AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Two
Lacey had already formulated exactly what she was looking for in a guy. He had to be extremely well dressed. Pristinely groomed, and she wasn’t above him getting manicures to maintain his grooming standards.
He had to have some sort of business or law degree. He had to work in an office behind a desk. He had to be clean-shaven, have a mild disposition, impeccable manners, a dash of refined charm, and a good dose of kindness.
The three men she was staring at right now as if she had been caught with her pants down, although that could be the case here to some degree, were not what she was looking for in a man. Her list of attributes was listed as direct opposites of each one of them.
Which brought her to the Kennedy brothers, whom Lacey had known all her life.
Her earliest memory of them involved them tugging on her pigtails, to them beating her at Monopoly, and then having to listen to every single female, young, old, and in between-, she came into contact with, go completely nuts over her brothers’ best friends.
She hated that she was all her friends’ go-between when she had to go up to them and plead her friends’ cases for a measly date with the cowboys. And they always refused anyway.
For the life of her, she would never understand what they saw in the Kennedy brothers.
They were too tall, their voices too rough, their hands even rougher, and their manners stank because they laughed at her when she fell into the pool in her party dress when she turned twenty, and they also never wanted her to forget how she fell off a horse into cow dung when she turned twenty-two, just last year.
They were insufferable specimens, each in their own right.
Their eyes were stupid shades of god knows what color of green. They had obscenely long eyelashes, which was a big turnoff for her. She hated the way their jawlines were so damn structured that even their scruffy beards couldn’t hide them. She hated their beards. Period.
They wore checkered shirts and jeans so worn that she fervently hoped she was nowhere in sight when the fabric ripped, and their asses were exposed. She did not want to see that. Ever. Thank you very much.
Joshua, the oldest Kennedy brother, had a scar that ran from his eyebrow down to his left cheek and made him look more like a pirate than a cowboy. He kept his dark hair on the short side—very short—and he didn’t even need to pretend to glower, it came to him naturally, she was sure. Girls went crazy for that kind of rugged broodiness; they were super attracted to it but also a little skittish about it. Not her. Not even a tiny little bit.
Case, on the other hand, had a smile that could make anyone who looked his way kneel at his feet, except again for her, of course, because she couldn’t see the appeal, and not once did she want to actually drop to her knees before him. Like ever.
His dark hair curled over his collar in silky, soft waves, and the thick leather band he wore on his wrist brought attention to his big hands, which were just a ravine of veins and calluses. Not her thing.
Tyler, the youngest, had a smile that could melt a thousand hearts in one go. Again, hearsay, because the man was currently grinning at her and she was still standing, unmelted.
His dark hair was a tousled mess, longer in the front, and kept falling over his eye, which forced him to thread his fingers through his hair to send it back. She could recommend a few men’s grooming houses to him.
They did bull riding, bronc riding, rodeo barrel racing, and whatever else other sweaty, dusty sport cowboys did in their spare time, and then they herded cattle for a living on a ranch in the middle of nowhere.
She’d had the unfortunate experience of knowing firsthand that bovines stank, which was enough to say about what they did for a living.
They were also really just too muscular for her, with their eight-pack abs, powerful thighs, and tanned bodies, which she had analyzed when they went swimming in some unsafe river with her brothers. They hadn’t even seen the inside of a gym, and she didn’t much like the raw, almost savage strength of their bodies.
Personally, she called it the caveman look.
Why women went crazy for that kind of thing, Lacey would never know.
Honestly, she saw nothing in them that appealed to her on any level whatsoever, so she declared every other woman who drooled their panties off for them just a little mentally imbalanced, or they didn’t know any better.
Give her a man in a suit with clean fingernails, dress shoes, and combed hair, and she’d be happy. Give her these men who measured their testosterone with their obscenely sized feet in their dirty, dusty boots, and she’d gladly give them back.
“Miss Lacey.” Each of them drawled, and she instantly knew they were messing with her, expecting her to be enamored by the velvety timber of their voices, the cadence of huskiness, and the shivery depth in their lilts.
She rolled her eyes. Hard.
Again, she had to put it down to the shock of seeing them because nothing else could explain what happened next.
A slight, annoying prickling in her breasts at the sight of them had her folding her arms over her chest, which in turn had a warmth spreading all over her body that seemed to start from between her legs.
The more she tried to hold onto her clenched body to keep the balls inside her, the more strained her breath became. More waves of warmth tumbled over her.
Were the balls inside her heating up? Was that something that they did? Had she missed reading that when she skimmed the print on the box?
