Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 90682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90682 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 453(@200wpm)___ 363(@250wpm)___ 302(@300wpm)
The last brother is as tall as Duke, looks as strong as Duke, and is better looking than Duke—confidently striding through the wake of his younger, twin brothers with his arms out, wrapping me in a hug.
It’s like hugging a bear.
“I’m Dallas. The one in charge while this one is fuckin’ about in New York.”
Fuckin’ about in New York…
Duke gives him a tiny shove. “Watch your mouth.”
Watch his mouth? Duke is one to talk, peppering every sentence with curse words, but he’s an adult, and it’s not my place to correct his grammar.
Guess he thinks it’s his place to correct his brothers.
His hands go to his hips as he turns to stare at the front of the house. “Place looks like shit. Why haven’t you done nothin’ to it?”
He strides toward the porch, taking the stairs two at a time. His hand goes around one of the railings and tugs at it.
“Someone is going to fall ass over teakettle if they’re leanin’ on this.” He gives Dallas a pointed look.
His brother's hands go up. “Fine, we’ll fix it.”
Duke nods. “It’ll take you a half hour. You’ve mended plenty of fences on the ranch. This will be a breeze.”
The guys all nod.
They follow their older brother to the porch, though they’re all mostly the same size.
I’ve never seen four giants like this.
Their poor mother…
I trudge along behind them, noting the girls next door still on their porch, smirking beneath my baseball cap.
Oh Lord, those girls.
I imagine they’re ecstatic to be living next to these guys. If I were them, my post-teenage hormones would have been raging, and I’d have spent the majority of my time accidentally running into them on their way to class, orchestrating it so I was walking out of the house at the same time.
“Going in my direction?” College-aged Duke would have said.
“Who? Me?”
“Yeah, you. I’ll walk you as far as the quad…”
Sigh.
As my luck would have had it, I wasn’t outgoing, so I wouldn’t have had the courage to stand outside gawking at the hot guys next door, let alone accidentally bump into one of them so they’d walk with me to class.
Nope, shy Josephine Kettner would have waited until they were out of sight before leaving the house so she wouldn’t have had to make awkward small talk, thinking anything she said would be dumb and make her look foolish.
“You comin’?” Duke is holding the door open for me, and I catch a whiff of him as I walk past him into the house.
“Did you shower this morning?” God, he smells good. I noticed it in the truck, but I’m really noticing it now that I’m brushing past him.
He nods. “Sure did.”
“Oh my God, what time did you wake up?”
He shrugs, laughing. “I don’t know. Five?”
“It’s Sunday,” I hiss. “Who in their right mind wakes up at five on a Sunday?”
“I had to wake up early to outsmart you, remember?”
I feel weird entering the boys’ house before he’s all the way inside, hesitating in the small entryway, glancing around as if I were taking a home tour and assessing every square inch.
The first thing I notice is that it’s a mess.
Not just from the clutter everywhere but from the dirt on the ground in the tiny foyer. They have dark hardwood floors, which are prone to show all the dirt—and do.
“Come on, the kitchen’s this way.”
Duke skirts around me, taking the lead—thank God—and I follow him through what should be a dining room, staring at his back muscles the entire way.
Thick neck.
Broad shoulders so wide he barely fits through the doorway.
The brothers are all in the kitchen, and I see they’ve already ordered pizza. The cardboard delivery boxes are stacked up on the counter, surrounded by all the things that should already be inside the cabinets.
“Why’s this such a damn mess? This stuff could have all stayed in here.”
Dallas nods. “Yeah, but Mom’s been nagging us to clean this shit, so I took it all out to clean it.”
“Did you?”
“No.” He laughs, turning to grab some paper plates and slapping them on the nearby table.
It’s barely ten thirty in the morning, and they’re already planning on scarfing down pizza. Huh. Must not have had breakfast.
“Do you guys always rent the same house?” I ask because of the comments Duke made, about how terrible the outside looks and how they should get a move on fixing the porch.
“No.” Dallas shakes his head. “We just bought it. That’s why we’re moving in before the end of the year.”
Duke nods. “Makes more sense financially to own instead of rent. When the boys aren’t here in the summer, we sublet with other students. Dallas had roommates his freshman and sophomore year, but now that the twins are here”—he takes a slice of pizza out of the top box and chews off the end of it—“we’ll sell it once the twins enter the draft.”