LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t blame her for that part. For the silence and the nights when it was easier to pretend he was asleep when she slid between the sheets than it was to try to make love with someone who didn’t have two words to say to you.

      Ironically, he would be thrilled to make love with someone who didn’t have two words to say to him now. But hooking up was different than marriage. At least, he vaguely remembered that it was.

      “I hope they are,” Finn said, obnoxiously cheerful. “I hope every year with her feels like five. Because my time with her has been the best of my life.”

      Given the way they had grown up, he really didn’t begrudge Finn his happiness. He was glad for him, in a way. When he wasn’t busy feeling irritated by his celibate status.

      Of course, if he really wanted to do something about it, he could. But for a long time it had suited him to stay unattached in every way possible.

      Though, in fairness to him, figuring out how to conduct a physical relationship while he was raising a teenage girl was pretty tricky. He had to set some kind of example. And casual sex wasn’t exactly the one he was aiming for.

      He figured he had to at least try to be a model of the kind of man he wanted his daughter to be with. In twenty years or so, since he wasn’t in a hurry for her to be with anyone.

      But that good example thing was simple in theory, and not all that enjoyable in practice.

      “Good for you,” he said, sounding more annoyed than he had intended.

      “How’s the barn coming along?”

      Cain was grateful for the change in subject. “It’s coming.”

      “Show me.”

      His brother grabbed his hat off the shelf by the door, and Cain grabbed his own. Strange how this had become somewhat natural. How sharing a space with Finn, Alex and Liam—while annoying on occasion—was just starting to be life.

      He took the steps on the front porch two at a time, inhaling the sharp, clear air. It was late summer, and in Texas about now walking outside would be like getting wrapped in a wet blanket. That was also on fire. He could honestly say he didn’t miss that part of his adopted home state.

      The Oregon coast ran a little cold for his taste, but he had to admit it was still nicer than sweltering. The wind whipped up, filtering through the pine trees and kicking up the smell of wood, hay and horse. If green had a smell, it would be that smell that rode the coastal air across the mountains. Fresh and heavy, all at the same time.

      It was fastest to take a truck out to the old barn on the property, the one that had originally stood near the first house that had been built when their great-grandparents had bought the land. The house was long gone, but the barn still remained, and with all of his near-nonexistent free time Cain had been fashioning the place into a house for Violet and himself.

      “You know,” Finn said, as they pulled the truck up to the old structure, “you could always hire Jonathan Bear to finish this out. If you keep going like this, it’s going to take you forever.”

      “You haven’t seen what I’ve done. Anyway, are you in a hurry to get us out of the house?” In the month since they’d come to live with Finn, he’d never seemed to mind them being in the house.

      On the ranch in general, yes. But not in the house.

      He shrugged. “It doesn’t make much difference to me. Even if you and Violet aren’t in the house Liam and Alex will be. So Lane and I aren’t going to start engaging in public sex anytime soon. At our house. However, there’s a reason she held on to her cabin.”

      Lane owned the property down by the lake, and even though she was essentially living with Finn, she still kept that property, and harvested vegetables out of the garden to sell at her mercantile store and to share with them. Cain had no complaints.

      “Well, thank God for that,” Cain said, his tone dry. “I was seriously concerned.”

      He and his brother walked through the still overgrown pathway that led up to the old barn. He had started with structural things. A new roof, replacing siding where it had dilapidated. Recently, he had moved on to the interior. He slid the brand-new door to the side, revealing the gutted, mostly hollow belly of the beast.

      “Wow,” Finn said, stepping deeper into the room. “You’ve done a lot.”

      “New wiring,” Cain said, gesturing broadly. “Insulation, drywall. I need to texture, and then I’m going to work on interior walls. But, yeah, it’s coming along. It will be fine for the two of us for the next couple of years. And when Violet leaves...”

      Unbidden, an image of the beautiful redhead he had seen at the bar last night filtered into his mind’s eye. Yeah, in a couple of years he would have a place to bring a woman like that.

      Not that he couldn’t go back to her place, or get a hotel room, but he didn’t want to have to explain his absence to a teenage girl who barely thought of him as human, much less realized he was actually just a guy with a sex drive and everything. Both of them would probably die from the humiliation of that.

      “It’ll be a pretty nice place,” Finn said, and Cain was grateful his younger brother couldn’t read his mind.

      “Not bad. And yes, I know that I could pay somebody to finish it. But right now I’m kind of enjoying the therapy. I spent a long time managing things. Managing a big ranch, not actually working it. Managing my marriage instead of actually working at it. I’m ready to be hands-on again. This is the life that I’m choosing to build for myself. So I guess I better build it.”

      He knew that at thirty-eight his feelings of midlife angst were totally unearned, but having his wife leave had forced him into kind of a strange crisis point. One where he had started asking himself if that was it. If everything good that he was going to do was behind him.

      So, he had left the ranch in Texas—the one he had spent so many years building up—walked away with a decent chunk of change, and packed his entire life up, packed his kid up, and gone to the West Coast to find... Something else to do. Something else to be. To find a way to reconnect with Violet.

      So far, he’d found ranch work and little else. Violet still barely tolerated him in spite of everything he was doing to try to fix their lives, and he didn’t feel any closer to moving forward than he had back in Texas.

      He was just moved.

      Finn’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. “Hey,” he said, “can you pick up Violet tonight from work?”

      “I thought Lane was doing it.”

      “It’s her girls’ night thing. She forgot.”

      Well, he had just been thinking that he needed to actually see where Violet worked. “Sure. Sounds good.”

      “What are you going to do until then?”

      “I figured I would do some work in here.”

      Finn pushed his sleeves up, smiling. “Mind if I help?”

      “Sure,” Cain did his best to disguise the fact that he was shocked by his brother’s offer. He wasn’t used to this. He’d been navigating life alone for so long he’d forgotten what it was like to have support. “Grab a hammer.”

      * * *

      ALISON STARED AT the sunken cake sitting on the kitchen countertop and frowned. Then quickly erased the frown so that Violet wouldn’t see it.

      “I don’t know what happened,” Violet said, looking both perturbed and confused.

      “You probably took it out too early. Though, it’s nothing a little extra icing can’t fix. And it’s my girls’ night tonight, so I think it can be of use in that environment rather than being put up for sale.”

      Violet screwed up her face. “It’s ugly.”

      “An ugly

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