“Yeah.” Jared looked at Shane. “What’s he rolling about?”
“Rebecca. You were saying?”
“The bedroom smells like her,” Shane muttered. “She doesn’t leave any of her stuff laying around, and it still smells like her. Soap, and that stuff she rubs on her skin.”
“Uh-oh,” Jared said, and helped himself to a beer.
“You know, her parents sent her to boarding school when she was six. Practically a baby. She never had a chance to be a kid. Sometimes when she laughs, she looks a little surprised by the sound of it.” He paused, thought about it. “She’s got a great laugh.”
Jared turned to Rafe. “She kick him out?”
“He says not.”
“It’s my damn house,” Shane reminded them all. “My house, my land. I’m the one who says what goes on around there. If I don’t like that stupid, idiotic, ridiculous equipment of hers, then that’s it. I don’t like that she’s wrapped herself up in all this bull, and she’s wearing herself down. I’m not coming in and finding her in a heap on the floor again.”
“What?” Amusement fled as Devin straightened in his chair. “What happened?”
“She fainted—far as I can tell. She says she had an encou
nter with our great-grandmother.” He downed beer to wash both worry and unease out of his system. “Yeah, right. They’re both frying chicken the night before the battle. I’m not getting involved in that.”
“Is she all right?” Rafe asked.
“Would I be here if she wasn’t?” He raked his fingers through his hair and fought to block out the image of her pale, small, still form on the kitchen floor. But he couldn’t. “She scared the hell out of me, damn it. Damn it.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, rubbed the heel of his hand over his aching heart. “I can’t take her being hurt. I can’t stand it. The woman’s ripping at me.”
With an effort, he pulled himself back, took another gulp from the bottle. “She bounces back,” he muttered. “I’ve never seen anybody bounce back like she does. She’s fine now, dandy, back in control. She’s not pushing me into getting hooked up with that business. She’s not going to hook me into anything.”
“Brother.” With some sympathy, Jared opened another beer and passed it to Shane. “You’re already hooked.”
“Like hell.”
“At a guess, how many times do you think about her in a given day?”
“I don’t know.” Annoyed, Shane decided getting drunk wasn’t such a bad idea after all. “I don’t count.”
In lawyer mode now, Jared briskly cross-examined the witness. “Anyone else you’ve thought about that much, that often?”
“So what? She’s living with me. You think about somebody who’s in the same house day and night.”
Rafe studied his nails. “It’s just sex.”
“The hell it is.” Like a bullet, Shane was out of his chair, fists ready. “She’s not just a warm body.” He caught himself, and his brother’s sly grin. “I’m not an animal.”
“That’s a switch.” Unconcerned, Rafe sampled his own beer. “How many other women have you wanted since Rebecca came along?”
Zip. Zero. Zilch. Terror. “That’s not the point. The point is…” He sat again, brooded into his beer. “I forgot.”
“The point is,” Devin said, picking up the threads, “you’ve lost your balance and you’re falling fast.”
“He’s already hit,” Jared put in. “He just doesn’t have the sense to know it. But, being a sensible woman, Rebecca might not fall so easy, especially for you.”
“What the hell’s wrong with me?”
“As I was saying,” Jared continued. “She’s got a life in New York, a career, interests. You might have a problem keeping her from wriggling away. You’ll have to be pretty slick to convince her to marry you.”
Shane choked, coughed, and gulped more beer. “You’re crazy. I’m not marrying anybody.”
Rafe only smiled. “Wanna bet?”