Laughing with my half brothers? Being let behind the curtain with their cursed dating lives and Jack’s bad luck with rock paper scissors and the new direction Decker’s going with his novels?
Snaggletooth Creek, Colorado, will never be home for me. My heart belongs in New York.
But the thirsty part of my heart is taking a long, deep gulp of cool water after living in a love-parched desert.
“If someone handed you a million dollars tomorrow and told you that you could do whatever you want with it, what would it be?” Lucky asks as we sip our drinks and eat the Chex Mix beside the assorted appetizers that they ordered from the bar.
Rhys clears his throat across from me.
All three of my half brothers shift a look at him.
He pounds himself on the chest. “Swallowed a little wrong.”
Once again, I’m torn between wanting to throttle him and respecting his courage.
Lucky looks back at me. “No thinking. Gut answer.”
“I’d donate it to a cause to help save the polar bears,” I say.
That’s been Daphne’s mission since she learned in elementary school that the polar ice caps are melting. So I can confidently speak to the importance of my biggest cause, even if it’s technically not mine.
“Dude, did you hear that there’s a new kind of bear?” Jack says. “A polar bear mated with a grizzly bear. Isn’t that terrifying?”
Lucky grins. “Evolution in action. It’s a beautiful thing.”
“Until you stumble across one on the trail.”
“Polar bears aren’t this far south,” Decker says. “Pretty sure you’re fine unless you’re going somewhere way far north for a trip you’re not talking about.”
“Or unless they migrate south,” Rhys says.
All three of the triplets gape at him.
He sucks in a grin as they each start protesting, and once again, he’s both irritating and intriguing.
Who was he before his ex shredded his heart?
And don’t tell me she didn’t.
You can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes when he talks about it.
“You ever see a polar bear in the wild, Margie?” he asks me over the triplets’ continued insistence that polar bears aren’t migrating this far south.
“I have not,” I reply, because Margie Johnson most definitely hasn’t left the lower forty-eight to go far enough north to see a polar bear in the wild.
We’re not talking about the things Margot Merriweather-Brown has done.
Especially since Daphne doesn’t know about that one trip I took to the northern parts of Alaska and would basically die if she knew I’d seen a polar bear in the wild when she hasn’t.
“Huh,” Rhys says.
Like he knows I’m lying.
I hold his gaze for a moment, getting an innocent stare right back.
“When would she have seen a polar bear?” Lucky says to him. “Dude. You really so insecure about her getting the better of you when you met that you’re acting like she’d lie about that?”
Rhys breaks eye contact with me and shrugs at Lucky. “Never would’ve guessed by my history that I’ve been to all seven continents, but I have. So you never know.”
