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  When he lifted his head, I asked, “Why am I riding with you?”

  “ ’Cause you’re sleepin’ here tonight and since you are, no reason for us to take two vehicles.”

  My heart tripped. He wanted me back. And soon. Which would mean more sex with Jacob. And soon. And just more time. And lots of it.

  I liked that.

  “I am?”

  “Buford needs company and he can’t come over so you’re comin’ back.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “Tomorrow night, after we go out on a proper date, we still end up pickin’ up my dog and goin’ to your place or not pickin’ him up and stayin’ at mine.”

  A proper date. I liked that too. I hadn’t had many of those and none with Jacob.

  And more time.

  I liked that better.

  And hopefully, since one or the other of us was spending the night, more sex.

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  He studied me before remarking, “You’re docile in the morning when you’re not talking about pools.”

  He was wrong. Usually I was somewhat grouchy in the morning.

  But I was docile in the morning when I had back-to-back orgasms I didn’t have to give myself. And, incidentally, I’d never had back-to-back orgasms at all and having had them, my guess would be they’d make anyone docile.

  “Let’s not talk about pools,” I suggested and got another grin.

  Then I got another kiss.

  After that, I got pulled out of bed, across a room and into a shower.

  * * *

  Two hours later…

  I was sitting in my family room surrounded by women with the addition of rollicking children.

  This was because, up in my attic, nine men and one woman were laboring. Those men not Jacob were named Chace (I knew him at least), Max, Tate, Ty, Reece, Deke, Bubba and Wood. The woman there was named Twyla.

  They were all brawny (Ty especially, that guy was huge; and, not in a mean way, but it must be said, Twyla was brawny too). They were all handsome (not as handsome as Jacob but they were definitely on the mouth-watering end of the good-looking spectrum, and even a masculine woman, Twyla, was not hard to look at either, if you didn’t count her lady mullet). And there were a lot of them, thus it was likely my insulation under the roof of a sprawling mansion would take about an hour to install.

  The thing was, they brought their women with them.

  I did not know this was going to happen. And when trucks and SUVs started rolling into my vast circular drive (something I was lucky to have seeing as it fit all those trucks and SUVs), I noticed that Jacob, standing next to me with his arm flung around my shoulders, scowling, didn’t know these men were bringing their women either.

  And he didn’t like it.

  At first, I thought that was weird.

  Then, I thought it was wonderful.

  I thought that when Faye and Lauren jumped down from their respective husband’s SUVs (those being Chace Keaton and Tate Jackson), Jacob’s lips found my ear and he said, “Say the word, I’ll have a word and move the women out. I know you aren’t big on socializin’ and I got a bad feelin’ about this ’cause got more men who have women comin’. You don’t want company, I’ll deal with it.”

  I loved it that he knew that about me and I loved it that he was willing to move to protect me.

  But it wasn’t that I wasn’t big on socializing. It was that I wasn’t very good at mingling. Small talk did nothing for me. Connecting in a vague way that was meaningless left me cold.

  This was why, back when Jacob was with Elsbeth, he and I almost always ended up during a party or after dinner (or during dinner, even with people around us) holed up away from everyone else, or focused on each other, deep in a conversation or in the throes of a heated debate.

  On that memory, it hit me in a way it didn’t hit me when he brought it up that Jacob was kind of right. He was with Elsbeth but I’d never seen him deep in conversation with her and definitely not in the throes of a debate. Their relationship was close, affectionate and loving (a painful memory that wasn’t less painful now, alas), but there were parts of it that weren’t deep.

  Those parts, Jacob had, as far as I could tell, only with me.

  And I had the close, affectionate and loving bits too. Just not in some of the ways Elsbeth had them (until now).

  This thought made me dread surprise-hostessing a bunch of women I didn’t know (though, I did want to meet Faye since Chace was a really good guy I always liked) a whole lot less.

  I turned my head, caught his eyes and whispered, “Thank you, honey, but I’ll be okay.”

  “Sure?”

  God.

  So nice!

  “Yeah,” I assured him.

  His arm around my shoulders gave me a squeeze.

  More trucks came up my drive.

  So now men (and one woman) were up in my attic and I was sitting in my thankfully big family room with a bunch of women I did not know, though I also kind of did. Or, at least, some of them.

  First there was Lexie Walker, the fabulous brunette married to Ty Walker. She worked at the spa I went to in Carnal to have my hair done. She did facials or something in the back room (I got my facials with my friend Erika in Denver). I hadn’t met her but I had seen her around the spa and said hi. I also kind of knew her since she and Ty had made national news when it was exposed he was framed for a murder he didn’t commit by the racist jerkface ex-now-dead chief of police in Carnal (Ty was half black).

  The others included Lauren Jackson, a blonde married to Tate Jackson. Both Tate and Lauren were famous too, as they also made national news when she was abducted by a serial killer and her husband saved her.

  We’ll just say, the county having a gang of thieves hitting houses and using high school students to do it was unfortunately one in a long line of scary shit that had been happening. Thus, I figured, the reason they’d called in Jacob. I didn’t know police did that, but, seeing as everyone had been arrested and Jacob wasn’t on the job for very long, it was obviously a good plan.

  Also in my living room, there was the redheaded Faye Keaton, Chace’s very heavily pregnant wife, as in very pregnant.

  And Nina Maxwell, Max’s wife. She lived in Gnaw Bone. I knew Max as he owned a construction company and was a customer at the lumberyard. I’d even met his kids since he brought one, the other, or both on occasion when he was making or picking up an order. But that was business. I’d never met Nina. I’d seen her and Max a couple of times around town, but even though I’d smile and wave and he’d tip up his chin, I never approached mostly because they always were so into each other it seemed like it’d be an intrusion. Or they had their kids and thus their hands full.

  Then there was Zara Reece, another blonde, Graham Reece’s wife. She, too, was pregnant but not as far gone as Faye. She also just reopened her shop, Karma, a shop I’d visited frequently before she was forced to close it, and chatted with her impersonally when I did. So I kinda knew her too. Her shop, it must be said, I was glad she reopened because it was awesome.

  And last, there was Krystal Briggs, a woman with a very large chest and very attractive hair I’d never guess would be attractive seeing as it was a mixture of flaming red with blond streaks à la Ginger Spice in the heyday of the Spice Girls. But she worked it. She was married to a guy everyone called Bubba who was nearly as huge as Ty.

  There were also four children, ranging from small child to toddler, wrestling on my rug. Two were Nina’s. Two were Lexie’s.

  They told me Wood’s wife, Maggie, couldn’t make it.

  For this, I hid being grateful.

  They were enough.

  It wasn’t because they weren’t friendly. They were.

  It wasn’t because they didn’t quite hide their curiosity about me. I got that.

  I got it because Chace and Jacob were tight, Faye was married to Chace, and these women were close. I knew women talked so I’d be an object of fascination, what w
ith Jacob corralling their men to install insulation, which said it all about how a man felt about the woman whose insulation he was installing. The girls had shared early on in getting cups of coffee and settling in that all their men had helped find Faye during her ordeal, Jacob included in that, which, when something like that happened, was an unwanted but definite bonding ritual and these men had bonded through it.

  The odd man out in that was Graham Reece, who wasn’t around then. But he was a good friend of Max’s so Max figured many hands made light work, especially if those hands are connected to brawny hot guys (though Max probably didn’t think about the hot part) and he’d asked Reece to come along.

  I was glad for the help, which cost me nothing but beer and chips and brownies (that I’d had just enough time and just enough luck the oven was working to make).

  But I was overwhelmed because these women were tight.

  I didn’t fit in. They had history, a lot of it intense, and it was my experience that a latecomer to that might be welcome but she was never in.

  And I’d decided long ago, in college actually, when I’d been bit by a couple of girls who were mean girls and were mean to me, that my time and energy in friendships should be saved for only those who deserved it. Seeing as I liked my own company and my life, filling it with people I genuinely cared about who genuinely cared about me worked.

  So I didn’t know how to do the girl posse. I didn’t have a lot of experience with it, by design. And being in a chatty, close-knit one in my own house but still the outsider wasn’t much fun.

  I wouldn’t tell Jacob this. He’d worry or maybe ask them to leave.

  So I had to suck it up and deal.

  I was thinking this when something weird happened.

  And that weird something was, with Krystal leading the pack, all of them set about making me not the outsider, folding me in the posse, and doing it genuinely but also honestly.

  Krystal started this by asking, “How you holdin’ up with your uber-alpha?”

  I blinked, stared because I thought her question was weird, then asked, “Pardon?”

  “The mighty have fallen,” Lexie noted, grinning at Lauren, “Only Deke left.”

  Deke, I forgot to mention, was a big guy with long blond hair in a ponytail. And he didn’t bring a woman.

  “So, Emme, how you holdin’ up?” Krystal repeated.

  “I, well…” I started but trailed off, unsure.

  “Just so you know,” Faye, who’d brought a couple bags of herbal tea and had a mug of it in her hand that luckily my stove was working in order to boil the kettle to make, was talking to me, “Chace is super-happy you and Deck reconnected. He said he’s always liked you.”

  That felt nice since I’d always liked Chace.

  Nice enough for me to reply, “Just so you know, Jacob is super-happy Chace found you.”

  She smiled at me.

  “You call him Jacob?” Krystal asked then looked at Faye. “Does anyone call him Jacob?”

  “Not that I know of,” Faye answered.

  Krystal looked at me. “What’s with ‘Jacob’?”

  Until right then, I didn’t understand I called him that because no one else did, except my mom and dad, but including Elsbeth. I called him that likely to be outside the pack. I called him that unwittingly creating something between us, an intimacy he shared with no one… but me.

  And he never said a word.

  This made me feel mushy.

  “I like the name Jacob,” I told her, and it wasn’t a fib.

  “It’s a nice name,” Faye murmured, grinning into her tea.

  “Just so you know,” I said to Faye. “Jacob is also super-honored you’re naming your son after him.”

  Faye smiled at me again.

  “Yes, that’s sweet, Faye,” Lauren put in.

  “Okay, is it just me, or has anyone noticed Emme hasn’t answered Krys’s question?” Lexie stated at this point, and my eyes went to her.

  “That’s because I don’t know how, exactly,” I admitted.

  “Oh boy,” Krystal sat back, looking at Lexie, “this is not good.”

  My gaze went to her. “Why?”

  She leaned into me and warned, “Do not let that man walk all over you.”

  I blinked.

  Jacob would never do that. I didn’t even know why she’d think that. I’d said nothing that would lead her to that.

  “I—” I began.

  Faye got there before me. “Deck’s an alpha but he’d never do that.”

  I was relieved she felt the same and verbalized it.

  “Bullshit,” Krystal said.

  My head jerked.

  “He wouldn’t,” Faye replied to Krystal.

  “They all try,” Lexie put in.

  That wasn’t good news.

  “Is the sex good?” Krystal asked me, and my head jerked again.

  “I, well… it… we just started—” I stammered, not even knowing why I was stammering instead of telling her that was none of her business.

  “I hope it’s good but not great,” Krystal remarked. “Sex slave to an alpha. Bad news.”

  This time my head didn’t jerk. I blinked again.

  “I’m a sex slave to an alpha and I have no complaints,” Lauren muttered, grinning at Zara.

  “Me either,” Zara replied, grinning back.

  “I’ve had mine longer than all of you,” Nina announced. “And I’m of a mind that there will never be a time I complain mostly because it’s been years and Max has given me nothing to complain about.”

  “Don’t tell me Tate Jackson isn’t addicted to all that,” Krystal said to Lauren, ignoring Nina and throwing her hand up in the air to indicate all that was Lauren, and there was a lot.

  She had to be in her forties but she hit that age in a happy way, lots of hair, biker babe look that I thought was the bomb, a fabulous figure. Tate Jackson was extremely good-looking but he hit the jackpot with his wife, and unless he was stupid, which I didn’t figure he was, he would know it.

  “This is where things are interesting,” Lexie declared. “I would have thought it’d be hard, especially out here without a huge pool to pick from, for Deck to meet his match but he has. I mean, it isn’t like there are a bunch of skanks around, mountain girls have it going on, but not Jacob Decker caliber of have it going on.” Her eyes pinned me. “That’s good news for you, honey.”

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “You. Are. Hot,” Krystal stated, answering my question to Lexie. “That sultry, don’t-give-a-damn, I-don’t-need-a-man, exotic kind of hot.”

  Another blink then, “I am?”

  “Babe, totally. This is why I’m concerned. You lose that edge, you’re screwed,” Krystal answered.

  It was then I found my mouth sharing (and I didn’t know why), “I think last night I told him in the middle of a rant that I was lonely.”

  “Oh fuck,” Krystal muttered.

  “You’re lonely?” Zara asked, her warm brown eyes holding a hint of concern.

  “Well, I got sick a while ago, like really sick, hospitalized sick.” I watched all the women get concerned looks so I went on quickly, “I’m okay. Totally fine. It’s all good but it wasn’t fun to do that alone.”

  “I’ll bet,” Lauren murmured.

  “Being sick alone is awful,” Nina declared and grinned. “Being sick around an alpha is a lot less awful.”

  I found this comment intriguing.

  She and Max had been together a while so it was likely she’d at least gotten a cold or something, so she would know. But Max didn’t strike me as a care-for-his-sick-wife-with-kindness-and-adoration kind of guy. He struck me as a she’ll-get-over-it-I’m-going-to-go-chop-down-some-trees-for-firewood kind of guy.

  “Glad you’re better,” Faye said quietly. “But sorry you were sick.”

  “Yeah, that sucks,” Lexie agreed.

  “I’m okay now,” I assured them.

  “We can see that, anyone can see that,” Kr
ystal said, eyes moving the length of me in my armchair then coming back to mine. “Does Deck know you were sick?”

  I nodded.

  “And does he know you didn’t like to go that alone?” she asked.

  I nodded again.

  She sat back, muttering, “Not sure what to do with that.”

  It was at this point I was beginning to think this conversation was all kinds of weird.

  “I couldn’t exactly keep it from him. I was sick for a year and we’re starting a relationship,” I told her.

  “A year?” Zara asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “Bummer,” Zara replied.

  “It’s all good now,” I stated.

  “Krys,” Lauren called, and Krystal looked at her. “I don’t get where you’re going with this. It’s not like you aren’t sitting in a room full of women who are hooked to badasses who are doing a little bit of a whole lot of all right.”

  I was glad to know Lauren thought this was weird too.

  “Yeah, I know,” Krystal returned. “But, A, it took some head butting, a lot of bullshit and a fuckload of emotion to get you here. And B, no offense, Laurie, but Emme here,” she flung a hand out to me, “is different.”

  “She is?” Lexie asked at the same time I asked, “I am?”

  Krystal looked at me, her face was normally a hint hard but I saw her eyes were now soft.

  She was very, very pretty.

  With that look in her eyes, she was a knockout.

  “Babe,” she said quietly, “Deck is a good guy. I can’t say I know him all that well, but I know he’d do anything for Chace and Faye and he’s proved that. A man can be a good friend, the best kind of good friend there is, that means he’s a good man. But you aren’t like normal women and I’ve seen a lot of women and the kind I like best is your kind. You got a life. You got a mission, this house. You got your world and your way of doin’ things. And a man like Deck can come into that life and make it all about him just by bein’ Deck. He wouldn’t do it intentionally. With the force of his personality, he’d just do it.”

  I didn’t know how she figured that all out about me.

  Maybe she had awesome mental powers like Jacob.