by Maisey Yates
He couldn’t imagine a time when he wouldn’t want to. But, there was no point in saying that. “Exactly.”
“And we’re friends first.”
“Always.”
She let out a sigh of relief and her body melted against his. “I’m so... I don’t know. Just relieved. All of this has been hard. Everything. Cord being on TV all the time. Everybody acting like he’s a god when I know for a fact he’s underwhelming if anything.”
Finn laughed, more than a little satisfied by that estimation of her ex.
“It will be nice to... To be with somebody who knows. And to not have to try so hard,” she said, putting her hand on his face. “To pretend that I feel normal. And not to pretend that I’m not attracted to you.”
That was the biggest source of relief as far as he was concerned. The fact that he didn’t have to channel all his restraint into resisting her, and resisting the attraction that had only grown more intense over the past few weeks.
“Yeah,” he said. “Now all we have to deal with is a lifetime of emotional scarring and issues.”
She laughed, and the sound did a lot to ease the tension still lingering inside him. “Well,” she said, “thank God for that.”
“But first,” he said, looking down at that freckle on her shoulder, “I need to taste your skin again.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING saw Finn doing the walk of shame up to his front door. Normally, there would be no one around to witness such an event, but this morning when he walked into his kitchen, hungover from sex and lack of sleep, he had three very attentive witnesses.
It would have been comical if he didn’t find it so annoying.
Liam, Alex and Cain were all sitting at the kitchen table, and paused with their coffee halfway between the table and their lips when Finn made his entrance.
“We were about to file a missing persons report,” Alex said, leaning back in his chair and slinging his arm across the back.
“We almost called search and rescue,” Liam added.
“I just went to sleep,” Cain said.
“Leave it to you assholes to be up early today without me to drag you out of bed.”
“Assholes are good for that,” Alex said. “By which I mean only doing the right thing when it might bother somebody.”
“Job well done,” Finn growled, walking across the room and making quick work of the remaining coffee in the pot.
“You disappeared last night before things got good,” Liam said.
“Somehow,” Alex said, “I doubt that. I have a feeling Finn went to a private party.”
“Are you guys twelve, or what? I’m a grown ass man. If I stay out all night I’m not going to blush and giggle about what went on.” He felt protective of what had happened between himself and Lane. They didn’t need to know the details, and they definitely didn’t need to know he’d been with her.
“I’d like to ruminate on it for a bit.” Alex smiled. “I would like to ruminate in detail. I was distracted when you left, so I didn’t get to see you go. But I want to know who you left with.”
“Excuse me while I change my earlier question. Are you women?”
Liam lifted his coffee mug. “That’s sort of sexist, Finn. I feel sullied by our association.”
“Feel free to make a sign and march in the streets then, jackass.”
“I think I’ll just finish drinking my coffee.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You might have responded to a text,” Liam said. “Just one. So that we knew you weren’t lying dead or mortally wounded somewhere.”
He hadn’t even checked his phone yet today. “And you care about that?”
He had meant the question to sound somewhat skeptical, but it came out legitimately curious.
Liam lifted a shoulder. “Who’d ride us hard during ranch chores and make us wish for death?”
“Great,” Cain said. “Finn got laid. That’s all we’re going to hear about it. Frankly, I don’t want to hear any more about it. I want to go milk some cows.”
“Do you want to talk about that, Cain?” Alex asked. “Because that’s kind of concerning.”
“Every so often I’m sorry you weren’t named Abel.”
“Wow.” Alex took another sip of his coffee.
“We really do need to get to work,” Cain said, the slight drawl he had that the rest of them didn’t a little more pronounced this morning. “I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my teenager at some point today. I need to get her out of the house. She can’t just sit around until school starts in the fall. Mostly because neither of us will live through it.”
Cain drained his coffee and stood, heading toward the door. “See you out there.”
Finn had to admire—with grudging respect—the ease with which Cain had adapted to the ranch life. Granted, his older brother was used to this kind of setup, even if daily work had been a thing of the past.
It made it a lot harder to be bitter about his presence here.
The jury was still out on the other two.
“You were supposed to be our wingman,” Liam said.
“Dick move, abandoning us,” Alex said.
“That’s so strange,” Finn said, “because I don’t recall needing a wingman to get laid. If you do, maybe you need to up your game.”
“Probably easier when you know the woman you picked up,” Alex said, his tone overly innocent.
He shot his younger brother a deadly glare. “It’s not open for discussion.”
“Is anything in your life open for discussion, Finn?”
“That’s a very good question, Alex,” Finn said. “Which we can talk about after we discuss the details of your life, which you have so kindly laid out with transparency for all of us to see.”
“I was in the army. Now I’m not. Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Why aren’t you in the army anymore?”
Alex’s expression turned stony, serious, much more so than Finn was used to seeing. “I got tired of watching people I love die. How about that? Now you go.”
“Alex...” Liam turned to face his brother.
“Shit,” Finn said.
“No details necessary,” Alex returned. “It is what it is. War is hell, and all that clichéd shit. Dairy cows seem like a hell of a lot more fun than dodging explosions... What can I say. Plus, I have some responsibilities to take care of here.”
“What responsibilities? Related to the military stuff?” Finn asked.
“Like not your damn business,” Alex said.
“You have your stuff, I have mine,” Finn responded, before turning to Liam. “What about you? Do you want to tell me why Sabrina Leighton saw you sitting in Ace’s last night, and then turned around and ran out of the bar like she’d seen a ghost?”
Something in Liam’s expression shifted. “Not particularly.”
“No explanation at all?”
“Maybe I’m a ghost?”
He had a feeling Liam might be a ghost in Sabrina’s estimation. But he was less interested in the details of his brothers’ lives and hell of a lot more interested in getting them off his back.
“Here’s how I see it,” Finn said, not quite realizing this was how he saw it until he started talking. “You’re all pretty determined to stay here. That means we need to figure out how to exist together. We need to figure out what everyone’s function is going to be in the Donnelly Family Fun Time Hour. We’re dysfunctional as fuck. Have been for more than thirty years. I don’t think a few weeks together is going to fix that. Hell, it may take thirty years to fix that. But it doesn’t mean we can’t make this work.” He gritted his teeth against the instant denial that occurred inside of him.
&nb
sp; The Laughing Irish was his. Letting go of that, admitting that maybe his brothers had a right to be here, that maybe he was just going to have to make it work with them here... It wasn’t easy. But it was reality.
And maybe it was just being here with them that made it all click into place. Or maybe it was Lane. Maybe having her, the way he’d always wanted, had released some of the tension inside him. Had made things a little clearer.
His grandfather hadn’t trusted him. Whatever Finn had given hadn’t been enough. Callum had felt the need to include the others in spite of all Finn’s work and dedication. And Finn just had to accept that.
Just like he’d accepted the fact that his mother had walked away with no interest at all in coming back. Just like he had accepted that Liam and Alex had made suitable replacements for Finn and his mother where their father was concerned.
Two days ago it would’ve seemed impossible to make this concession. But last night he had finally been with Lane. And with that weight shifted off his shoulders everything else seemed a little bit easier to carry.
“That’s kind of what we’ve been waiting for,” Liam said.
“No you haven’t. You’ve just been hanging around taking orders from me.”
Liam snorted. “No. I told you in the beginning that I thought that friend of yours had a good idea. And that I thought we should do it. We have more manpower now than we did before, and I have all the cash you could ever want to inject in this place.”
“Thanks. But I don’t need your money.”
“It’s we,” Liam said. “Not you. And seriously, I could outfit these cows with diamond-studded milking machines.”
“But that’s ridiculous, so you won’t,” Finn said.
“You say that like ridiculousness has ever stopped Liam from doing anything in the past,” Alex said.
“I don’t know him well enough to comment on that,” Finn said. Honest, but the moment the words left his mouth he realized how depressing they were.
“I have a feeling that’s all going to change,” Liam remarked. “Probably pretty quickly.”
And, in another testament to just how good things had been with Lane last night, that comment didn’t even make Finn feel angry. It didn’t bother him at all. If anything, it made him feel a little bit hopeful.
Later, he would see Lane and he would thank her properly. And he would have another talk with her about those subscription boxes.
* * *
FINN HAD TEXTED her earlier and asked her to come over after she closed up shop. She didn’t know why, but she felt nervous. Giddy. Well, okay, she knew why.
She sighed and set about taking all of the giant tin pans full of pasta out of the backseat of her car. She had been so worked up that she had spent the day scurrying between the front of the store and the back kitchen.
She had needed something to keep herself busy. Cooking had been it. The Donnelly brothers always seemed grateful for the extra food, and now that all of them lived here they went through it a lot faster than when it had just been Finn.
She liked it. Liked taking care of all of them. When it suited her, and not on a daily basis. That would probably be more than a little bit onerous. Immediately, she was forced to imagine herself as Snow White, except instead of taking care of seven little men, it was four very large men and a cranky teenager.
She steeled herself against the onslaught of tension she was certain was going to hit the moment she came face-to-face with Finn. She was not going to be able to look at him without thinking about his naked body. No, there was no way. In fact, she had spent the entire day with images of Finn’s naked body superimposed over whatever she was doing.
That never happened to her. She just wasn’t the kind of person who lost her mind over sex. It was fine. But it wasn’t all-consuming. Finn was becoming a little bit all-consuming.
That was actually good, she reasoned, as she walked up the stairs to the front door of the Donnelly family home. She could use something that was all-consuming. Something that got her mind off everything that was happening with Cord.
She frowned. Not that anything really was happening with Cord where she was concerned. Cord McCaffrey might be a successful politician with a family and a life, but he wasn’t actually parading those facts around to hurt her. It occurred to her then that up until this very moment she had kind of felt that way.
Like he had been senatoring at her. Rather than just living his life.
She wasn’t sure the realization made her feel all that much better. She wasn’t really sure how she felt about him going on with his life. That sobering realization was still sitting in the back of her mind when the front door opened.
It wasn’t Finn on the other side, or any of his brothers. Instead, it was Violet. “Hi,” the girl said, not quite able to manage a smile.
“Hi,” Lane returned, shifting her hold on the food, bracing it up her thigh. “I brought dinner.”
Violet’s expression remained neutral. “Are you my new mommy?”
Lane laughed, half shocked, half amused. Violet’s taciturn father was certainly a good-looking man, but there was only one Donnelly that got her pulse racing. Not that she was going to say any of that to the sixteen-year-old. Who made her feel kind of freaking old seeing as she did think the girl’s dad was sexy.
“Violet,” came a warning voice from somewhere out of view. “Could you maybe just...not be yourself for a few minutes?”
“No. All childhood propaganda I consumed during my youth insisted that I be true to my inner voice. And my inner voice is feeling sarcastic today.”
“That’s hardly noteworthy,” Cain said, coming into view. “Let me know when your inner voice is feeling human again, and maybe we can talk.”
“That might be a while. My human inner voice is on hiatus until it can make its way back to civilization.”
Cain grimaced. “Then I guess I have to get used to the gremlin.”
Lane was almost sure she saw the ghost of a smile playing at the edges of Violet’s mouth. But she couldn’t be totally certain because the girl turned and went back up the stairs.
“I brought dinner. She might want to come back down,” Lane said.
The older Donnelly forced a smile. “Probably not. She might creep down after everybody else is done. That way she can limit the interaction.”
“What’s she doing with her time?”
“Texting her old friends. Basically, throwing herself into the life she had, and ignoring the life we have now.” Cain rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought bringing her here would help with things. But she seems even unhappier than she did back in Texas.”
“She’s bored,” Lane said simply.
“She assures me her cell phone is all she needs for entertainment.”
“Right. But she’s lying. Even if it’s mostly to herself. Take it from me—an exceedingly well-behaved teenager in my day—she needs to stay busy.”
“Unfortunately, I kind of see her point about Copper Ridge. There’s not much to do here.”
Lane smiled. “I guess not. But it was the source of my salvation when I was about seventeen. I came here, got away from my parents, moved in with my brother. And I got my first job.”
“That’s what Violet needs,” Cain said, looking suddenly decisive. “Work.”
“It would at least get her out of the house for a while.”
“Do you know of anyone who’s hiring?”
Lane thought for a moment. “Actually, I probably do. I have a friend who owns a bakery in town, and she was just telling me she’s a little bit short-staffed. But I work on Main Street so I can keep my ear to the ground for all kinds of jobs. The bakery might be really fun, though.”
“It doesn’t really have to be fun,” Cain said. “Because right about now it’s that or military s
chool.”
“Why would you consider military school?” Alex walked up behind Cain. “As you can see, the military did nothing to calm me down.”
“Can I come in?” Lane asked, holding up the massive container of food. “I am laden with carbs.”
“Oh,” Cain said, reaching out and taking the pasta from her hands. “Sorry about that. Usually I’m a little more considerate.”
“He’s not,” Alex said. “But maybe to women.”
“Don’t ask my ex-wife.”
“We can’t,” Alex said, “because she left. Because the problem was clearly her.”
“That might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Alex,” Cain said, walking ahead of his younger brother and into the kitchen.
“That means you can expect me to be a dick for the rest of the evening.”
“I already did.”
Lane flexed her fingers, curling and uncurling them, nerves making her stomach tighten and her palms sweaty. It was kind of crazy. Feeling nervous to see Finn. A man she had seen nearly every day for the past decade. And yet, she was almost vibrating with tension.
She had underestimated how difficult it would be to see him—for the first time since they’d been naked together—with an audience. An audience that was probably a whole lot more observant than she would like.
She heard footsteps on the stairs and looked up. Her throat went dry, tight, and then everything else tightened after. Her lungs, her chest... Her... Everything.
Finn. Suddenly, the whole world seemed to get quieter, seemed to slow down. He was... Well, he was kind of beautiful. She had always known he was good-looking, but she had never known it quite this way. This way that was coupled with intense, sensual pleasure at knowing exactly what it was like to feel those hands on her skin.
To know what it was to have his lips pressed against her.
He was wearing a cowboy hat, a tight black T-shirt and a pair of jeans that hugged his thighs and other parts of him she was now intimately familiar with.
There was a dusting of golden stubble over his square jaw, just enough to lend a gritty edge to all that male beauty he possessed.