by Sierra Dafoe
“Over my dead body.”
“When did you meet her?” Michael asked. Seth hadn’t mentioned a woman. Not to anyone. He would have known. The dads wouldn’t have kept something like that quiet. They would have been too busy giving him hell.
“Yesterday,” Seth said in a gruff, pissed-off voice.
“Yesterday? Yesterday? And you’re going off on me for having just met her?” Michael laughed. “You fucking hypocrite.”
And then the thought came. Stuck in his head like someone had hit him with a hammer. He’d walked into his brother’s house and met a woman he instantly and absolutely had to have. It wasn’t just sexual. No, his reaction to her hadn’t even been sexual. It was emotional. On a level he couldn’t even explain.
The same woman his brother was having some psychotic caveman episode over.
“Oh no,” he whispered. “Oh hell no.”
“What are you talking about?” Seth demanded.
“Goddamn it, I thought it was bullshit. I thought it was some hokey bullshit that the dads made up to make Mom feel all soft and mushy.”
Seth got into his face, breathing fire he was so pissed off. “What. The. Fuck. Are. You. Talking. About.”
Michael closed his eyes and let out a helpless laugh. “It’s some fucked-up Colter gene. It has to be. There’s no other explanation.”
Seth threw up his hands. “I swear to God if you don’t start making some fucking sense, I’m going to knock the shit out of you.”
“Think about it, Seth. How many times have we heard the story over the years? The dads met Mom and they knew immediately and with absolute certainty that she was the one. The one. They said it was instant and so powerful they didn’t have a prayer of fighting. They wanted to love and protect her, wrap her in cotton and lock her away for about a hundred years. Now you tell me. Is that what you’re feeling when you look at Lily? Because I sure as hell am, and it’s worse for me because I don’t even know the goddamn woman.”
Seth looked like someone hit him square between the eyes with a bat. For a moment, Michael thought Seth was going to hit him.
“That’s crazy,” Seth finally said. “She’s a beautiful woman. Of course you’d have a strong reaction to her. You probably haven’t been laid in a year.”
“No need to get insulting,” Michael drawled. “I’ve probably gotten lucky at least twice since the last time you shed the monk robes. And sure, she’s beautiful, but step back a moment, Seth. Really look at her objectively. She’s not the most gorgeous woman you or I have ever seen.”
Seth’s lip turned up into a snarl and Michael held up his hand. “Let me finish. We’ve seen any number of women who were heart-stoppingly gorgeous, but tell me this. Were you tripping over yourself like this with them? You look at her and you see something beyond beauty. I know because I saw the same damn thing.”
Seth shook his head. “I’m not listening to this. This is insane. Our dads may have fallen for the same woman, but you can’t tell me we’ll do the same.”
“You’re forgetting the granddads. Explain that one, Seth. If there isn’t some hinkey shit going on in the gene pool then why are you and I about to go to fist city because we’re both determined to get close to Lily?”
Seth’s eyes looked haunted as it all sank in. “Damn it, Michael, this isn’t what I wanted. It can’t be possible. It has to be some stupid coincidence.”
“Yeah, well, believe me, sharing a woman with my two bonehead brothers doesn’t exactly appeal to me either, but unless one of us suffers a fast change of heart, we’re either going to have to do some serious compromising or one of us is going to go home to Mom in a pine box.”
“I’m not having this conversation with you right now,” Seth bit out. “There are things you don’t know about Lily. I can’t even convince her to let her guard down around me. She walked in here, saw you and now she’s ready to bolt.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Michael asked, now dead serious.
Seth glanced down at the mug of hot chocolate, swore and then stuck it in the microwave. Then, as if realizing how much time had passed since Lily had gone to get dressed, he glanced at his watch and frowned.
“She’s been gone too long,” he muttered.
Michael watched as Seth stomped off down the hall. A few seconds later he heard “Son of a bitch!” And then the unmistakable sound of a fist hitting the wall.
Michael surged to his feet, adrenaline spiking sharp through his veins. Seth came barreling out of the hallway and then ducked into the dining room. He came back out, face set in stone.
“What the hell is wrong?” Michael demanded.
“While you and I were out here discussing Lily, she took off.”
Michael’s eyebrow went up at the urgency in Seth’s voice. “Won’t she be back?”
“No, goddamn it. She’s homeless, Michael. She doesn’t have a place to stay. I found her between two cardboard boxes on the fucking street. She’s scared and alone, and she has no place to go. It took me forever to convince her to come here, and now she’s run scared.”
Michael’s stomach bottomed out with a thud. “Homeless? What the fuck?”
Seth whirled around like he couldn’t figure out what he needed to do first. He grabbed up his keys and then shoved his feet into his shoes.
“Yeah, homeless. I served her in the soup kitchen yesterday. I volunteer there once a month. She came in and bam. I mean I still don’t know what happened. When she left I followed her because I couldn’t stand the thought of her having no place to go. I found her in an alley, cold and alone.”
“Son of a bitch,” Michael muttered.
Seth pointed a finger at him. “Right now I don’t give a damn about what you feel for her or think you feel. I don’t give a shit about some fucking Colter gene that you think we got from the dads. All I care about is getting her back. Here. Where she belongs. Get your ass out to your Jeep so you can help me look. Everything else is just going to have to goddamn wait.”
The Boys Next Door
Sierra Dafoe
Love takes courage. Loving two men takes twice as much.
At seventeen, Tommy Ambinder was Annie Parsons’ first love, the center of her world. Almost. There was a secret spot reserved for Judah, Tommy’s elder brother. On the day she discovered Judah wanted her, as well, the aftermath drove Annie out of town—and a wedge between the men she loved.
Now, haunted by guilt, Annie has returned to Melgrove, Montana, with one hope in her heart—that twenty years has overcome the rift between the Ambinder boys. If they’ve mended fences, maybe she can repair her own life too.
Tommy’s missed Annie all these years, but he never realized how much until one glimpse reignites the passion that time hasn’t quenched. Something else hasn’t changed, either—half of her heart still belongs to Judah.
Now, with Annie poised to run again, history is threatening to repeat itself—unless one of them has the courage to break free of the pattern and blaze a new trail that’s wide enough for all three.
Warning: this book contains all the volcanic intensity of first love, searing-hot sex scenes, and two brothers sharing the one woman they love!
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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The Boys Next Door
Copyright © 2010 by Sierra Dafoe
ISBN: 978-1-60928-277-6
Edited by Linda Ingmanson
Cover by Angela Waters
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: December 2010
www.samhainpublishing.com
