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Eli laughed. It all felt so normal. So perfect. So what his life was supposed to be.
His mare.
His girl.
None of it made any sense, yet at the same time, it made the most sense.
If he kept Midnight, did that mean Beth might stay too?
“I’m right behind you, Callahan.” He hopped off the fence and grabbed each man’s bottle, one by one, waiting until they each drained their respective brews down to the last drop. “Let me just get these in the recycle bin, and I’ll be right over.”
The four of them dispersed, and he brought the bottles inside, rinsed them out, and then headed toward the large bin behind the chicken coop. But he stopped short at the coop entrance, dropping the bottles into the grass.
The sliding lock to the coop door wasn’t just loose. It had been completely pried off the wooden door. The chicks were still in their brooder, but he found several of Jenna’s hens strutting around the fenced-in yard, Lucy included.
One by one, he snatched them up, carrying each like a football back into the coop, trying at the same time to account for them all. But for every two hens he brought back inside, one would escape again because there was no lock on the door.
Sam was going to wonder where he was. Worse, Sam was going to want to kick his ass if he missed out on trying for a baby because Eli didn’t make it back on time. And while Eli had never really come to blows with anyone before, he didn’t want his first time to be with a buddy who boxed for fun.
Eli finally had the brilliant idea to use the recycling bin as a barricade, and chasing down only three more hens, he finally had everyone inside. Only once he was inside his truck, the adrenaline waning, did he realize that he hadn’t been making something out of nothing.
Someone was nosing around his property, his animals.
It might have been déjà vu, but it was also real as hell, and Eli wasn’t going to let shit go down again the way it had before.
Chapter 22
“You want Bethy to stay the night?” Delaney asked. “Like, all afternoon and evening?”
Beth glanced around the front porch from Eli to her sister to Sam—who looked like he suddenly wanted to pummel Eli—and then back at Eli again.
“Okay, first of all,” Beth began, “you say that as if you just found out I have lice and you now have to delouse me.”
Delaney scratched her head and pouted. “Do not remind me. I’m still traumatized by your third-grade class’s lice epidemic. Come to think of it, what did Mom ever do with all those stuffed animals she quarantined in giant garbage bags? Think they’re still in storage?”
“Ew!” Both women cried in unison.
“Forget it, Callahan,” Delaney said to her husband. “We’re skipping this cycle. Two kids double our chances of lice coming home from school. I’m not ready for that yet.”
Sam winced. “We can not be ready and still try…” he reasoned.
“You can stay, Bethy!” Delaney exclaimed.
Beth turned her gaze back to Eli, suddenly realizing the ends of his dark hair were damp with sweat, his expression pinched and strained.
“What is going on?” she asked him. “And no way I’m being used as an excuse to keep you two from getting busy.” She pointed back and forth between her sister and brother-in-law. “You all upped the security at the barn, right? So it’s safe for Midnight to head back home?”
Eli blew out a breath and finally looked Beth in the eye.
“I haven’t told you everything about that night.” He paused.
“It’s okay, Eli,” she told him, hoping he could hear how much she meant it. She realized now that if he truly cared for her after what she’d given him this past month—which was decidedly not Beth at her very best—she had nothing to worry about when it came to Eli’s past. This wasn’t a competition with the love he’d lost. It was whatever. It was them. And Beth and Eli were something entirely different from anything either of them had known before. Did the timing suck? Yeah. It sucked hard. But here they were, right now, taking on whatever came their way.
“You know what?” Delaney began. “We’ll leave you two alone to chat.” She looked at her watch and then at her husband. “Nolan is down for at least ninety minutes. Let’s go try.”
Sam’s face lit up, and he planted a smooch on his wife’s lips right there in front of everyone.
She yelped with laughter and then shushed herself.
