by Gigi Moore
She couldn’t believe her mother approved of this, couldn’t believe they had all cooked up this scheme to get her to….to what?
Tamara pulled back just as Jess bent his head for a kiss and stared at him. “What if I don’t want to give up my job and New York?” She couldn’t believe she asked it, that she sabotaged her future yet again. But she had to know where their heads proved to be as well as their hearts.
“We don’t want you to think of being with us as having to give anything up. But just in case you wondered, we’re prepared to sign over not just the shares willed to you, but our own shares too,” Jess said.
“Give up the ranch?”
“You’re more important to us,” Jax said.
“But what will you do for a living?”
Jess chuckled. “We’re not total farm boys, Tam. We did go to college. We’ll figure something out.”
“And if worse comes to worse, we could always live on yours or your mother’s charity for a while,” Jax teased.
Tamara laughed because she knew good and damn well neither of them would do anything of the sort. But she considered their willingness to please, appreciated that they would make the effort for her. Just knowing that made all the difference in the world.
“I love you both, you know that?”
“We wondered,” Jess said.
“I never had any doubt,” Jax said.
“That’s why I can’t do this.” She looked from one twin to the other, saw the crestfallen looks on their faces and rushed to clarify. “I mean I can’t let you give up what you love doing, not even for me.”
“Are you sure?” Jess asked.
“Because we took the liberty of having your boss draw up the papers just in case. All it will take is your Mom’s and our signatures and—”
Tamara quieted him with a sound kiss on the lips, then turned to Jess and gave him the same treatment before her mother stood and cleared her throat.
Tamara shook her head to clear the sensual fog that seeing the twins had invariably put her in. “Sorry, Mom.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just be sure this is what you all want.”
Tamara heard the doubt in her mother’s voice and saw the hopeful look in her eyes, as if the promise of Tamara’s successful relationship could heal her own past mistakes.
She exchanged looks with the twins as they exchanged looks with each other before they all turned to her mother as one and chorused, “We’re sure.”
Before Jeremiah called her all those months ago to come back to the ranch, Tamara had doubted anything good could come of her going home after so many years. She now knew that not only could she go home again, something good could come of it—something like love and reconciliation.
Her twin cowboys had taught her that.
Epilogue
The Double R – Ten Months Later
Carson Quarry watched the ceremony between the clearly happy couple from a distance, sitting on his stallion on the outer reaches of the gathering—a part of the service, yet strangely separate.
Watching Jess and Tamara take their vows, surrounded by family and so many loved ones should have been a joyous experience, but it proved bittersweet for Carson knowing that Jess and Jax Reynolds had something that he and his brother Sam would never have—a mate to call their own.
One woman to love, to protect and to make love with—that’s all it would take, all they needed and wanted to complete them. It seemed to be too much to ask for.
Carson turned to his younger brother sitting on his stallion beside Carson, followed his brother’s glance toward Tamara’s sister Desiree and shook his head.
He’d been watching her too, lured by her elegant, copper-brown beauty ever since she, her younger sister and their mother had arrived on the ranch ten months ago late last spring. He’d immediately placed her to a section of his mind marked off limits, that. She could not be for him and Sam for too many reasons to name, the least of which being her humanness.
But Sam’s youth made him believe love conquered everything. Even after all that he and his brother and Mom had been through in the last ten years he believed this.
Poor deluded kid.
Carson sadly smiled and applauded as the preacher brought an end to the ceremony, and Jess and Tamara passionately kissed.
Jax stood in the wings, ostensibly the groom’s best man, but everyone at the service knew that Tamara would be keeping house and making a family with both brothers. It proved a sweet set-up, one that Carson could only imagine and one that made his groin and heart tight with longing.
He beat back the unrealistic emotions with memories of the past and everything that he and his brother had gone through to stay low and live under the radar, everything they had done to protect themselves and their mother.
They couldn’t jeopardize that security with a slip of the dick just because they felt safe and at home for the first time in more years than either brother could count.
Carson knew that had anyone on the ranch other than his mother and brother heard his thoughts, they wouldn’t believe his sentiments. He knew he didn’t come off as the friendliest or most approachable person on the ranch, knew that most on The Double R eyed him and his brother with wariness. But that didn’t bother him. He and Sam needed to maintain the distance, not that they wanted to—never wanted to.
“Are you going to the reception back at the main house?” Sam asked, his quiet but eager voice pulling Carson from his unpleasant memories.
Carson heard the eagerness and the hunger that his brother harbored for wanting to belong, and it made his chest hurt.
He’d done the best he could helping their mother raise the kid since their father’s death, but he’d done a piss-poor job seeing to Sam’s other essential needs—like the need to settle down and be a part of a clan made up of more than just him and their mother. But what else could he do? The minute they let down their guard, let someone in and got too comfortable… Carson didn’t even want to think what could happen if this happened.
“I’ll stop by for a spell,” he murmured.
Sam bleakly grinned as he kicked his horse into gear and steered his mount toward the main house. “I’ll meet you there!”
Carson chuckled and turned his mount toward the house to follow Sam.
Yeah, he’d go mingle for a spell and torment himself with a view of a safe and secure future that he, his brother and their mom could never experience except from a distance—never.
THE END
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