“Crushed is better for a marinara. Sauce is better for recipes like beef stew.”
He turned his head and studied me. At this time of day, the store was fairly empty, but the canned music that hadn’t changed since I was a kid and had to shop with my mother never went away.
“When did you become Italian?”
I shrugged. “College fling whose mother was right off the boat. Best lasagna I ever had. With crushed tomatoes in the sauce.”
He picked one of the cans, tossed it in his cart, grabbed two more just like it from the shelf, then started walking further down the aisle.
“Kaitlyn’s making lasagna. Dinner’s at seven. You three are invited.”
We didn’t look all that alike. He was two years older, had the competitive demeanor perfect for his years on the pro rodeo circuit. Where he was calm, I was considered the wild one. He was dark where I was fair. Ever since he and Jed had hooked up with Kaitlyn Leary, he always had a smile on his face. Yeah, he got some every night.
“What’s going on?” I asked, impatient to get things moving. I had a woman to see.
Ava had left my bed early this morning—while I had wanted to keep her between us for two, maybe three days, it wouldn’t have worked. Colton and I had a ranch to run. Cattle didn’t give a shit for our love life and the Seed and Feed opened at eight. Those who thought Ava wasn’t a good choice to run an ag store needed to see her lasso the shit out of a steer. Colton and I may have been the only ones in town to see her without makeup or her hair done—when she woke up between us her hair was a wild, blonde tangle—those who judged her by her looks needed to get a fucking life.
I’d maybe judged her a little, assumed she’d never worked a rope before. That didn’t mean I hadn’t thought she’d be able to do so, just that she hadn’t before. There weren’t all that many out there who could swing a rope like she did. We’d never mentioned competitions, but I was pretty confident she could clean up.
While Duke had a hundred pounds on her, she could probably hold her own with his skill. Oh, he’d be able to drop the steer to the ground without being crushed, but she’d have the animal on her rope. Every fucking time.
If she wanted to run the Seed and Feed and that made her happy, then I was happy. Same went for Colton. We wanted our woman to have a life, something that made her want to get up in the morning. To feel… accomplished. And, at night, she’d come home to us. Every fucking night.
The only thing we’d change about her was her address. The little house she lived in beside the store was fine and all, but it was too far away. Hell, anything out of arm’s reach was too far away when it came to sleeping. She’d spend her nights in my arms. Or Colton’s. Period.
“Where the fuck did you go just now?” Duke asked, staring at me.
Shit. I’d spaced out, realized I was staring at shelf full of dry noodles.
“Ava.” I couldn’t help but grin, remembering all we’d done, how she’d walked—perhaps even a little bow-legged—to her truck this morning.
The corner of his mouth tipped up. “That’s why I wanted to see you.”
“We couldn’t have talked about her on the phone?”
A woman with a toddler sitting in the cart walked by. She smiled and we tipped our hats. Waited for her to go around the end cap.
“If we talked on the phone, we’d have sounded like teenage girls,” he said. “Kaitlyn said Ava finally got up the nerve to take you two on.”
I ran my hand over my face. “Jesus, you do sound like a teenage girl. Kaitlyn said? What is this, gossip hour?”
“I just wanted to see you in person.” He grabbed two packages of lasagna noodles, dropped them in his cart and moved on.
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked, following along behind him.
He eyed me. “It means I only have to look at you to know Kaitlyn was right. You look like a man who totally got laid.”
I stepped up to him, got in his face. “You might be bigger, but I can still lay you out.”
He grinned fully then. “Yeah, not a good idea. Word of the Duke boys wrestling in the grocery store will get back to Mom. Again.”
“The last time it happened I was twelve.”
“Exactly. It would probably be worse now. She might give us chores as punishment and they still wouldn’t be fun, but I wouldn’t mind being grounded. Not with Kaitlyn there.”
Yeah, I could totally relate. We hadn’t even started on the ways I wanted to fuck Ava.
My cell beeped and I pulled it from my back pocket. Swiped the screen, saw a text from Ava.