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Cannon didn’t follow their reasoning for that, but he didn’t fuss about it. He preferred that his woman wasn’t waiting tables in a rowdy bar, filled with horny cowboys, most nights of the week. To his thinking, she didn’t need to be at the bar or the restaurant. Her purpose in starting the horse facility had been so she could stop being in town so much. Yet, she kept going there five days a week.
Quitting hadn’t materialized. She claimed she needed the income to supplement things until her operation took off. Which was total bullshit. Cannon helped her with her bookkeeping. Devon could lie in bed and eat bonbons for the rest of her life, and she’d still be flush.
“Yeah, I know. Don’t remind me,” Hawk groaned. Cannon heard him moving around in the stable, the soft whinnies of the horses they were boarding a soothing background to their phone call. A creak told Cannon that Hawk had leaned against a stall door.
“I’m gettin’ real tired of working at the diner,” he grumbled. On Wednesdays, along with all their other jobs, they acted as short-order cooks at Leena’s. As busy as it was on that evening of the week, it was the only way they could still watch over Dev.
“I know. So let’s work out a plan. We’ve let this lie for too long. It’s time to stake our claim and make some changes around here.”
Number one being, getting Dev into their bed every night.
Two
Devon stared out the window of her two-story, craftsman-style home, watching the sun dapple the land she’d bought a year and a half ago. She’d been fortunate when she’d bought the parcel from Briar. Not only did Briar allow her to exercise her horses on the main ranch when they weren’t in the paddock, but the section Dev had purchased had a house, barn, and stable. They’d just needed some TLC to be fully usable again.
She’d made the home her own—well, hers and Hawk’s and Cannon’s. They were her family, and this place was as much theirs as hers. Together, the three of them had cleared the overgrown parcel, painted the buildings, repaired the fences and dealt with anything else that needed fixing.
This was home. It was hers. No one would swoop in and take it from her—or sell it from beneath her like she’d experienced on one nightmarish day almost five years ago.
No one would steal this from her.
As long as no one snatched her from it.
That ever-constant fear wore on her, making her feel so much older than her twenty-one years.
She sniffed a laugh.
“Happy birthday to me,” she whispered to herself.
No one knew she was twenty-one today. She wasn’t actually sure her guys knew this was her birthday. As part of hiding her identity, she’d lied about her age and personal details—or at least, she’d never discussed them with Hawk or Cannon. She knew they thought she was years older than she was.
Most days, she felt much older, too. That counted for something, right?
Leaving the window, she gathered the things she’d need for work tonight. At home, she didn’t try to hide her gender. If she went outside, she slipped on a loose Carhartt coat, and that did the trick should anyone visit unexpectedly. But she didn’t wear the dreaded bindings she’d put on for tonight. That was what she disliked most about going into town.
She knew what Cannon and Hawk would say about it. Quit. They’d said it often enough. And they couldn’t understand why she didn’t.
She sure as heck couldn’t explain it to them. How could she say, Well, the truth is, I need the reprieve from you two.
More like she needed a reprieve from the arousal they spiked in her, but she couldn’t say that either.
Yeah, neither reason would fly well. They’d be hurt by the former statement, and she couldn’t explain the latter without revealing the sexual tension she needed a break from. If she was here with them, all day every day, she had no doubt she’d end up in their bed, sexed up to within an inch of her life. Probably in less than a week.
A long sigh escaped her. God, she wanted that. But she couldn’t. Not when her whole existence was in the air. Not when someone could snatch her from here at any moment. Heaven forbid she got pregnant from all the sex. The outcome wasn’t outside the scope of possibility, and she longed to build a family with her men.
Her men…
She probably shouldn’t call them that, even in her head. They weren’t officially hers—not in a romantic way. They were her roommates. Her business partners. Her protectors. Not her lovers.
Still, she couldn’t think of them any other way.
Knuckles rapped on her doorframe, pulling her from her thoughts. She set down the clothes she’d just gathered and looked over.
“You doing okay?” Hawk asked. It was probably the thirty-seventh time he’d asked that since the perimeter alarm had gone off earlier. Just like always, her heart had leapt into her throat, and she’d raced to her hidey-hole while Hawk had checked it out.
It seemed silly when she thought about it, running and hiding whenever the alarm triggered, but anyone who was welcome at her horse facility had the code for the entrance. Any clients buzzed the house from the call box at the gate.
Whoever had triggered the alarm wasn’t supposed to be here.
