Wild Ride Cowboy. Maisey Yates

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       CHAPTER THREE

      ALEX WAS IN a mean mood by the time he got back home. It was late, and he was starving, and he was still replaying the scene with Clara over in his mind. He really should have gone to see her sooner. He had noticed the stacks of mail sitting on the counter. Had noticed the general state of disrepair of the place.

      But he had a plan now, one that had been affirmed when he’d gotten there and spoken to her.

      Bees.

      Of all the hipster bullshit.

      “Where have you been?”

      Alex’s older half brother Cain was walking toward the main house, probably heading down from the little converted barn he lived in with his fiancée, Alison, and his teen daughter, Violet.

      “Busy,” Alex responded.

      “Well, considering you didn’t just follow that up with sexual innuendo, I’m going to go ahead and guess that you were actually taking care of that property you’ve been needing to see to.”

      “Not that it’s your business, but yes.” There was no reason for him to be short with Cain. But since his older brother was an extreme hard-ass and didn’t seem to care, Alex didn’t see a reason not to be.

      “Good,” Cain said. “About time for you to man up.”

      “Thanks. Next time I need your opinion on my masculinity, I’ll ask. Right after I finish polishing my dog tags and disassembling my AR.”

      “We could save time and you could just whip it out and measure, Alex. I’m not threatened by that.”

      “What are we measuring?” Finn, Alex’s other older half brother, chose that moment to walk out the front door.

      “What do you think?” Alex asked.

      “Wow. Okay. I think I’ll pass on this brotherly bonding experience,” Finn responded, clearly picking up on the tone of the conversation without further hints.

      “You weren’t invited,” Alex said cheerfully. “And I’m starving.”

      “You’re in luck. Lane cooked.”

      Finn’s fiancée usually did cook. She owned the specialty food mercantile on the main street in town, and had a passion for not only spreading good food around, but for elevating the eating experience of the Donnelly brothers—or at least trying to.

      If she had seen what Clara was eating tonight, she probably would have force-fed her some kind of specialty cheese.

      Alex walked up the steps with Cain behind him. Then the three of them filed into the house. Whatever Lane was cooking, Alex could smell it already. Something warm and comforting. Something that smelled like home. Not Alex’s childhood home, but the way he had imagined other people’s homes had smelled.

      Or maybe, it smelled like this home. This was the longest he’d been in one place for a long damn time.

      It was strange just how easy it had been to get used to it. Living here with so many people. When he walked into the kitchen, Liam was there already, the only brother he’d been raised with. He was sitting at the counter, making conversation with their niece, Violet. Or rather, he had a feeling Liam was doing his best to harass Violet, since she was looking mildly perturbed and more than a little amused.

      Cain’s fiancée, Alison, was busy cooking with Lane, both women wearing aprons as they dashed around the kitchen. It was like Alex had fallen into some kind of manic 1950s dream.

      Violet, who was sixteen and more than a little surly, grabbed a potato chip out of the bowl that was sitting on the island and crunched it noisily.

      “This is bad for feminism,” she announced, talking around a mouthful of chip.

      “How СКАЧАТЬ