Page 60 of Shared By the Mountain Men Triplets

CHAPTER 26

BOONE

We spend the rest of the day getting the Dodge back into shape and tightening the cabin’s defenses, until it feels less like a home and more like a position. I hate it, but it’s the only way.

In the evening, I find Wren in the kitchen standing at the sink washing potatoes.

I come up beside her and get out a knife and the cutting board. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Do what? Make dinner?”

“Act like you’re calm.”

She looks over at me. “I’m not.” When I respond with a curious look, she says, “I’m concerned, and I’m angry, but I’m not falling apart.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

She turns off the water, finished with the lastpotato. “No, but you were making the face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you’re about to wrap a blanket around me and tell me I don’t need to worry my pretty little head.”

I bump her gently with my hip. “I never once mentioned your pretty head.”

“No, you’re more subtle than that.”

“I’m really not.”

That makes her smile, and I take it like a gift.

We fall into our usual rhythm in the kitchen, while Rhett and Cade take advantage of the last hour of daylight.

As Wren peels carrots, she watches my brothers through the window. “Do you always get like this?” she asks.

I pause my stirring. “Devastatingly handsome?”

She gives me a look. “Unified. When something happens, the three of you barely have to discuss it before you respond.”

“One organism,” I say. When she looks over at me, I explain, “That’s what one of the guys in Regiment used to call us. Triplets are already weird, but under enough pressure, we got worse.”

“What do you mean by worse?”

“Closer.”

She frowns. “Closer doesn’t sound worse.”

“It can be. When one of us takes a hit, the others feel it before the blood even shows. We learned each other like a reflex,” I say. “When things got bad, Rhettturned fear into order, Cade found the person trying to kill us, and I found the soldier bleeding the fastest.”

“And you saved them?”

“Or I made them feel less alone. After that, I moved on to whoever still had a chance.”

For a moment, there’s only the sound of onions sizzling in the pan.

“I used to think my smile was for them,” I say. “And the jokes I’d tell while I was doing something that hurt them but might keep them alive. Later, I figured out the smile and jokes were for me, too. If I could make them believe we were still people and not just bodies in a bad place, then maybe I could believe it.”

“I saw what was under your smile this morning,” she says.