Chapter Nine
Monday
Brooke liked living at the G. The first
couple of days had been peaceful. She’d met with Cleo and gone over the designs
for the play—which were terrible. She wasn’t even sure what the other designer
had been thinking, but she was glad they hadn’t gotten to the actual sewing
stage. Cleo was kind of the luckiest director in the history of time. If Brooke
hadn’t come along, Cleo would be forced to pull from the existing wardrobe, and
that would have been a disaster. Brooke understood the concept of modernizing Three
Sisters, but did the other designer even read the play? She made Olga look
like she was from an 80’s soap opera, while Irina was just… She knew she
shouldn’t use the word slutty, but putting her in micro minis didn’t modernize
the character. It merely let her know the other chick didn’t understand her.
Three Sisters. It was about being stuck and having
no way out. She understood that all too well.
The problem was she was starting to feel…not stuck.
Comfortable. A bit excited some days.
“Hey, you need some coffee, baby?” Shane walked into the
sewing room he’d put together for her with a mug in his hand. “You’re up
early.”
Oh, he said the room was a gift from him and Bay, but she’d
figured them out over the course of a couple of days, and Shane was the one who
took care of the everyday things. Shane kept things moving, and it was fucking
delightful.
A few days of living with them and she was already addicted
to having them around. It went way beyond the way they fucked her—which was
often and with great enthusiasm. They’d even sort of tried the playroom, though
they hadn’t found their groove there yet.
She smiled at him and accepted the coffee and the kiss he
offered her. “I had an idea for the first act, but I want to see how this lace is going to work on the fabric I have. It’s weird to
be working with a budget.”
“Did you not have one at the New York job? What’s the name…”
Shane began.
She turned and frowned his way. “Seriously? We’re pretending
to not know?”
Bay chuckled from the hallway. He was so big and broad he
made her sigh. He was dressed for work in well-worn jeans and a Western shirt,
his cowboy hat already on his head. He was such a contradiction. So like the
cowboys she’d known all her life, but with a thirst for culture and art. “It’s
the House of Bianchi. Brother, we know which pieces she designed for the spring
line.”
Shane shrugged like he’d tried. “I was hoping she’d forget
the stalker stuff.”
She’d actually thought about this and talked about it with
Lucy and River when they met for drinks at Hell on Wheels. Sawyer naturally
listened in and came down firmly on the “those boys are creepy and she should
move in with cats” side, but then Sawyer hated mostly everyone. Lucy and River
pointed out that she didn’t have to view it as creepy behavior. More like they
were fans of hers and wanted to follow her and maybe fall into her bed and give
her multiple orgasms and save her from her brothers and bring her coffee and
make sure she had a place in their home to work in.
She stood and gave Shane a real kiss. “I’m choosing to look
at it as pre-relationship research. After all, I wouldn’t have this lovely room
if you didn’t know an awful lot about me. And to answer your question, not
really. I mean I didn’t ask for Mulberry silk or baby cashmere, but for the
most part anything I wanted was either in-house or we had an account at several
fabric stores.”
“But sometimes it’s fun to see what you can do with what you
have,” Bay said. “I think my favorite piece of work I’ve ever done is a
sculpture of Shane riding a bronc that I made out of scrap metal and aluminum
cans.”
She’d seen it. How had she not realized it was Shane on that
powerful horse? “It’s at Stef’s, right? He keeps it in his foyer. I hope you
know how much it means to him to keep it there.”
If there was one thing she was feeling bad about it was the
rift between her and her family, and that included Stefan Talbot. She hadn’t
talked to her brothers in days. She’d seen Rachel when she brought the kids by
to say hello and dropped them off for some babysitting. She’d been working in
the theater, and Paige had given her the rundown on everything that happened
during last summer’s kid production of The Little Mermaid. Apparently
Poppy thought Ursula was misunderstood and probably disturbed by the amount of
pollution in the ocean, and Charlie and Zander had told Paige that the actor
who played Prince Eric was a poopy face, but only after Paige said he was cute.
And Sierra Kincaid-Briggs had cried during the part where Ariel lost her voice
so loudly they shut the show down because they were worried she hurt herself.
Rachel had looked sad even as she smiled. Tired. She looked
tired and a bit lost, and that made Brooke feel infinitely guilty.
Bay leaned against the doorframe. “Well, I would have left
it wherever we were. I can haul my sketchbooks around, but there’s not a lot of
places to put a one-and-a-half-foot sculpture when you’re working ranches and
staying in bunkhouses. We were outside of Denver at the time, and Shane
insisted on calling up a gallery.”
“Four, actually,” Shane explained. “I called the first one
and they hung up on me. That was when I realized I needed a good story. So I
made up a bunch of crap about being a dealer from back East who’d found this
amazing modern Western artist to rival Remington and Dixon. It took me a while
but once they actually let us in, they agreed to sell it. Well, once they
agreed to let Bay in.”
He did not take enough credit. “You were right the first
time. How did you meet Stef?”
“The gallery owner called him,” Bay took up the story.
“Apparently he has several gallery owners on the lookout for interesting
contemporary Western artists. Stef went up to Denver the next day, bought it,
and got our number from the owner. He showed up at the ranch we were working at
and had a laugh that my high-powered East Coast agent was my kid brother who
was knee deep in cow shit the first time they met. That was when he offered to
mentor us. Me in art and Shane in the business of art.”
She knew it was more than that. “And both of you in the art
of Dominance and submission?”
Bay’s lips curled up, his eyes heating. “Yeah. That, too. He
got us memberships to a club in Denver, and we stayed close for a while. He
would have us come out to his place and I would work, and then at night he
would open his playroom. This was all before Jennifer.”
“Yes,” she replied with a wrinkled nose. “It was around the
time you hit on my sister-in-law.”
Bay moved in, putting his hands on her hips. “She wasn’t
your sister-in-law at the time.” He leaned over and brushed those generous lips
against her own, and she felt Shane move in behind her. “What did we ask that
day, brother?”
“We asked your brothers if they had a sister,” Shane
whispered.
She had to laugh. “I’m sure they took that well.”
They still weren’t taking it well, but Bay kissed her and
Shane’s hands found her breasts.
The world could wait. And so could work.
Tuesday
Shane held the goat gently as Noah Bennett
showed Henry how to prime the needle that held the vaccine.
Noah was the town vet and happy to help teach Nell and Henry
how to take care of the animals they were planning on welcoming at their new
animal sanctuary.
Shane had been in the kitchen when Noah walked through and
announced he could use help.
Some days it was all about where a person happened to be.
The right place—since he’d been grabbing some coffee filters—and the wrong time
because now he was spending the whole afternoon here with the Flanders clan and
thirty-two traumatized goats. Bay probably finished up early and was already
fucking their girl.
It was something they’d both gotten used to. Only yesterday
Bay had a meeting with the gallery owner and Shane had gone to the theater to
bring Brooke a late lunch and ended up fucking her backstage during a
rehearsal. It had been hot as hell.
And then he’d gotten roped into doing a bunch of work on the
set. He liked working on the set and it happened more and more. Once Cleo
figured out he was handy, she’d been more than happy to give him a to-do list.
Damn, but he liked living with her. He liked everything
about it, from waking up with her all sweet and sleepy in his arms, to getting
her coffee because the sweet part didn’t last long and she needed caffeine, to
having dinner with her. Simple things like she’d made spaghetti and garlic
bread and a salad. Sitting and talking about their days, knowing he would sleep
with her… It felt too good to be true.
“You’re sure it doesn’t hurt them?” Nell sat on a camp chair
ten feet away from them, her hand on her belly.
She looked like she probably should have had that kid a
couple of weeks ago, but everyone swore she still had some time.
What would Brooke look like? Did she want kids? How many?
They would be lovely, like their momma.
He would love them. Whether they were biologically his or
not, he would be their dad and he would never, ever leave them or make them
think for a moment they weren’t loved and welcome. He would never treat them
like trash someone left behind.
Yeah, he had some issues to work out.
“It doesn’t bother them at all,” Noah replied. “But then it
didn’t bother Poppy either, did it, big girl? Doc Caleb said you were a champ.”
Poppy stood with her father, petting the goats. She’d been
calm and patient with all of them, and even the nastiest of the group seemed to
chill out around the girl.
Maybe she could talk to them. He could believe it. After
all, it was Bliss, and weird shit happened here.
“It hurt, but the doctor told me it was like a little sting.
It was a big sting,” Poppy replied and wound her arms around the goat’s neck as
though she could protect him.
Nell stood and made her way to Poppy, putting a hand on her