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They looked different from when she had seen them that morning. Yes, she had never seen them madder than they were now staring at her in their messy kitchen—oh boy, they were not happy to see her back at all. But there was something different about them.
Maybe it was because they were barefoot, Joshua had his shirt buttons undone, Case was wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt when they all always wore cowboy shirts in checkered or in plaid design, and Tyler had simply skipped a shirt altogether.
She remembered what Becca had said about their washboard abs and swallowed a little too hard. What was wrong with her? She had seen their abs before, and she had pronounced them not her type. And maybe Case and Tyler did need their hair trimmed, and she could do the same with Joshua’s beard.
She also noticed that all three of their knuckles seemed banged up with cuts and lacerations, possibly from fixing a barbed wire fence or something, and they needed some first aid treatment.
See, she was noticing things a good wife would notice. She was already winning.
“Now before you go caveman-shit crazy on me, just hear me out. I heard you three are looking for a wife. I’m here to audition for the part. But guess what? I don’t actually want to be your wife. I… just want to prove a point. Three points, actually, because I said I could be a wife to all three of you at the same time.
“Look, just let me stay here for five days; that’s all. I’ll cook, clean, and do your laundry, and I’ll also do whatever traditional thing your grandma thinks a wife should do for her husband—in my case, pretend husbands. Anything you want done, I’ll do it. No questions asked. At the end of five days, I might need you to write a little note that says I proved 100% that I was an extremely good wife. It’s so easy. Think about it. In the end, we all win.”
“How did you get in?” Case asked. His full, thick, silky-looking brows dipped to the center of his forehead, and his eyes narrowed at her.
“Well, locking me out wasn’t going to deter me, and you should remember that when you’re writing me my review as a wife I’m also pretty resourceful—”
“Answer the question,” Tyler said, cutting her off.
Rude, but okay.
“I came around the back.”
“You mean you went around the mountain?” Case asked.
“I did.”
Okay, so she couldn’t understand why, with every question she answered, they seemed to be getting madder at her.
“Where’s your car?” It wasn’t like Tyler to question her so seriously, so what was up with that?
“I moved it closer to the stream, so it’s out of the way, and then I crossed the stream and crawled under the fence and then got here and took a shower, and I’m wearing a towel because I left my bags in the car. I’ll get them back tomorrow when the sun is out.”
Lacey started to chew on the inside of her cheek. She couldn’t quite read the situation, but it most definitely wasn’t favoring her.
“You took a dirt road in the middle of a storm, and no one knew what you were doing?”
“Well, it wasn’t quite as bad a storm as it is now,” she said, answering Case. “But yes. I don’t know what the big deal is. I’m here, and everything is fine.”
“The big deal is, Lacey, for fucks’ sake, you could have fucking died out there and no one would have known where to look for you,” Joshua shouted at her.
“Well, yes, but none of those things happened, so can we just move on? And stop yelling at me.”
“Move on? You could have died.”
“But I didn’t,” she shouted back. “I made sure I didn’t—” Words dried up in her mouth as Joshua started to charge toward her. “Wait?” she said, putting her hand out to him in a feeble attempt to stop him. It turned out to be a useless attempt. Before she knew it, she was capsized over Joshua’s lap while he sat in a chair.
The towel lost the battle of keeping her covered up. Half her breasts were exposed, and her backside was in the air; the backside that was also completely exposed, down to her bare skin.
“What are you doing?” she shrieked.
“You want to be our wife, fake or not? Then this is what happens to any wife of ours who does anything as fucking stupid as what you just did. She gets taught a lesson never to do it again.”
Lacey quite forgot what her name was when Joshua issued his first strike on her poor, defenseless butt. She didn’t quite know the level of her obtuseness, but a spanking was the last thing she expected when Joshua brought her over to his lap. God, could she be any more clueless?
But never mind that. Joshua rattled her entire soul, shaking her out of proportion and leaving her inflamed and confused.
The needling sting on her flesh reverberated through her whole body and under her skin.
