My breath is coming hard and quick by the time we make it to the fence.
Rebel lifts me off my feet and hands me up to Owen who is straddling the top rail. “Careful with my girl.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s not like she’s suddenly not my sister,” Owen says, hauling me over the fence. Somehow my belly doesn’t touch the metal. “I’ve been taking care of her for years. That doesn’t change just because you’re in the picture.”
Rebel is right behind us as we hop down on the other side.
We run to catch up with the others who have all made it onto the next street. It’s a block to the main road from there. I’m puffing but not as much as I would have been before Rebel talked me into training with him when we first started working together. That feels like a lifetime ago.
A soft glow emanates from Violet’s storefront, and we hurry toward it.
Owen raps a beat on the door—a code of sorts my brothers share—and a few seconds later Jett unlocks and opens it.
Inside, the store is warm and fragrant. Polished wood floors the color of honey are matched with lilac walls. A side-by-side fridge holds buckets of flowers. Empty pails sit waiting to be filled with new bouquets come morning.
Foil balloons and Hallmark cards fill racks on the counter. The flower shaped wall clock ticks closer to eleven. It’s getting late.
“It smells like a garden in here.” Dizzy claps her hands and sways her hips. “So whimsical.”
“It smells like...” Owen’s chest expands. “Apple pie.”
Jett locks the front door behind us. “Violet is in the backroom brewing chamomile. She’s not calm.”
“Let me go check on her,” Owen says.
“Storm already is,” Jett tells Owen before my eldest brother disappears into the backroom.
Rebel grabs my waist and pulls me back against his chest. He wraps both arms all the way around my middle.
“Little?” Jett asks me, but his worried glance is for the woman brewing tea.
“I’m fine.” I shoo him away. I’ve never seen him, or any of my brothers—except Burke—act like this. “Go ahead.”
Jett strides out of the room too as I turn to curl my hands around Rebel’s neck. He picks me up by the waist and carries me to the furthest corner of the room, out of listening distance of Kelsey, Ivy, and Dizzy.
“I should be angry at you.” Rebel’s fingers graze the swell of my belly. “I want to yell at you for putting our girls in trouble.”
“Our girls?” I stare at his chest. At that spot over his heart, where I would hear how hard it beats if I were to rest my cheek there. “That seems unlikely, given the history in both of our families. I’m the only girl in how many boys?”
“Eleven.” His lips twitch. “Which is why they’re going to be girls. It’s about time our numbers were evened up.”
“Okay, mister. But I don’t think that’s how baby math works.” I rest my head against his shoulder. “We’ll have boys. Marty and Romeo.”
“We’ll see.”
“Don’t like Romeo?” I tease.
“We can wait on names until we know.” He kisses the top of my head. “You should’ve stayed at the ranch, but I may have rubbed off on you more than I planned to when I pushed you to do things you weren’t comfortable doing.”
I find that reassuring boom under my cheek—the steady thrum of his heart. I love him so much. “You helped me find my strength and confidence. A sense of security I didn’t know how much I needed.”
“I’m glad.” He smiles at me.
I stare up into his blue eyes and hope he will understand. “I can’t let them get away with it anymore. That’s why I had to get a confession. And I did get one. With their help.”
I glance at my gal pals.
“I’ll drive up and down Main Street and play it over a megaphone if that’s what it takes for everyone to understand who Kurt and the rest of them are.”
