by Alta Hensley
Alana looked from one of us to the other. “Did we walk in on something?” she asked quietly.
“It appears our brother is already making our guest feel welcome in her new home,” Derrick said with a devilish smirk that I had grown to expect with his sick sense of humor.
“Just going over the rules,” Rogan said, keeping his gaze firmly planted on me.
“Good,” Cal said, his expression dark as he looked at me. “We expect them to be followed.”
Alana slugged Cal in the arm and then glared at the rest of her brothers. She smiled at me warmly. “Ignore them, Monet. They pretend they are bullies, but they aren’t. Don’t let them scare you.” She reached for my hand. “I’m so glad you decided to join us in coming to Ireland. I was so scared I would be lonely. I didn’t want to be the only girl and, well… I’m just so happy to have you here as part of the family.”
Family.
If she only knew.
If she knew her brothers had kidnapped me, forced themselves on me, and threatened me to stay…
And what was even worse was…
As every minute passed, I realized I didn’t truly hate it, or them, for doing so.
Alana would think we were all crazy.
And we were.
“We need to get to town,” Rogan spoke up. “We have a shipment of supplies coming, and we promised to meet with some of the men anxious to meet the new generation of O’Sheas.”
“I thought you wanted breakfast?” I called out after him as he made his way to the door, making sure my words were as sweet as could be, and not able to keep a small smile from curling my lips when he just growled.
Growl away. I’d seen his eyes and the crotch of his pants before he’d stepped away from me. Who knew I could get under his skin so easily?
“Rogan’s right,” Cal cut in. “We don’t want to keep them waiting. We can eat there, I’m sure.”
“Will you be all right while we are gone?” Nolan asked Alana.
Alana smiled and nodded. “Yes. I have Monet, now. She’ll keep me company.”
Yes, she had me now.
They had me now.
What that all meant, I still wasn’t sure.
Chapter Eight
Monet
“Is everything okay?”
I turned away from the door to see Alana looking concerned. “Yes, everything is fine. Rogan said you were getting eggs?”
Her smile lit her whole face. “Yes. The chickens are so cute, and it was such fun even though a few of them pecked me. But that didn’t keep me from gathering the eggs.” She held up a wire basket where I could see several eggs, though they weren’t the white ones I was used to. Instead, they ranged in color from bluish to a darker tan.
“That’s pretty amazing.”
“I know! This is all so exciting. We don’t even have to go to the grocery store. We actually get to cook what we gather!”
Good thing, as it seems we’re grounded, I thought, bending to pick up the pin, tucking it into my pocket as I looked around the kitchen with a sense of fear and intimidation. She actually expected me to cook, but without modern-day tools, I wasn’t sure where to begin.
I knew the first order of business was to get the stove fired up. Grabbing some small pieces of wood from a basket on the floor, I laid them into the firebox. I made sure to open both the draft and damper wide before striking the match. It shouldn’t be that hard to light a simple cookstove fire.
Hearing the growing crackle from inside, I sighed in relief, giving Alana a grin, happy I’d managed to accomplish my first task. That done, it was definitely time for coffee. I pumped water into the pot and was about to dump the beans in when Alana spoke.
“There’s a mill.”
“A what?” I asked.
She smiled and after putting down the egg basket, went to a wooden box on the counter. “You pour the beans in the top and turn the handle. Then you open the drawer and you have freshly ground coffee.”
Between the two of us, we took turns grinding the beans and within a few minutes, the heavenly scent of coffee filled the kitchen. While it perked, I opened the refrigerator to see what choices I had. I pulled out a large ham. It would be perfect with eggs, and while I was at it, I’d make some griddle cakes, too.
“How do you like your eggs?” I asked, holding up two different ones. “Brown or blue?”
“Let’s live dangerously and cook both,” Alana suggested. Her smile and easy giggle warmed me through and through. It was hard to be anything but happy in the presence of this young woman. Again, I couldn’t help but wonder how she could be so different from her brothers.
A large crackle and pop pulled my attention back to the stove. The fire! From the noises coming from the stove, and the flames shooting out from around the door as well as pushing up around the burners, it looked like I had created a full-blown inferno. Without thinking, I grabbed the coffee pot and tossed its contents onto the fire to extinguish the flames. Most of the fire went out, but the kitchen soon filled with smoke. Coughing and choking on the pungent vapors, I fiddled with the damper some more to try to maintain the fire while eliminating the smoke.
My adjustment seemed to work after a few moments. Wiping the tears from my burning eyes, I turned to Alana. “Open up the door and let some air in.”
Alana looked at me like a frightened doe. She quickly followed the command and ran to offer her assistance.
I felt awful at being the cause of her fear. Grabbing a dishtowel, I began to wave the smoke out past the open door. Coughing again, I said, “Well, we’re off to a fine start, aren’t we?”
Now that the danger had passed and the air was clearing, she gave me a shaky smile. “My brothers said it will take some time to learn, but together, everything will be all right.”
Giving her a hug, I felt a wave of understanding flow through me. Alana was safe, would be taken care of because her brothers loved her. Assholes or not, they were protecting her. They were making sure she had everything she needed… even if it meant kidnapping a friend for her. As sick and twisted as it was… they’d changed the direction of their lives so she could be happy and safe.
“They’re right,” I said, “and we’ll learn together.” It took far longer than I’d thought it would, but we did manage to make breakfast, the slabs of ham and the scrambled eggs going a long way toward brightening my day. Of course, the second attempt at coffee was truly my salvation. Alana drank milk that I learned had indeed come from one of the cows.
“Nolan found an old churn out in the barn. He said it belonged to our great-grandmother. Cal is going to make a new plunger and then we can churn our own butter! Won’t that be fun? Of course, we have to milk the cow first.”
“Of course,” I said, because really… what else could I say.
We spent a few hours scrubbing and dusting before we unpacked some boxes, talking about the books we pulled out to place in our new home. Shelves went from floor to ceiling on both sides of the fireplace. I couldn’t help but think that a single Kindle could hold all these volumes, but had to admit the thought of settling on the couch or in one of the overstuffed armchairs, the weight of a book in my hands made a perfect picture in my head.
I learned that ‘dinner’ was lunch, and while Alana set the table once her brothers returned from town, I threw together a repeat of breakfast, this time actually making the griddle cakes I’d foregone that morning. Though many eyebrows quirked when I set their plates down before them, they did seem impressed there was actual food prepared—or perhaps they were shocked I hadn’t thought to poison it.
“You should have seen Monet,” Alana said, practically bouncing in her chair. “She didn’t even scream when the fire started.”
“Fire!” Rogan’s shout sounded a bit strangled as he had been swallowing when that little tidbit was shared.
Handing him his glass of water, I said, “It’s all right. I wasn’t trying to set the place on fire, I just used too much wood. Nobody got hurt, th
ough I did waste an entire pot of coffee to put it out.”
He took several long swallows and then set his glass down. “I’m glad that was the only casualty.”
Pleased he wasn’t berating me, I managed to give him a small smile.
“The town was smaller than I remembered,” Cal said between chews.
“That’s probably because we were a lot younger the last time we visited. Alana hadn’t even been born yet,” Nolan said, shoveling food into his mouth.
“Better for us, I suppose,” Rogan said.
“When can we go to town?” Alana asked. “Are there any fun shops?”
I caught the glances all the brothers gave each other.
“In time,” Cal said. “We have a lot to do around here. It will take a lot of effort to get the barn and house back into good repair.”
“So you can go, but not Monet and me? Really?” Alana said, looking around the table. “You guys may think you can boss me around because we are related, but you can’t tell Monet what to do.”
I caught Derrick’s smirk as he tried to conceal the humor he obviously found in that statement. I wanted to reach over the table and wipe that sneer right off his face. The brothers knew damn well they could boss me around. And that fucked up dirty secret infuriated me. If only Alana knew…
If only Alana knew what kind of men her brothers were… it would destroy her. I had to keep reminding myself of that. It would destroy her.
Which is why I just ate in silence and didn’t say all the words raging inside me.
“You aren’t missing much,” Nolan said.
“But we will take you soon,” Rogan offered to try to appease Alana as I realized he often did. “Let’s just get this farm running, and make sure the house doesn’t crumble around us first, all right?”
Alana rolled her eyes and glanced at me with a small shake of her head, but she didn’t say anything. Apparently, she was used to her brothers’ dictates, though she found them about as annoying as I did.
We ate the rest of the meal in silence. The men thanked me and Alana for dinner, and left to do whatever it was they had to do.
It didn’t take me long to realize why people in the old days didn’t get into trouble. Who had the time? It seemed we’d barely finished cleaning up the kitchen from dinner before I was pulling out bowls and ingredients to make supper. Thankfully, someone had seen fit to stock our pantry, so while Alana peeled potatoes and carrots, I flipped through a cookbook I’d found in there. It appeared to be about a million years old, the pages stained a bit, but I was soon enthralled at the recipes. Even some of the names were cute—boxty, dulse, yellowman—all of which could go on my to-be-tried list.
For now, I decided to try my hand at making bread. The cheddar and potato rolls looked promising, but the soda bread seemed the easiest. As I worked, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would need more chickens. Not to eat, but to provide eggs. I’d just cracked the last one Alana had collected into a bowl. Without a grocery nearby, it was going to take a lot of gathering to keep a family of six fed—especially when four were huge men who were spending hours doing manual labor.
Despite the challenges, Alana and I pulled off our first big meal. The bread was slightly burnt on the outside, a bit doughy in the middle, but the mashed potatoes were creamy, the honey-glazed carrots delicious and from the way the men were devouring the fried ham… Suddenly, a recipe I’d read popped into my head.
“Where exactly did you get this ham?” I asked. “Do you have pigs here?”
“Oh, like Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web,” Alana asked, and then gasped, looking a bit askance at the last bite of ham she’d been about to put into her mouth.
Rogan shook his head and reached over to pat her arm. “It’s all right, honey. All our pigs are wild.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means they forage in the woods, fending for themselves. If we run out of pork, we’ll go hunting and butcher one. Why?” Cal asked.
“Just wondering,” I said, rising to begin clearing the table. “But I’m telling you right now, if any one of you wants blood sausage, you’re going to have to make it yourself—and not in my kitchen, either.” I wanted to grin as they all looked at each other as if wondering how to respond, but I wasn’t joking. I drew the line at anything made from actual blood. They expected me to follow their rules, well, they needed to know there were rules they’d be following as well.
Chapter Nine
Monet
The full moon lit up the clear night, making it a perfect evening for a quick jog. The day had been full of unexpected challenges. While I should have been exhausted, I felt antsy. I needed to feel the air hit my face as my feet pounded against the ground. I needed a release.
The men were still downstairs awake. Did they ever sleep? I waited for as long as I could but had no choice but to plan my escape now before fatigue took over. I knew going for a run was out of the question, per their idiotic rule of not leaving the house until they felt it was safe. And a night run would most likely be seen as a worse sin, but I didn’t care. I’d sneak out of the house, enjoy my run, and be back before anyone was the wiser.
I threw back the quilt and retrieved the makeshift rope I’d made from the sheets I pulled off my bed. Tying one end around the iron bed frame, I opened the window and tossed the rope out. Throwing my leg over the windowsill, I smiled. Though I’d never actually done it, I suddenly felt like a teenager sneaking out to meet her boyfriend. I swung my foot back and forth until I found my first toehold. Holding onto the ledge with one hand, the sheet with the other, I backed out of the window and placed my second foot onto the trellis that was filled with branches. With my full weight on the framework, I heard an ominous crack and felt the wood begin to sway a bit. Moving as quickly as I could, I descended the sheets, using the wooden lattice to aid in my escape. Time after time, I had to bite back a cry as another thorn pierced my skin through my clothing or scraped my cheek or hands with each move downward. If I didn’t hate roses before, after tonight, I didn’t care if I ever saw or smelled one for as long as I lived.
Just a couple of feet before reaching the bottom, I suddenly felt no resistance in my arms. Looking up, I saw the tail end of the sheet whip out the window. My rope had come free of the bedframe, my knot-tying skills obviously subpar. I fell the remaining distance, landing squarely on my ass. I froze, listening, knowing the thud and my squeal did little for my covert operation. When I didn’t hear a sound, I finally stood up and brushed the petals, thorns, and broken twigs from my body, grateful none of the brothers had heard a thing. Releasing the breath I hadn’t been aware of holding, I plucked a final thorn from my thumb and brushed my hair back. I’d just turned, my foot lifting to take that first step when another sound had my heart stopping.
A deep voice came from the shadows. “What in the hell are you doing?” Derrick emerged from the darkness, anger painting his face.
My heart managed to start again, but skipped a beat as I tried to think of an explanation for the white sheets at my feet. When no brilliant idea came to mind, I said, “I-I uh… I wanted to go for a run.”
He looked from my feet to the window above our heads and then back at me. “Are you crazy? You could have broken your neck!”
“Well, I didn’t,” I said. “And if I had, you only have you and your brothers to blame. I just wanted to jog and knew you wouldn’t allow—”
“So you knew not to leave the house.”
Oh shit. Time to backpedal. “Look, it’s not like I was trying to escape or run away. I just wanted to jog.”
“And you decided not only to blatantly disobey our rules, but to put yourself in danger while doing so?”
I knew how stupid my idea seemed, but hearing it put that way, I couldn’t help but be embarrassed by my poor judgment. I looked like a damn teenager sneaking out, and this did little for my pride.
“You’ve got one minute to march your ass back into that house,” Derrick commanded.
The demand attacked every ounce of feminism and woman power I had in me. Them were fighting words. “I will not! You kept me in that horrid basement for days, and today I learn you’re going to keep me cooped up inside. Well, that’s bull. I’m going to jog just as I planned.” Even though my body stung and ached from my climb and fall, I was not going to let this man win. I should have done this to begin with and informed each one of those pricks I would run whether they liked it or not. Running was my stress reliever, and I’d be damned if I’d allow them to deprive me of it.
“Wrong. You will turn your ass around and get inside before I do it for you.”
“You can’t tell me what to do! I may be your damn captive, but you can’t treat me like a fucking child! You guys said if I played along, that you would not treat me like a prisoner,” I yelled, clenching my fists despite the sting that told me I’d obviously missed another fucking thorn. Part of me knew I was acting like a rebellious teen, but the majority of me couldn’t help it.
“Taking a page from your own book, you’ve got ten seconds,” he warned, beginning to count backward from ten.
I stood my ground, glaring at him, ignoring his countdown just as he’d ignored mine in the store. “You don’t scare me. Count all you want. I’m not moving!”
“Five, four, three, two, one. Time’s up.”
He started for me with two big strides. Seeing him coming, the moonlight clearly reflecting the look of absolute determination on his face, I did the only thing any sane person would do… I turned and ran.
