He felt it and gave me another grin before he gave me another order.
“Go, clean up.”
“Okay, honey.”
He touched his mouth to mine, pulled out, and rolled off.
I rolled the other way and dashed to the bathroom.
I closed the door.
But when I got there, I looked in the mirror and saw my long hair wild, my eyes soft and sated, my skin flushed.
My hair looked sexy like that, even I had to say so.
My eyes looked amazing.
My flushed skin made me look vibrant and alive.
I looked like I’d been fucked hard.
And I’d never looked happier.
Chapter Eight
I’ll Have Pie
Six weeks later, I sat in my Adirondack chair on my porch, feet up to the railing, eyes to the rain falling soft and steady on the trees. My heart was heavy even though I had my phone to my ear and was listening to my mother talk about the family reunion she had suddenly gotten a wild hair to have and was therefore planning.
“Early August, Cassidy, five cabins and we’re paying. No argument.”
She said “no argument” because she’d birthed me. She knew me. She knew me even before I was born, telling me (and anyone who would listen) that I had a lot to say with the amount of kicking and moving I did before I came out. So she wasn’t surprised I came out bawling.
She knew I would argue.
And she was right.
“Mom, first, I have two guest bedrooms at my house so Titus doesn’t have to pay. He and Bessie can stay with me. I know things are tight since Bessie got laid off.”
“Titus isn’t paying. Your father and I are.”
At this, my eyes got huge and my voice pitched higher. “Mom, are you crazy? Titus will lose his alpha mind if you and Dad try to pay for his cabin.”
“He’ll get over it.”
There it was. She was crazy. My brother would never get over it. And thus, Christmases—Christmases that the family now usually spent with me at Glacier Lily (this being what I’d arranged after Deacon had his words with me that Christmas years ago, not a hardship for my family since my cabins were awesome)—would be a pain in the ass because my baby bro would show. He would show because he loved me, he loved my sister, and he doted on Lacey’s kids.
So he’d show.
But he’d do it brooding. And Titus brooding was no fun.
“How’s this for a compromise?” I started. “Titus and Bessie stay with you in your cabin. That way they only have to pay half.”
“Honey, one day, pray to God, you have your own children. And then, pray to God, you’ll rejoice every day for decades at the beauty you created. Beauty, if it’s a boy, you don’t want to hear enjoying his wife in the next room. And, just saying, vice versa if it’s a girl with her man.”
Instantly, my mouth stretched out and down at the idea of hearing my little brother banging his wife. Something I knew he did, and regularly. This knowledge coming not only because that was what married people did, but also because two years ago, Mom and Dad had hosted Titus and Bessie’s rehearsal dinner at the ranch and Dad had walked in on them doing it in the upstairs bathroom.
This caused Bessie to scream, Titus to shout, and Dad to slam the door, rush down the stairs and out of the house, mumbling, “Gotta feed the horses,” when he most definitely did not have to feed the horses in the middle of my brother’s rehearsal dinner.