Slow Burn Cowboy(39)

“Do you want to talk about that, Cain?” Alex asked. “Because that’s kind of concerning.”

“Every so often I’m sorry you weren’t named Abel.”

“Wow.” Alex took another sip of his coffee.

“We really do need to get to work,” Cain said, the slight drawl he had that the rest of them didn’t a little more pronounced this morning. “I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my teenager at some point today. I need to get her out of the house. She can’t just sit around until school starts in the fall. Mostly because neither of us will live through it.”

Cain drained his coffee and stood, heading toward the door. “See you out there.”

Finn had to admire—with grudging respect—the ease with which Cain had adapted to the ranch life. Granted, his older brother was used to this kind of setup, even if daily work had been a thing of the past.

It made it a lot harder to be bitter about his presence here.

The jury was still out on the other two.

“You were supposed to be our wingman,” Liam said.

“Dick move, abandoning us,” Alex said.

“That’s so strange,” Finn said, “because I don’t recall needing a wingman to get laid. If you do, maybe you need to up your game.”

“Probably easier when you know the woman you picked up,” Alex said, his tone overly innocent.

He shot his younger brother a deadly glare. “It’s not open for discussion.”

“Is anything in your life open for discussion, Finn?”

“That’s a very good question, Alex,” Finn said. “Which we can talk about after we discuss the details of your life, which you have so kindly laid out with transparency for all of us to see.”

“I was in the army. Now I’m not. Is there anything else you want to know?”

“Why aren’t you in the army anymore?”

Alex’s expression turned stony, serious, much more so than Finn was used to seeing. “I got tired of watching people I love die. How about that? Now you go.”

“Alex...” Liam turned to face his brother.

“Shit,” Finn said.

“No details necessary,” Alex returned. “It is what it is. War is hell, and all that clichéd shit. Dairy cows seem like a hell of a lot more fun than dodging explosions... What can I say. Plus, I have some responsibilities to take care of here.”

“What responsibilities? Related to the military stuff?” Finn asked.

“Like not your damn business,” Alex said.

“You have your stuff, I have mine,” Finn responded, before turning to Liam. “What about you? Do you want to tell me why Sabrina Leighton saw you sitting in Ace’s last night, and then turned around and ran out of the bar like she’d seen a ghost?”

Something in Liam’s expression shifted. “Not particularly.”

“No explanation at all?”

“Maybe I’m a ghost?”

He had a feeling Liam might be a ghost in Sabrina’s estimation. But he was less interested in the details of his brothers’ lives and hell of a lot more interested in getting them off his back.

“Here’s how I see it,” Finn said, not quite realizing this was how he saw it until he started talking. “You’re all pretty determined to stay here. That means we need to figure out how to exist together. We need to figure out what everyone’s function is going to be in the Donnelly Family Fun Time Hour. We’re dysfunctional as fuck. Have been for more than thirty years. I don’t think a few weeks together is going to fix that. Hell, it may take thirty years to fix that. But it doesn’t mean we can’t make this work.” He gritted his teeth against the instant denial that occurred inside of him.

The Laughing Irish was his. Letting go of that, admitting that maybe his brothers had a right to be here, that maybe he was just going to have to make it work with them here... It wasn’t easy. But it was reality.

And maybe it was just being here with them that made it all click into place. Or maybe it was Lane. Maybe having her, the way he’d always wanted, had released some of the tension inside him. Had made things a little clearer.

His grandfather hadn’t trusted him. Whatever Finn had given hadn’t been enough. Callum had felt the need to include the others in spite of all Finn’s work and dedication. And Finn just had to accept that.

Just like he’d accepted the fact that his mother had walked away with no interest at all in coming back. Just like he had accepted that Liam and Alex had made suitable replacements for Finn and his mother where their father was concerned.

Two days ago it would’ve seemed impossible to make this concession. But last night he had finally been with Lane. And with that weight shifted off his shoulders everything else seemed a little bit easier to carry.

“That’s kind of what we’ve been waiting for,” Liam said.

“No you haven’t. You’ve just been hanging around taking orders from me.”

Liam snorted. “No. I told you in the beginning that I thought that friend of yours had a good idea. And that I thought we should do it. We have more manpower now than we did before, and I have all the cash you could ever want to inject in this place.”

“Thanks. But I don’t need your money.”

“It’s we,” Liam said. “Not you. And seriously, I could outfit these cows with diamond-studded milking machines.”

“But that’s ridiculous, so you won’t,” Finn said.

“You say that like ridiculousness has ever stopped Liam from doing anything in the past,” Alex said.

“I don’t know him well enough to comment on that,” Finn said. Honest, but the moment the words left his mouth he realized how depressing they were.

“I have a feeling that’s all going to change,” Liam remarked. “Probably pretty quickly.”

And, in another testament to just how good things had been with Lane last night, that comment didn’t even make Finn feel angry. It didn’t bother him at all. If anything, it made him feel a little bit hopeful.

Later, he would see Lane and he would thank her properly. And he would have another talk with her about those subscription boxes.

* * *

FINN HAD TEXTED her earlier and asked her to come over after she closed up shop. She didn’t know why, but she felt nervous. Giddy. Well, okay, she knew why.

She sighed and set about taking all of the giant tin pans full of pasta out of the backseat of her car. She had been so worked up that she had spent the day scurrying between the front of the store and the back kitchen.

She had needed something to keep herself busy. Cooking had been it. The Donnelly brothers always seemed grateful for the extra food, and now that all of them lived here they went through it a lot faster than when it had just been Finn.

She liked it. Liked taking care of all of them. When it suited her, and not on a daily basis. That would probably be more than a little bit onerous. Immediately, she was forced to imagine herself as Snow White, except instead of taking care of seven little men, it was four very large men and a cranky teenager.

She steeled herself against the onslaught of tension she was certain was going to hit the moment she came face-to-face with Finn. She was not going to be able to look at him without thinking about his naked body. No, there was no way. In fact, she had spent the entire day with images of Finn’s naked body superimposed over whatever she was doing.

That never happened to her. She just wasn’t the kind of person who lost her mind over sex. It was fine. But it wasn’t all-consuming. Finn was becoming a little bit all-consuming.

That was actually good, she reasoned, as she walked up the stairs to the front door of the Donnelly family home. She could use something that was all-consuming. Something that got her mind off everything that was happening with Cord.

She frowned. Not that anything really was happening with Cord where she was concerned. Cord McCaffrey might be a successful politician with a family and a life, but he wasn’t actually parading those facts around to hurt her. It occurred to her then that up until this very moment she had kind of felt that way.

Like he had been senatoring at her. Rather than just living his life.

She wasn’t sure the realization made her feel all that much better. She wasn’t really sure how she felt about him going on with his life. That sobering realization was still sitting in the back of her mind when the front door opened.

It wasn’t Finn on the other side, or any of his brothers. Instead, it was Violet. “Hi,” the girl said, not quite able to manage a smile.

“Hi,” Lane returned, shifting her hold on the food, bracing it up her thigh. “I brought dinner.”

Violet’s expression remained neutral. “Are you my new mommy?”

Lane laughed, half shocked, half amused. Violet’s taciturn father was certainly a good-looking man, but there was only one Donnelly that got her pulse racing. Not that she was going to say any of that to the sixteen-year-old. Who made her feel kind of freaking old seeing as she did think the girl’s dad was sexy.

“Violet,” came a warning voice from somewhere out of view. “Could you maybe just...not be yourself for a few minutes?”

“No. All childhood propaganda I consumed during my youth insisted that I be true to my inner voice. And my inner voice is feeling sarcastic today.”