rewrote history just a little bit. You guys…stay here. I’ll take care of this.”

  Duke and Marquis were content to discuss damage control and potential liabilities, and my brothers banded together preparing for their own battle atop the hill. I hurried back to the field, but Lady had followed. Closely.

  Wasn’t sure she realized the questions that would be raised within an already confused and disoriented town event. A bewildered Butterpond was just as dangerous as an angry Butterpond. The only thing that spread quicker than gossip…