Page 35 of Colt

“Love you too.”

I tuck the handcuffs into my work bag and collapse into bed.

Sunday supper.

It’s usually my favorite time of the week. Mom makes something ungodly delicious. Dad breaks out the good brown liquor. Dean gets showered with love and attention and his favorite desserts. Mom is a big baker, and she loves the excuse to whip up something sweet just for him.

But I realize one second too late that this Sunday supper is different. As I step into the single-story home where I was raised and where my parents still live, despite the fact that they could’ve easily built something bigger and fancier, the first person I see is none other than Lainey freaking Brown.

She’s standing at the kitchen counter beside Mom. The two of them are laughing, all smiles as Mom gives a pot a stir and Lainey peels a cucumber. A pair of mostly empty wineglasses sit on the granite nearby.

I swear to Christ, the woman is out to kill me. A fucking cucumber? Really? I know she’s not trying to antagonize me, because she’s got better things to do. But as she holds the cucumber and patiently, almost tenderly, peels the skin off⁠—

Goddamn it, I feel like she is trying to antagonize me.

Or maybe you just want her to because those handcuffs are burning a hole in your pocket. Saddlebag. Whatever.

It’s been almost two weeks since she arrived.

Almost two weeks since I grabbed her hand and felt woozy from the contact.

I do not get woozy. Ever. But there I was, sure I was in the midst of a legitimate cardiac event as Lainey laughed and Big Brother practically kissed her palm.

We’ve crossed paths a few times since then. She’s always scribbling in that damn notebook of hers, a thoughtful look on her face as she listened to Beck talk about cattle, watched a buyer take a horse for a spin, or asked Billie a million questions about how she keeps an operation as big as ours running.

I hate that she’s so interested in everything. Why can’t she, I don’t know, turn up her nose at us and be the stuck-up, clueless city girl I want her to be?

She did look ridiculous in what I’m sure she thought was appropriate ranch wear. For her, that looks like tight-ass jeans, white fucking cowboy boots, and flannel button-ups she ties at her waist, showing off her belly button.

I dreamed about her again last night. She and I were fighting about something—everything—and out of the blue, she grabbed my shirt and kissed me. Then I pulled off her shirt, and just as I was slipping my hand inside her jeans, I woke up hard as fuck again.

I’ve been careful to avoid her since that first day. For obvious reasons. One of the benefits of having five siblings is that someone’s always around to pick up the slack. Far as I know, Lainey’s been spending most of her time with either Billie or Beck or holed up in the conference room in the ranch’s new offices.

Bless her black heart, she’s been staying here at my parents’ house while we wait for a plumbing issue to be fixed in the apartment above the hay barn. Guess that explains why she and Mom are so chummy all of a sudden.

Also explains why Lainey would be at Sunday supper.

“Mimi!” Dean still screams with delight anytime he sees my mom. It’s really cute. I can already see glimpses of some preteen attitude in him, so it’s nice when he still acts like my sweet baby boy.

Part of me is so ready for him to grow up. Another part wants to keep him this little forever.

He takes off running and wraps his arms around Mom’s legs. “Mimi, guess what!”

“Well hey there, handsome!” She bends down to wrap him in a tight hug. “Oh, you always give the best hugs.”

“But guess what!”

“What?” She’s grinning ear to ear.

“Dad drove me all the way to Austin yesterday to go to this store that was all LEGO! Can you believe it? Look what I got!” He holds up the half-completed Star Wars ship we’ve been working on since, oh, six thirty this morning. “Isn’t it the coolest?”

“Whoa whoa whoa.” Lainey holds up a hand. Thankfully, it’s not the one holding the cucumber. “You like LEGO sets?”

My son smiles up at her. “I don’t like LEGO sets, I love LEGO sets.”

That has us all laughing. And then—Goddamn it—my eyes are raking over Lainey because my guard slipped for all of two heartbeats.

She’s barefoot. Wearing a long black dress that hugs her waist and buttons down the front, the deep V of the neckline revealing just the tiniest bit of her full chest. Her hair is loose and wavy.