The Lovin’ Is Easy (Triple Diamond Book 1)

by Gemma Snow

  “You might want to tie your hair up,” he said on a small laugh. “I think it’s pretty obvious what we’ve been doing in here, if that look is anything to go by. If Micah or Dec takes one look at you, they’ll know exactly what took place in the barn behind the stables.”

  “Good call.” Madison combed her fingers through the tangled strands of hair before she was able to knot it into a loose braid. She checked her skirt one more time, fixed her top and looked up at both of the men standing beside her. How had she ever thought either of them intimidating? Now, she felt nothing but comfort and joy and happiness in their presence—definitely still dangerous, then.

  “Listen, I wanted to go talk to the woman at the bakery stall for a bit,” she said, because she had wanted to speak to the woman at the bakery stall and because she felt the sudden clawing need to get away from Christian and Ryder before she spilled her guts and said something that would bring this whole delicious little fantasy to an end. “I’ll catch up with you guys in a little bit, though, okay?”

  Ryder looked just a little skeptical, like he wanted to know why the bakery stall and why she hadn’t invited them to come along, but Christian played her savior and just nodded.

  “Just don’t go running off with any other cowboys,” he said, smiling one of those rare, real smiles that changed his whole face. Her favorite smile.

  “Not a chance.”

  Before she could help herself, she brushed a kiss across first Ryder’s cheek, then Christian’s before slipping out of the barn door and back into the bustling fair without another backward glance.

  Chapter Twelve

  Christian had gotten halfway across the barn and toward the rest of the fair when Ryder’s voice snapped through the air like a whip.

  “What the hell was that about?”

  When Christian turned around, Ryder had his arms crossed, the intimidating scowl on his face one that had long been reserved for his father and misbehaving livestock. Not that Christian hadn’t ever fought with Ryder before. They’d scuffled and tumbled more times than he could count, sometimes drunk, sometimes pissed, sometimes both. They’d given each other plenty of black eyes over the years and more than one broken nose. But the expression on Ryder’s face now, and the strength of his stance, told Christian that the coming altercation had nothing to do with a game of cards, a waitress or unmanaged teenage boy angst. Whatever Ryder was pissed about right now seemed to go a lot deeper than that.

  “What the hell was what about?” Christian asked, confused as all hell. They’d just spent the last thirty minutes having mind-blowing sex with an incredible woman—what the hell could be wrong?

  Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s up his ass. It’s the same damn thing up yours.

  So what if it is? The whole thing was temporary and label-less and they never, ever needed to have this conversation, nor the fight that was simmering on the horizon just a few feet away from him.

  “‘Don’t go running off with any other cowboys’?” Ryder’s expression was tight. “What does that mean?”

  Christian clenched his fist at his side, ready to start swinging if it came to it. Ryder maybe had more muscle, but Christian was the faster of the two in hand-to-hand, so it would be a pretty even match.

  “So what?” Anger filled Christian for the first time. “So what if I don’t want her to go running off with other men? Shouldn’t you be happy about the suggestion? I’ve seen the way you look at her and I know you don’t want to let her go—” He had plenty more to say, but Ryder interrupted him with a shove, sending him two feet out of the barn door and into the dusty alley between the fair and the farm it was on.

  “I don’t look at her any way,” Ryder growled. Oh, Christian knew that growl. It had gotten him into as many fights as Ryder in college, when he’d had to go in and save his best friend’s ass at a bar or party.

  “You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me.” Christian shoved Ryder back a step. Ryder took the step forward again and they stood face-to-face, chests nearly touching. “You want that woman in your life and you hate the idea that she doesn’t seem to want to stick around. You like her.”

  “Back off, Christian,” Ryder said, his voice dangerously low. “I’m telling you right now to back off.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Christian replied. “Clearly something is up your ass where Maddy is concerned and I want to know what the hell it is. You may be my best friend, Ryder, but I’m sure as shit not letting you hurt that woman.”

  Ryder sucker-punched him in the gut. It was rude and fast and it knocked the breath clear from his stomach. Christian gasped and Ryder shook his head.

  “I’m not the one who hurts women,” he said. “The bad boy is all your territory. Break their hearts and leave them behind—you do that. Not me.”

  Sure, he had done that. Twice, to be specific. It wasn’t as though there was a string of women around the block just asking for his attention.

  “What the fuck, Ryder?” Christian got his breath back and swung for Ryder’s jaw. He missed as Ryder moved out of the way, but Christian got a decent blow above his shoulder and collarbone. Ryder staggered back a little, kicking up a plume of dust from the road.

  “Don’t ‘what the fuck’ me, Christian. You think I’m the one who looks at her that way? You should catch a glimpse of that dewy-eyed expression you make at her. Let’s be serious here. No matter what, you care around her, you like her and think she’s important. How I feel has nothing to do with that.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ryder—it has everything to do with that. Don’t you fucking get it? She won’t have just one of us. It doesn’t work that way. It’s all or nothing. Use your fucking head, doctor.” He pushed Ryder in the shoulder, the injured shoulder, one more time and this time Ryder landed a punch to his jaw instead of his gut and Christian fell back a step.

  Then it was all-out battle, feet kicking up a storm of dust and rocks in the long aisle of people, arms and legs flying out at odd and concerning angles. Christian got in a crack to Ryder’s jaw and Ryder landed one more punch to Christian’s gut before they were both rolling around in the dirt and dust, scratching and fighting like they hadn’t done since they’d been seventeen years old.

  Then, just after Christian had got Ryder into a deep headlock and Ryder then pinned Christian to the ground, two pairs of shoes appears in their line of vision.

  “Up, both of you. Now.” Deckard McCormick might have been a happy-go-lucky guy most of the time, willing to flirt with anything on two legs, but when he used that tone of voice, there was no question in anyone’s mind how he led a successful search and rescue team, saving lives and protecting people all the time. Two strong hands gripped Ryder’s shoulders and pulled him off Christian, and two more dragged Christian up off the ground. When they were both standing at last, Christian turned around to see that Micah was holding him at a safe distance from where Dec was holding Ryder.

  “What the fuck, guys?” Micah asked, in the low tone that somehow had a way of making a guy feel bad for what he’d just been caught doing. “It’s about her, isn’t it? Jesus Christ…” He sighed then nudged Christian forward. “Talk. Now.”

  Dec did the same with the Ryder until he and Christian were standing perhaps a foot apart.

  Christian rolled his head back on his shoulders and let out a low, earth-shaking sigh.

  “I like her, man.” His voice couldn’t be said to rise above a whisper. “I like her for a lot more than just the sex and just the temporary and all that. I’ve never liked a woman this way before and I know you like her, too.”

  Ryder sucked on his teeth and when he spat, blood flew out. Christian grimaced. It was obvious he’d never meant for it to go down like that. Ryder was his brother, his best fucking friend in the whole world, the guy he’d die for without question. But Maddy Hollis had a hold on him that he just couldn’t shake and the truth was, he knew deep inside she’d never stay for just one of them—if she made the choice to stay at al
l.

  “Yeah, man,” Ryder said, his voice tart. “I like her too. A lot.”

  “Shake hands, both of you,” Dec said, that same authoritative tone to his normally easy voice. “Now.”

  Ryder stuck his hand out first and after a long moment Christian reached out and accepted it. He sighed. “I just… I dunno, man. I was hoping for once we might be able to do something on our own. Does that make sense? It’s always been us through everything, but I never thought this part would be us, too.”

  As if at a distance, Christian registered Dec and Micah stepping back, allowing them to have this conversation without an audience. Ryder pulled him into an embrace, tough and rough, just like the man himself, but telling, too.

  “So what?” Ryder said after a minute. “We’ve done everything else in life together and we’ve succeeded, survived, whatever it took to get to the other side. There’s something about Maddy, Christian. I couldn’t tell you what it is, but I feel more for her than I’ve ever felt for anyone, and I have to be honest, it scares the shit out of me.”

  “It scares me, too,” Christian admitted, his tone low and quiet. “It’s been less than a week and she has us both wrapped around her finger.” He glanced back to see if Dec and Micah were getting off on their whole true-confession thing, but the other two guys, having believed that Christian and Ryder were done with their little WWE scene for the day, had hightailed it, giving them space.

  “We have to tell her everything,” he said. “All of it. She needs to know the truth about Mason leaving us a stake in ownership and the loan and everything. And she needs to know how we feel about her, too. I want to ask her to stay.”

  Ryder nodded. “Let’s ask her to stay. Together, after we’ve told her everything else. I don’t want her to find out we’ve been keeping the agreement with Mason a secret.”

  Christian wiped his sweaty, no doubt bloody hair out of his eyes and felt a little lighter in the chest. The sooner they got this all over with and cleared away, the sooner they could tell Maddy how they felt and ask her to give them a chance to prove themselves good enough for her.

  “Yeah. I don’t want her thinking we seduced her to stay long enough for us to sign the papers with the bank.” He was about to say how that would never have been their style in the first place and that they should both feel a little shitty about it—he sure did—but his stomach dropped like a fucking anvil and no words escaped.

  Maddy stood just at the end of the lane, barely visible through a small clearing of trees, and it was so much more than clear that she had heard them.

  “I guess that’s it, then.” Maddy’s voice flatlined, the sound of it like a punch to the gut. Sure, they should have been honest from the start, but it hadn’t taken half a minute for them to both him and Ryder to realize just how colossal a mistake they had made. Hell, they had just agreed to come clean about everything. No way she would believe that now, though.

  And why the hell should she, when she’d been so honest, so open about everything, especially about her dickhead ex-fiancé, who hadn’t treated her the way anyone deserved to be treated, but most definitely not Maddy. Judging by the expression on her face, she’d take her ex over them right now, and the truth of that was a knife slicing his shattering heart.

  “Maddy…” He took a step forward, but she backed out of the clearing and into the lane. The hurt in her eyes turned to something far more dangerous, a firewall of anger neither he nor Ryder would be able to breach.

  “Oh, no.” She shook her head, her tone hot with rage. “You don’t get to call me that. No way do you get to call me that.” She stepped back, toward the larger fair, toward the crowds and the safety that wasn’t them. He hated that she no longer felt safe with them, even as he understood exactly why.

  “While we’re on the subject of hard truths, I was going to tell you both that I’m considering turning Holmwood into a wedding venue for extra income and leaving the California event scene behind. See, that’s what I was talking to Mrs. Potter about, how I might carve out a career for myself here, a life.” She paused, looking at them like Christian looked at shit on the bottom of his boots.

  “More fool me for thinking either of you might want to be involved in that life. Guess I don’t need to worry about that, since you two seem more than happy to fuck me over any way you can. Isn’t that right?” The smile she shot him was full of venom and it hurt worse than any snakebite.

  “We were going to tell you,” Ryder tried. Out of the corner of his eye, Christian saw what he knew to be panic on Ryder’s face, the same panic Christian felt bursting in his own chest. They had barely known this woman a week, but she was becoming something important to them that transcended that shortness, something they both agreed was very much worth holding onto.

  “After you got the loan from the bank?” she asked, her voice bitter. “After you bought the ranch out from under me, while you were literally under me?” Her scoff was self-admonishing to the core. “Well, go ahead. Buy your part-ownership in the ranch. I don’t give a damn.” She shook her head, steam practically spilling from her ears, her face red and eyes swelling with hurt.

  “After everything I told you about Joshua and my parents…” She divided her fury between them. “You both know what I’ve gone through this week. Jesus Christ, you told me you’d take care of me. You told me to trust you, that you’d stop whenever one of us felt uncomfortable. Well, here I am, saying stop.” She turned and stalked down the lane.

  “Madison, where the hell are you going?” Ryder called.

  “I’m getting a ride home,” she said. “I don’t really want to be around you guys right now.”

  Then she was down the alley and into the throng of people, leaving Christian feeling like he’d just swallowed a cement truck. He looked at Ryder, who had gone a little pale in the face of her admission, his expression saying everything Christian felt. They needed to fix this and they needed to do it fast, because once she left, there’d be no way in hell they could get her back. It was all of a sudden the most important thing in the world that she didn’t leave.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Madison was proud of herself. She made it all the way to the bedroom, shut and locked the door, kicked the blasted boots across the floor and sat down on the bed before bursting into tears. She wasn’t a crier, not as a rule. She hadn’t even cried when she’d found Joshua. But overhearing Christian and Ryder, men she had felt some inexplicable connection to over the past week, discussing in an offhand manner how best to keep her distracted while they bought the ranch out from under her made Madison feel sick to her stomach. She hadn’t expected declarations of love—that would have been insane—but something was growing between them, something a little more than sex, more than friendship.

  Or so she had thought.

  It turned out she was just absolute shit at picking men.

  For a moment, Madison considered calling Lily, but if she were being completely honest, she so didn’t feel like explaining to anyone else how much of a fool she was. No, she needed to keep busy, keep her mind off the ache blooming behind her heart and the overwhelming sense of shame and hurt.

  A small sound from under the bed started her and a second later Lucy jumped up, landing in a pile of fluffy gray limbs. She looked up, her eyes devoid of that cat condescension, and climbed into Madison’s lap, snuggling her head against the inside of Madison’s knee. It seemed everyone—herself included—wanted her to stay here, except the people she most wanted to miss her when she was gone.

  No more wallowing. No more self-pity party. Time to take action. First, she grabbed her phone and made plans to go home. Good, there was an eight a.m. flight, which meant she could be ass-out of Triple Diamond before the sun was all the way up—far, far away from Christian Harlow and Ryder Dean before they could do any more damage.

  Damn good thing I didn’t quit my job yet. Sure, she’d get ranch profits soon enough, but for now she needed stability and structure—and her job was nothing if
not time-consuming. Downtime was just a way for her to beat on herself a little longer for the stupid decisions she seemed to keep making.

  A distraction would be great right now. She’d gotten her work done during the day, finished her book on the flight over, and didn’t have wireless in the house, since she hadn’t bothered asking about the password. Negative points for another dumb move. Madison was considering springing for an unlimited data plan when she caught sight of a brown box sitting on the bedside table.

  Mason’s photos—the pictures of Mom.

  She grabbed the box, careful not to jostle the kitten, and settled crossed-legged on the bed. When she lifted the cover off the box, there it was, right on top, a faded photo of her mother as a child. If Madison got up from the bed, she’d be able to see the same tree out of the window, though, of course, it was much bigger now. Ellena Hollis—at the time Ellena Westerly King—had been a beautiful child. Unlike Madison, she was fair-haired and blue-eyed, just this side of too thin, and smiling.

  Madison placed the photo down with a gentle hand and reached for the next. It showed a slightly older kid with his hand wrapped around her mother’s shoulder, their twin expressions of joy and mischief so similar that Madison couldn’t doubt that this was her uncle Mason, the man who had owned the Triple Diamond, the stranger who had left her everything.

  The siblings, and Madison’s young, unfamiliar grandparents, aged through the photos. High school graduation and prom photographs, images from the summertime, with the sandy-haired kids growing into young adults, moments frozen in time—canoes on the lake, smiling faces in the big farm fields of vegetables, state fairs and Halloweens and Christmases.

  Madison’s eyes burned as she turned over each picture with care to read the date, imagining her mother and her stranger uncle—not such a stranger anymore—growing up on Triple Diamond. What a life that must have been. Madison had known her mother grew up on a farm. She’d heard the stories throughout her life, of the animals and the open fields, and rising before the sun was full up, but Ellena hadn’t specified the details and certainly hadn’t mentioned that her ranch was one of the biggest in the state of Montana, or that it was worth several million a year.