I sucked in a breath through my teeth and tried to straighten up. It involved a lot of grumbling and swearing, but eventually, my knees stopped shaking and my glutes quit screaming at me. Cy held me up throughout the ordeal while Emrys watched with a smirk and the crushing teenager watched with murder in her eyes. I kept waiting for a snide remark or something mean to come out of Cy’s mouth. After all, I had started off questioning his authenticity. It was clear he could sit on his big steed all day without an ounce of discomfort, whereas I was a hot mess and barely able to stand. He didn’t say a word, just waited until I was back in control of my jelly-like limbs and held me up.

I turned around in his hold so we were face to face and told myself not to lean in to him. He might be all kinds of fire and flame but I wasn’t going to let myself melt. I put a hand in the center of his rock hard chest and pushed a little so that he got the hint and took a step backwards, letting me go as he went.

“I’ve got it. Thanks.”

He dipped his chin down and then leaned closer to me so that his lips were almost touching my ear. His breath was warm but it made me shiver as he told me, “If you need help getting the ointment on the hard to reach places, let me know.”

I shivered at the suggestion and at the image his words brought to mind. I cleared my throat so I could get a response out. “I think I’ll be able to reach.”

“Good, because you handle it yourself or you ask me, but you do not ask my little brother. He flashes that smile of his and women fall at his feet, but he is not for you and you are not for him.”

I stiffened and planted my hands on my hips, fully prepared to tell him he could take a long ride down a short trail, that he didn’t get to decide who was for me or who I was for because he didn’t know a damn thing about me. All my righteous feminist indignation prickled and riled up, ready to flay him in half with barbed words. However, what came out of my mouth was, “At least Lane knows how to smile, even if he uses it to make women fall.”

Cy’s raven-colored brows shot upward and his very unsmiling mouth twitched at the corners. “I can smile.”

I huffed, “When?”

He bent close again and my whole body wanted to press into his. “I smile when something makes me happy.”

“What makes you happy?” I couldn’t picture him as the jovial, cheery type to save my life, but I really was curious about what would make that stony expression he always wore turn into something more approachable. A smile from him would mean heartbreak and devastation. I wouldn’t just melt, I would dissolve into nothing more than particles that were made up of desire and need for this man and this man alone.

“Behave and you’ll find out soon enough. Go take care of Boss so he can keep on taking care of you.”

He walked over to Em and all I could think was that whatever it was that made a man like him smile was bound to be nothing but trouble for the woman he was smiling at.

Not So Alone

Emrys wasn’t lying about knowing how to fish, which was a good thing, because I didn’t have the patience that it took to bait the hook, cast, and recast for hours upon hours in order to secure dinner. I was bored out of my mind after the first fifteen minutes. But she declared that if she was going to feed both of us then it was going to be my job to clean the catch. I almost threw up when I watched her do the first fish. However, when my reaction made not only the kids, but also the Warner brothers, and the two silent men laugh at me, I sucked it up and managed to power through the next few slimy, fishy executions without making a mess of it. Em told me that she was proud of me and oddly enough, I was proud of myself as well because that was the kind of thing I would typically walk away from. I hated not knowing what I was doing and I was paranoid about doing things wrong.

Ethan, who complained the entire time that he would rather be playing Xbox, also managed to pull in quite a haul. It didn’t go unnoticed by any of the adults in our group that it was Lane who congratulated him and told him job well done rather than his father.

With enough provisions secured for dinner, Cy declared it was time to get back on the horses and ride to the riverside clearing where we were bunking down for the night and setting up camp. Once there, I begrudgingly took the small glass jar of ointment he offered me and found a secluded spot where I could work my jeans down around my hips so I could work the potent salve into my skin. He didn’t lie. It smelled to high heaven and it made my skin slippery and slick under the denim. Emrys wrinkled her nose at me when I made my way back to the horses. Boss made a noise that I swore was one of disgust when I went to climb up onto his back. You could smell me coming from a mile away. The situation wasn’t going to be helped at all when the smoke from the campfire that night and the bug spray I slathered all over myself was added to the mix.

After taking care of the animals and making dinner, that was followed by a surprise dessert of campfire s’mores that Lane seemed to pull out of nowhere. I was so tired I could barely see straight. Em and I went to crawl into the tiny pop-up tent that we were to share for the week, even though everyone else was still up and gathered around the campfire chit chatting, everyone except for Cy. The big man had wandered off about the time Lane busted out the surprise sweets and hadn’t come back to camp by the time I was ready to call it a night. I was pretty sure his disappearing act was prompted by the fact Evan was stuck to his side like a blood-sucking tick. It was his way of spurning her advances without being outright rude. Lane was right, his older brother really wasn’t much of a people person.