Page 30 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

Wren laughs, and the sound carries through the cabin like music. It appeals to all three of us in an instinctive way, and Wren notices. Her laugh fades, and her hand tightens on her fork. Rhett looks away because he has more discipline than either of us. Then Cade glances down at his plate, but I keep watching Wren because she’s beautiful, and I can’t pull my eyes away.

After dinner, we play cards because we need something normal to do.

My brothers and I have played cards at tables, on rucks, in barracks, in the dirt, in the back of transport vehicles, and under ponchos in the rain. Poker mostly, often with whatever rules we could invent to separate tired Rangers from their cash.

Wren sits at the table with a mug of tea and watches Rhett shuffle. “Do you play a lot?” she asks.

“Only when we’re bored,” I say, “or tired, snowed in, pissed off, avoiding sleep, or trying not to talk about our feelings.”

“So most of the time,” she says.

Rhett deals her in without asking.

She looks at the cards but doesn’t pick them up. “I don’t know if I should gamble with men who shared a womb and a Ranger team.”

“Smart,” Cade says.

“We’ll go easy,” I say.

She slides the cards to the edge of the table and picks them up. “No, you won’t.”

“No,” Rhett says. “We won’t.”

She smiles at that, then proceeds to win the first hand with a pair of queens and an expression so bland I almost miss it.

After a few more hands, she’s leaning in, her eyes bright with the thrill of competition. I’m sure she’s tracking discards and calculating odds, but she won’t admit it. She calls Cade’s bluff once and looks so pleased with herself that he stares at her for several seconds without blinking.

Rhett watches her like he’s watching a new variable enter a battlefield. I watch her like a man discovering religion.

She’s not just smart out on the trail, doing her job. She’s sharp everywhere. Sharp enoughto be dangerous.

I get the impression she enjoys being underestimated. She smiles when she wins, but it’s not a smug smile. She looks satisfied, and it makes me want to put that expression on her face in every way a man can.

CHAPTER 14

BOONE

The next night, Rhett is on the back porch talking on the phone with another postponed client, and Cade is out in the garage doing some sort of repair work. Wren and I are inside with a deck of cards at the dining table, and there’s a restless energy in the air.

The lights are low in the cabin, casting a golden glow on her skin. That’s all good, except for the especially enticing triangle of cleavage exposed by the V-neck of her snug white shirt.

She beat me the first three hands, and that distracting bit of flesh might be the reason.

She folds on the fourth hand, and on the next one, she bluffs. Badly.

Her face loses all emotion, and her fingers tap once against the edge of her cards before she catches herself. She keeps her shoulders relaxed, but her pulse flutters at the baseof her throat.

Instead of matching her bet, I lean slowly across the table.

Her eyes narrow as I come close enough to count the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. Close enough to smell her shampoo and see the way her breath catches and how determined she is not to show it.

“You have a terrible poker face,” I say.

Her eyes stay fixed on mine, and the air gets hotter between us. “I’m not the one who’s obvious.”

Every thought in my head dissolves.

An owl hoots somewhere nearby, and the cabin settles with a creak, but Wren doesn’t move away, and neither do I.