Page 95 of Filthy Fae

I pushed back from the table and stood. “What did he do?”

“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Don’t you go running out there and beating him up like you did Mr. Grimes. He didn’t do anything. He just asked a lot of questions.”

“Dammit,” I said. “I knew he looked like someone your mother would have hired to come get you. I don’t need anyone nosing up in our business. And neither do you.”

I looked at her hard until she dropped her eyes. She knew exactly what I meant. People might give us a pass—would anyone really blame three lonely men for wanting a woman to warm our beds through the harsh Wyoming winter? And if we liked to share, well, that wasn’t unheard of. It was the woman they’d judge, and I wasn’t having any of that. Not when that woman was our stepsister.

“We can tell him to leave,” Holden said, putting a hand on Amber’s. “We’re not going to beat up anyone.”

“Maybe he’s fine,” she said. “He really didn’t do anything.”

“Hell, let’s just go meet him for ourselves,” Sawyer said, picking up his hat from beside his plate. He and Holden followed me out, Amber close behind. The night had come on fast, and it was darkish—as dark as it got with snow on the ground. The snow crunched under our boots as we walked along the row of empty cabins toward the next-to-last one, the one that had stood untouched for three years before Amber had convinced us to rent them out. Christmas lights twinkled along the railing of each cabin, and a pretty wreath hung on each door. Amber sure knew how to fancy up a place.

“I was probably just being paranoid,” Amber said.

“Don’t apologize for having instincts,” I told her. “Out here, it’s saved more than a few men’s lives.” Not to mention I’d learned my lesson about ignoring my own instincts when my fiancé had turned out to be a cheating bitch.

“Doesn’t hurt to meet the guy,” Sawyer said, climbing the three steps. He rapped on the door, and a second later, we could hear footsteps crossing the hardwood inside.

Hearing boots on that floor, in the house where my former brother had lived all those years, brought back too many memories that I didn’t want dug up. The door swung open, and suddenly, it was more than déjà vous fucking with my head. Because standing in the doorway, just like he’d done a thousand times before, was our brother.

3

Amber

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Waylon growled.

I could feel the tension ripping through his body from five feet away. An involuntary shiver went through me, and I had to squeeze my thighs together at my body’s conditioned response to the way he was trembling with holding himself back. Usually I got to experience it while lying flat on my back when he was pissed at me and teasing me to the point of insanity before unleashing his fury by giving me a pounding for the ages. Our angry sex was nothing short of miraculous, but I didn’t think Waylon was about to bend this guy over and fuck him until he was a born-again believer.

“I did the decent thing and called, but seems y’all have lost my number,” the renter guy said.

“We got nothing to say to you,” Sawyer said.

“Mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

The guy stuck out a hand and grasped mine. “Cody,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”

Cody. Holy fucking shit. The prodigal son had returned. No wonder he’d looked familiar. None of the Westlings looked very much alike, but I’d been staring into the faces of his three brothers every time I’d been fucked for the past year. I couldn’t believe I’d missed the family resemblance, even if it was slight.

“Amber,” I said weakly as he pumped my hand.

Waylon wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me back like he was afraid Cody was going to grab me and hold a gun to my head. “Don’t touch her.”

Cody looked me up and down, then nodded. “She’s your woman, huh?”

“Leave,” Waylon said, his voice flat. “You got about two minutes to get off our property before I get the gun.”

“Now hold up just a minute,” Cody said, raising a hand. “I didn’t come here for any of that. I been calling for months—hell, for years now. You could have answered, and we could have done this over the phone, all civilized.”

“I can’t shoot you over the phone,” Waylon said.

“Wait a minute,” I said, stepping in front of Waylon, who looked like he was ready to grab Cody and rip his balls off. “He’s the one who’s been calling all this time? I thought those were your booty calls.”

“You think we’d be taking booty calls?” Holden said, shooting me a wounded look.

“You didn’t take them,” I pointed out. “Which is exactly why I thought they were booty calls. Although I admit I thought those women were pretty desperate to still be calling after a year of being ignored. All those calls were from your brother?”

“He’s not our brother,” Waylon said flatly. “He’s dead to us. And he’s about to be dead to the whole world.”