Come To Me (Dare With Me #3) - J.H. Croix Page 0,5

to argue. To a fault, no one in our family held back when it came to expressing feelings.

“Remind me where you’re from?” Grant prompted.

While Grant was a pilot, he hadn’t been in the Air Force with us. He was seven years younger than Flynn.

“All over the place. I was born in Texas, but my dad signed up for the military and we bounced around. We made it back to Texas later when my dad was stationed there. That’s where I finished high school. Because both my parents were fluent in Spanish, along with the rest of us, he got a good job as a translator after he retired from the military. After that, he started his own construction business. It worked out really well for him.”

“How do you like Alaska then? It’s a far cry from Texas.”

I shrugged. “It is, but when you’re a military brat, you get used to being in different places. I might’ve been born in Texas, but we left by the time I hit first grade. I suppose I know the state well because we made it back there later on, but home is more of a feeling than a place for me. I love Alaska. It’s beautiful, and I’ve got you guys. Y’all are family just as much as my sisters are.”

Speaking of sisters, my phone rang then. I glanced at the screen. “It’s Harley. I better take this, or she’ll give me hell,” I commented.

The guys chuckled as I stood and walked into the kitchen to take the call. “Hey, sis.”

“Hey, can I come visit?” my sister asked, getting right to the point, as she was wont to do.

“You know you’re always welcome. What’s going on?”

“I just dumped Joey, and I need a place to stay. There’s no fucking way I’m going back to that job to stare at his face anymore. So, I quit my job too. I thought maybe I could crash up there for a while and figure out what I want to do next,” Harley explained.

Harley had a touch of a temper, not the bad kind, but the quick kind. She never pitched a fit. She made fast decisions and acted on them immediately when she was upset.

I thought about Elias’s empty bedroom upstairs. “You’re welcome to stay. Give me a heads up on when you’ll be here.”

“It’ll be in a few weeks. I’m gonna go stay with Terese for two weeks,” she explained, referring to another one of our sisters. “I haven’t seen her in a bit and then I’ll come up there.”

“That’ll work.”

“Perfect. Love you.”

The line clicked in my ear the second I said, “Love you too.”

Shaking my head with a laugh, I stared at the phone in my hand and took a breath. I loved my youngest sister, but sometimes she stirred things up. She also always had an opinion on my life. It would be interesting to have her here.

Chapter Three

Gemma

I took a bite of the scone and a subtle orange flavor broke across my tongue. “Oh, my God,” I moaned, my words coming out muffled because I was chewing. I moaned again and swallowed. Leveling my gaze with Cammi’s, I said, “This is amazing. I thought you said baking wasn’t your forte.”

Cammi smiled, her blue eyes twinkling. “It’s not. I set up a gig with Daphne out at the resort. She’s going to do a rotation of baked goods for me since they have room in the kitchen out there. She’s incredible. We’ve even got a plan for delivery with the guys who come to fly every day. Between them, somebody comes to town every single day. They drop them off for me the afternoon before, and I pop them in the oven the next morning.”

“Wow. I already thought your coffee was incredible, but now with this, you’re taking it to the next level.” I meant every word. I’d discovered Misty Mountain Café on my second day in town, and I loved it.

Cammi beamed. “Thank you. Really. Like I told you, before this year my only expertise was coffee. I’ve got coffee down to a science. Taking this place over is a big step for me, and I knew I needed to up my food game.”

“You’ve given up doing massage?” I asked, referring to the side job Cammi told me she did occasionally in the winters for the physical therapy clinic at the hospital.

“Yeah, I had to. There’s no way for me to fit it in. Is that something you do? I mean, you teach