Page 31 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

Her lips are right there. Dusky pink, bare, slightly parted.

I’ve been careful with her. We all have. But there’s only so much careful a man can be when the woman he wants looks at him like she sees his hunger and doesn’t intend to run from it. Like she has a hunger of her own.

I shift closer, and her fingers curl around her cards.

“Boone,” she whispers.

Her saying my name like that crumbles my resistance.

Then Cade comes into the kitchen from the back door, and Wren jerks back.

I close my eyes as Cade fills a glass of water and drinks half of it, saying nothing. Wren stares down at her cards like they contain the world’s deepest secrets.

I turn in my seat and fully stare at my brother, and he stares back.

“You need something?” I ask.

“Water.”

“Got it?”

He lifts his glass, then drinks the rest, sets it in the sink, and comes our way. “Deal me in next hand.”

The moment is dead, but the temptation to crawl across the table and finish what Cade interrupted takes longer to fade.

The next couple of days follow a familiar pattern. Mornings start with coffee and Wren continuing to wear my shirt like a short robe, knocking the air out of me every time I see her curves in flannel.

She checks in with her supervisor, but nothing much changes on their end. Wren fills the daylight hours working on her laptop, her body angled toward the mountains like she’s straining on a leash.

She’s anxious and frustrated, and I try to ease the mood by cooking good food. Wren insists on helping me clean up every night after dinner.

Her shoulder presses against my arm at the sink as steam rises from the hot water. I wash, and she rinses and dries, and the domesticity of it gets under my skin worse than the flirting.

I understand flirting. A look held too long, laughter, touching. It’s simpleand easy.

Wren drying dishes in our kitchen like she belongs here is something else, though, and it makes me ache.

She takes a plate from my hand, our fingers touching briefly. “You’re different from your brothers.”

I give her a grin. “Better looking?”

She smiles back at me. “You all have the same face.”

“Yet you were able to tell us apart right away. I have more charm.”

“That must be it.”

“Definitely.”

She sets the plate in the cabinet after she dries it. She already knows where most things go, and that adds to the ache, which is centered in my chest.

“You’re more talkative, for sure,” she says. “More friendly.”

“More likable.”

She nudges against my arm. “Surely the most modest, too.”

“It’s one of my best qualities.”