CHERRY PICKED
SUNDAY BROTHERS #3
CHERRY PICKED
Never ask your brother’s best friend to…pick your cherry.
When I asked Jack Wyatt to help me lose my pesky v-card, I didn’t expect him to keel over in shocked disapproval and nearly tumble us down a mountain.
You might think a guy who's been reading romance novels his whole life would've figured out a smoother way to broach the subject, but in my defense, I’ve been pining for Jack for seven long years, just waiting for him to notice me.
Jack sees me as sweet, shy Hawk Sunday: his Pride and Prejudice-obsessed hiking buddy; his dependable employee; the honorary little brother he’s determined to protect, not…deflower.
But to me, Jack is everything a romantic hero should be: tall, gorgeous, kind, and brilliant.
Or at least Ithoughthe was brilliant… until he started getting so many things so boneheadedly wrong.
Like refusing to do the deflowering himself, but also, erm... blocking any other potentialplant-loversfrom getting all up in my garden.
And like continuing to see me as someone who needs protecting, rather than a man who needspossessing…
A man who's determined to get his cherry well and truly picked this summer, whether Jack Wyatt likes it or not.
PROLOGUE
HAWK
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader in possession of a good book must be in want of an interruption.
~ Hawk Sunday, January 2016
Hidingin plain sight had always been my superpower.
“Haaaaawk?” my little sister singsonged from the living room doorway, not realizing that I was a mere two feet away from her. “Hawkins Sunday, my favorite brother in the whole entire universe? Hawk, pleeeeease? Come out, come out, wherever you are! I have the teeniest,tiiiiiniestlittle favor to ask you!” she called, clomping up the stairs.
I stuffed a Thin Mint into my mouth and grinned as I pulled the giant quilt more firmly over my head, snuggled deeper into the sofa cushions, and turned the page of my new book.
I loved my family—trulyloved them. I would happily take a bullet for Emma, or my uncle Drew, or any of the four giant lummoxes I called my big brothers.
I delighted in helping them with their school projects and their town committees, with chores around Sunday Orchard, or,in Drew’s case, with finding the keys and reading glasses he misplaced on the daily, usually somewhere on his person.
But a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old man hadneeds, damn it. Specifically, in this case, theneedto eat this last box of Girl Scout cookies I’d been saving since a ravening horde of Sundays had descended like locusts and eaten all eleven of the other boxes I’d purchased, theneedto not venture into the January sleety-rain combo for anything less than a life-or-death emergency, and theneedto find out if the dastardly George Wickham would actually gain control of heroic, deliciously broody Mr. Darcy’s estate after committing Darcy to Bedlam, or if the intrepid Miss Elizabeth Bennet, racing across England in a stolen phaeton, would arrive to save the love of her life before time ran out.
“Henry Hawkins Sunday! I know you’re around here somewhere,” Emma called again, her heavy snow boots pounding back down the stairs.
“Hey, hey. What’s with the racket, sister?” Drew asked, meeting her in the hallway.
“Porter texted the family group chat that he lost his snow pants and ski gloves, and he wants to borrow Hawk’s,” Em said. “And Webb called ’cause he’s bringing a friend over to go snowshoeing, and he says it’s about time Hawk got some fresh air ’cause he’s probably looking peaky. AndIwanted to ask Hawk to take me to get ice cream at Scoops since he bought himself a car and everything now.” She heaved the put-upon sigh of the unlicensed. “But he’s off somewhere reading his books again.”
I glanced up from said book, scowled at the inside of the blanket, and angrily shoved more cookies in my mouth. Em said the wordreadingin the same tone of voice one might saypreg-checking the cowsorplucking the slugs from the cherry trees.
The trouble with being in a family of lumberjacks (plus one aging hippie and a pint-sized wilderness warrior) was that all of them would rather be slathered in jelly and tied to an anthill than spend a full day indoors, so they couldn’t imagine why I would.
Not long ago, I’d loved the outdoors, too; hiking had been a thing my dad and I did regularly. But the appeal of the activity had died with my dad. Shortly thereafter, I’d learned of the existence ofPride and Prejudicevariations—not to be confused with the actual OGPride and Prejudicebecause the original was still the best—andvoilà. Instant love affair.
There’d been no going back for me.
But no matter how many times I tried to explain my fascination—the plots and the symbolism and thelove—none of them seemed to get it.
