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Their youngest sister, Alaina, had a baby, and was married to Gus McCloud, which meant she was in very close proximity to all the McCloud brothers.
Alaina’d had a bit of a rocky road to happiness, but now she seemed pretty well giddy with it.
And yeah, the McCloud men, who she was now surrounded by, were notoriously hardheaded and difficult. Her husband most of all.
“He’s not the same kind of difficult as Gus,” she said, trying to figure out how to articulate the Levi of it all. “He’s...he’s arrogant, first of all. Gus is not arrogant.”
“You don’t think so?” Rory asked.
She thought about her brother-in-law, who was scarred and a bit gruff, but ultimately one of the most caring men she’d ever met. Alaina was mouthy and had a quick-burning temper. Gus couldn’t be arrogant, not when dealing with Alaina.
“No,” said Quinn. “I don’t think so.”
“Hmm.” Rory picked up her phone and brought up a video call.
Alaina, all red curly hair and smiles, answered. She was holding their nephew on her hip. “Hey,” she said.
“I have a question for you,” said Rory. “Is Gus arrogant? Quinn doesn’t think so.”
Alaina howled with laughter. “Yes. He’s the biggest, most arrogant bastard on the planet.”
“Hey.” They heard a man’s voice off to the side and Alaina quickly flashed the phone over toward him.
“This is irrelevant,” said Quinn. “I don’t care about Gus.”
“That’s hurtful,” Gus said just from outside the frame.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said to her brother-in-law, and she could feel all the impossible heat she associated only with Levi flooding her. “I just mean that I’m trying to deal with Levi Granger, and I think he’s more arrogant than Gus.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Gus. “Levi Granger is an asshole.”
“See,” said Quinn. “Levi Granger is an asshole.” For some reason, that sat wrong with her, and made her feel bad, too, but she did not recant. “And it is a noted, documented fact. But I’m not going to let him make me angry. I’m going to make a binder instead.”
“Sorry,” said Fia, dipping her head toward the phone. “You got involved in a sister dispute.”
“Do I need to come over there?” Alaina asked.
She was about an eight-minute drive away, living on McCloud’s Landing, a few miles away on the interconnected dirt roads that ran between the ranches.
“No. This is all about Quinn requesting money to buy a laminator.”
Alaina laughed. “A laminator. That’s what this is about? Aren’t those like twenty bucks? Let it never be said the Sullivan sisters couldn’t make a mountain out of a molehill. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Alaina hung up.
“Well, thank you for that,” said Quinn. “I didn’t need to involve the whole family.”
“Yes. We can drive over to Mapleton and get a laminator.”
“All of us?”
“All of us,” said Fia.
Which was how she found herself bundled up into her sister’s turquoise truck, and headed the hour out of Pyrite Falls into Mapleton, the closest town that actually had some decent-sized services.
Pyrite Falls itself was less the town and more a strip of buildings. With Smokey’s Tavern, John’s grocery store and Becky’s diner, the place was very small.
The public school was in Mapleton, and the children of the families that worked at Four Corners had the option to send the kids to the one-room schoolhouse on the property to be schooled that way. That was where Quinn had gone to school.
All of them had, in fact.
