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“I’m scared of them,” I admitted.
Piper frowned. “Why?”
I sighed. “Have you seen them?”
Piper shook her head. “No, but they sound like cruel shrews.”
One of the men laughed. Knox, I thought.
“Look at me. I’m… plain. I wear glasses. I’m short and frumpy and I… I—”
“Make your husbands so hot for you that we can’t wait to take you,” Jed said, joining us. “I won’t look at my desk at the mine the same way again.”
Piper groaned. “I don’t want to hear this.”
“Then cover your ears,” Knox countered, giving his sister a narrowed gaze as he leaned against the porch rail. He leaned back so his legs stretched long and almost brushed the hem of my dress. “I thought we went over this, sweets. We spank your ass a pretty shade of red every single time. We can go over it, again and again, until you believe it. We want you. Glasses and all.”
“Your stepsisters did this, made you feel… less,” Jed said.
I nodded, then looked down at my clasped hands, remembered how I felt every time Marina and Tara had taunted, teased. Tattled.
“They’re beautiful. Tall, lithe and have tamable hair. For years they belittled me and it was easy to believe when I heard it enough.”
“But you were driven from town because you supposedly seduced your gardener,” Piper commented. She knew the story as I’d told her that very first day over coffee and whiskey.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s silly, isn’t it? I’d never seduced a man. Marina and Tara knew that and it made their efforts all the more ironic. I didn’t know how, still don’t.”
Knox pushed off the rail, came over and squatted down before me. “That’s where you’re wrong. You seduced both of us. On sight. True seduction is when a woman doesn’t even know she’s doing it.”
“You have your husbands. Me. Lane and Spur. The Tates. The miners you are teaching. You’ve befriended the town,” Piper added. “We all believe in you.”
“Except for the Thomkinses,” I countered. After their visit when I first arrived, and knowing I was now Mrs. Dare, they offered me a cold shoulder. However, they offered everyone in town a cold shoulder, so I didn’t feel singled out. For once.
“No one likes them,” Piper said. “My point is that your stepsisters… what are their names?”
“Marina and Tara.”
“Odd names,” she murmured. “Marina and Tara can do nothing to you. You have men, money, a mine. They can’t take any of that from you, no matter what they say.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them to come up with something devious,” I grumbled.
“They can’t say you’re having an affair behind our backs. No one would believe you,” Jed said.
“Why is that?”
“Because you make so much noise when you come, the whole town knows you’re well satisfied with us.”
I flushed hotly and stood to smack him, but he took my hand and tugged me into him. He kissed my forehead and I felt safe, protected in his arms. Embarrassed, but content.
Piper groaned.
“If they do say something—” Knox said, his voice deep and with a hint of anger, “—then Piper can shoot them.”
Piper clapped her hands together with a sick sense of glee. “Finally. I can shoot someone.”
***
Marina and Tara showed up on our doorstep and Piper had been very disappointed. I’d been relieved, but much like a tooth pull, knowing what was to come was perhaps more painful than the extraction itself. I’d thought the women were gone from my life when I’d boarded the train in Clancy, but they’d reappeared. And now I had to get rid of them, this time on my terms.
