Chapter 1
“I suppose we could keep him for breeding stock. If you two don’t mind sharing,” a female voice said somewhere near his ear. “He’d probably make gorgeous babies, at least.”
“Please, I think we have enough babies around this place,” another woman said from the other side. “Definitely enough dirty diapers.”
“Will you two shut up for a moment? You jabber more than the rest of us combined. Hand me that washcloth.” A third woman was even closer. Her voice was a bit deeper, smoother. Sexier. Familiar?
Three women. There was no way he could handle three women. Pity. They had beautiful voices. And one was touching him, running the cloth over his face. Gently.
He could smell her perfume, or her soap, or something. She could keep touching him, if she wanted. He wouldn’t protest at all. Did the other two smell just as nice?
He hoped so. He supposed they could take turns…
“What are we supposed to do with him? Is there any blood?” another voice asked. Younger, he thought. A kid? Well, there went that fantasy. “Who is he, anyway?”
“Ith he a bad guy? Ith he going to taked one of uth away?” This one had a definite lisp.
“I’m really hungry. Are you done with that man yet?” another child voice said.
“What exactly are you doing with him?” Yet another child.
Then he heard…the babbling of a baby? Where in the hell was he?
He didn’t know if this was a dream or a nightmare.
“I’m going to make sure he hasn’t killed himself,” the most in-charge female voice said. “Then I’m going to call his keepers to come get him. They may be able to get through the back way. Take him to the hospital in Evanston or something.”
Keepers? Evanston? That was over a hundred miles from Masterson. Where the hell had he ended up? How?
“Not tonight, you’re not. Cloe is working, Claudia is somewhere in Cheyenne with Sage, and Clancy…
well, Clancy is out with Barand tonight, lucky girl.
We could probably call Cadell to come get him, but that means we’d have to let Cadell into our inner sanctum and I don’t want that.
That man is not getting near our house. Period. ”
Well, that one didn’t like Cadell very much, apparently.
And they knew him and his brother from the sounds of it.
And his sisters. Really well. Well enough to know where his sisters were tonight, anyway.
He didn’t even know that—and Clancy, his youngest sister, was currently living with him.
She’d told him she had plans but wouldn’t tell him what those plans were.
He was starting to put things together here, and the last thing he wanted was to open his eyes and face the reality.
Please don’t let it be them. Just not them.
“We can’t have that, can we? One Grady man here is bad enough,” the sexiest voice said next. “I don’t think I could handle both of them.”
Cold water dripped on his face. Cal forced his eyes open. No use putting off the inevitable.
And saw what he could definitely say was a nightmare surrounding him.
Three utterly gorgeous red-headed, blue-eyed devil-women stared down at him—with six redheaded, blue-eyed little devil-girl urchins, including one baby, surrounding them.
“This is hell. No doubt about it. I’ve died and gone to hell.
Tylers—nothing but trouble. This has to be hell. ”
How had he ended up here? It didn’t make sense.
“He thed hell! He thed hell!” one child demon yelled, practically in his face. The lisper.
The eldest of those Tylers frowned down at him from where she sat on the edge of the couch where he rested. Next thing he knew, a bowl of cold water was dipped right onto his face. Deliberately.
Sending her million devil sisters cackling. All of them.
Even the baby-version of her laughed with the others.
His eyes met extraordinary blue ones. Challenging ones. “Damn it, Augusta, did you have to do that?”
“Watch your language, Calloway. My little girls are listening. We don’t curse around here.”
Augusta Tyler despised him.
And the feeling was entirely mutual.
“How in the he—" Her eyes narrowed. Her hand threatened to tip again. “World did I end up here?”
“We found you passed out in your truck,” one of her sisters said with a sniff of derision. “Junie and I got you inside, with Jan’s help. Thought we were going to have to get a wheelbarrow. You don’t remember?”
She patted him on the head condescendingly. Cal swatted at her hand. He probably shouldn’t move just yet—he was beyond dizzy at the moment.
“Not really.”
September Tyler, his sister Clancy’s closest friend in the world, peered down at him like he was a bug. She’d always been a weird kid. He’d known her since she was a tiny forty-pound pest in overalls. She’d been exasperating back then. She hadn’t grown out of it much.
Come to think of it…Em was still a tiny pest—though she might weigh a hundred pounds now, on a good day—and was currently wearing overalls. Some things never did change.
“We heaved you into Junie’s truck and brought you here.
The roads are probably out between here and town by now, though.
The storm is going to be bad. So you’re kind of stuck with us for tonight, unless you want to go all the way down through Sublette County.
You’d better mind your manners, or I’m siccing Clancy on you, by the way. Don’t be a jerk.”
A preschooler in thick glasses ran around the room saying jerk, jerk, jerk repeatedly. The redheaded she-devils surrounding him didn’t even blink at the kid’s volume.
They were all uncivilized savages.
His youngest sister didn’t scare him at all. Now, all three of his sisters combined, maybe…
He tried to sit up, dislodging the woman who was sitting next to him on the overstuffed couch. He grabbed for her quickly. He didn’t want to be responsible for the damned devil woman hurting herself.
But she caught herself just fine—and evaded his hands easily enough.
What was he supposed to do now?
He was definitely in enemy territory. And there were nine of them. Each one just glared at him like he was the enemy. Even the baby watched him warily, looking just like Auggie, but with blood red hair sticking out wildly all over her little head.
Well, he supposed he was the enemy around here.
He’d once tried to buy their home out from under them.
No denying that. Cal hadn’t known it wasn’t actually for sale at the time.
He’d tried to explain that, but the crazy woman hadn’t listened.
He and Auggie had been snapping and snarling at each other ever since.
Before that, he’d barely known the woman existed.
She was just another one of the million Tylers floating around the county, causing trouble everywhere they went. Well, one who happened to be besties with his younger sister Cloe for years. That was all.
“Mommy, me hungee,” the preschooler said. She was no more than three or so, tiny, with long strawberry blonde hair the same shade as Em’s. She wore thick glasses on her little face. “Can we eats the peedda now?”
He didn’t know their names. Something to do with the months, he thought. He always got so irritated when his sisters mentioned them. Any of the Tylers, really. But especially…them. This branch.
Well, Em just exasperated him a little. He’d known her since he was nineteen and she’d been in kindergarten or so.
She irritated him the same way his youngest sister did.
The two together were maddening, confounding female creatures.
And Em was at his house frequently with Clancy now that Clancy was staying with him again. He could deal with Em around.
But the older two Tyler sisters…
Dangerous, dangerous creatures.
They were female devils. Any man could see that with one look. And no man could give Augusta or Juniper Tyler just one look now that they’d grown up. He’d noticed that before in the past eight or nine months or so. A man looked at one of them—and he didn’t look away for a long, long time.
Just about every man under ninety had to have noticed those two in the diner at one time or another. They were memorable. It was part of their evil charm.
Auggie had called him a greedy land grabber once, no better than his evil father. Right to his face, while she was breathing fire up at him. In the middle of that diner. She’d told him his own mother would be ashamed of him for what he was doing.
That had stung. More than he would ever tell anyone.
A year and a half later and he hadn’t forgotten the sting.
He was nothing like his father at all. He never would be again.
Of course, Auggie had been angry at him for him trying to buy her ranch at the time.
But how was he to know the mortgage on the place had been obtained by her criminal father and she and her sisters—then only two, as the younger six hadn’t been found yet—would be homeless?
He would have let them rent the place, if they had asked.
For cheap. He’d mostly wanted the two hundred acres they owned, not the house.
He wouldn’t have thrown three women under the age of twenty-two or -three out into the streets.
Especially considering how close they were to his own sisters.
He adored his sisters. He wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt them.
Auggie, the fire-breathing dragon, hadn’t given him a chance to explain or make that kind of offer. She’d ripped into him, telling him what a jerk he was, that he was just like his father, and his mother would be so ashamed of him.
He’d remembered that day ever since. She’d brought up his mother.
“It should be ready soon,” another sister said.
This one had the fiery red hair like the baby.
Juniper—the middle one. She had been there the night her father had almost killed Cal’s sister Claudia five months ago.
She’d been abducted by the men responsible and had barely escaped.
She looked at Em. “I’ll grab the pizzas; you handle the hand washing.
We’ll let Aug have Calloway Grady here. She should be able to keep him in line. ”