Lulu was taller than Pippa even though Pippa was older, so Pippa’s chin had to rest on her sister’s shoulder as Lulu launched into a garbled, half-sobbing explanation.
“It’s okay.” Pippa rubbed Lulu’s back through her thin shirt. Her sister was going to get cold in just that. Where had she put that blanket she’d had on when Bear had arrived? “Of course you can stay here.”
Pippa cut a glance to Bear, who was glaring at them. He looked like he was about to call down a thunderstorm through pure telekinetic rage. And they’d been having such a nice time before this, with him checking the coop and her teasing him about her attorney.
“Maybe we should talk about this in the house,” she said to Lulu, never looking away from Bear.
“What?” Lulu caught her breath on a stuttering sob. “Why?” She caught sight of Bear. “Oh.”
In the blink of an eye, Lulu was composed, smiling slightly, perfectly polite. It never failed to amaze Pippa, how her sister could do that. Lulu had tried to teach her the trick of it after Pippa had lost the customer-service job, but the lessons had never taken. The family curse strikes again.
“Hi.” Lulu gave Bear a brave smile. “I’m Pippa’s sister, Lulu. Actually, it’s Lucretia,” Lulu said with the laugh she always used when explaining her name. She had a whole song and dance Pippa could recite from memory. “Yes, like the Borgias.”
“I don’t know them.”
Lulu’s smile flickered. “O…kay. Mostly I go by Lulu though, Zee to my family.” Her smile hardened again. “Lulu is fine.”
“Like Cheerios.” Bear looked Pippa up and down in a way that made her feel extremely warm even though it was a cold morning.
Lulu’s smile dropped completely. “Yeah. She told you her nickname? Excuse me, but who are you?”
“The man who owns this place.” Bear didn’t miss a beat.
Good Lord, that was the last thing Pippa needed. There was so much to explain to her sister, and Bear claiming he owned the house was only going to confuse everything.
Pippa started herding Lulu toward the house. “No, he doesn’t. It’s… There’re some snags, but I’m working on them. And he overheard Annie—Ansel—say Cheerios. That’s all.” She gave Bear a significant look, then swung her gaze over to his tractor, pointedly telling him to get lost. “His name is Bear, and he’s leaving.”
“Oh, Annie.” Lulu was wistful. “I remember him. So cute and small. He’s still here?”
“Yes. Except not so small.” Pippa cocked her head. “Maybe still cute. Don’t tell him I said that.”
Bear made a strangled noise that might have been a stifled laugh. And the awful man wasn’t moving.
“I meant that for you,” she warned him.
“Aww, but I’m sure Annie wants to know how cute he is.”
A laugh bubbled in her throat even though Lulu was staring at the both of them with wild curiosity, her eyes still red.
“Just take your overcompensating tractor and go.” Pippa shooed him to it while also pushing Lulu toward the house.
“That’s his tractor?” her sister asked. “Why is it here?”
Bear opened his mouth. Pippa glared at him. Finally he shrugged and turned to leave. He had that hitch in his step again, although it didn’t seem angry this time. Reluctant, she might call it.
“I’ll explain it all inside,” she told Lulu.
When Pippa heard the tractor start, it was with mixed relief and disappointment. He’d actually been almost nice for a few moments this morning. And the way he’d fixed the brooder lid… It was so weird to find that sexy, but she was used to being weird.
It had been so sexy though.
“Cheerios?” Lulu was leaning in toward her face. “You okay?”
“Sorry.” Pippa blinked. “It’s been… Please, can we just go inside?”
“Sure. First I have to get Howie out of the car.”
Of course she had Howie—Pippa should have remembered. Howie was a terrier, or at least they thought he might be. His favorite things to do were snoring on the couch and destroying unsecured garbage bins. Pippa had never seen him do anything else and couldn’t understand why Lulu loved him so much. Shouldn’t a dog do something?
Tybalt was going to have a fit when he saw the dog. But he’d simply have to deal, because Lulu needed them. This place.
Lulu came back, clutching Howie in her arms, who was way too big to be carried. His expression said he didn’t mind a bit and actually considered this the proper way for him to move about.
Once they were inside, Howie took a corner of the sofa and started snoring while Pippa made tea. Once that was done and Lulu had some tissues, Pippa poured out every bit of the story, starting with the couch fire and ending at this morning and Bear checking out her chicken coop.
Lulu wasn’t even looking at her by the end—she could only stare blankly at her tea. She was perched on an ancient folding chair Pippa had found in a shed while Pippa teetered on what must have been a milking stool, her knees jammed into her chest.
“Jeez,” Lulu said finally. Her brows drew together. “James was a smoker?”
Pippa groaned. “After all that, and that’s what you say?”
Lulu shrugged delicately. “It’s a filthy habit. I thought you had better taste.”
“I did! We broke up months ago. I just couldn’t move out. Until he set the couch on fire and I was kicked out.”
Lulu’s mouth curved in triumph. “See? He shouldn’t have been smoking. Filthy habit.”
“Okay, fine. You’ve heard my sad story. Why are you here? What happened?”
For a moment her sister looked away, guilt pulling at her face. Or maybe shame. “Yulia got a new boyfriend.” Her voice was so tight it might snap. “Leo.”
Yulia was her roommate. She had not great taste in men, judging by the stories Lulu had told Pippa about some of them.
“He was nice… at first,” Lulu said. “You know, friendly.”
Pippa could imagine. Men were usually very friendly with Lulu since she was beautiful. All the parts on Pippa that didn’t quite fit together came together just right on Lulu. They looked alike; it was only that Lulu looked like… well, a pretty version of Pippa.
Not that Pippa was jealous. Lulu hated the attention she got. She’d learned how to put on a facade to manage it, but she wasn’t really comfortable with it. Still, this guy must have done something terrible to get past her defenses.
Pippa reached for Lulu’s hand. “What happened?”
“He started talking about how he was into polyamory. Which is fine,” Lulu said quickly. “It’s just not my thing.”
“Yeah, if he’s bringing that up with you behind Yulia’s back, I don’t think he’s really into polyamory. I think he’s just a sleaze.”
“Oh no, he did it in front of Yulia.”
Pippa’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “What did she say?” She didn’t know Yulia well, but Lulu had never mentioned polyamory as being an interest of her roommate’s. Or was it more of a lifestyle than an interest? Whatever it was, Pippa wasn’t going to ask Lulu.
“Yulia said she thought it might be fun if I joined in. With them.” Lulu was staring hard at her tea. “I could be their unicorn. She said Leo really wanted to try it first with me because I seemed cool.”
Lulu’s distress radiated from her so strongly Pippa swore she could see the black waves of it.
“Gross,” Pippa said instinctively. It was clear from Lulu’s reaction that she hadn’t encouraged it at all, that it had blindsided her.
“I mean…” Lulu shrugged one shoulder. “People do it. I just didn’t want to.”
“Lulu, that’s not polyamory,” Pippa said. “That’s perving on your girlfriend’s roommate.”
Lulu’s troubled expression didn’t ease. “I told Yulia I wasn’t interested, but Leo didn’t… He kept finding ways to be alone with me. He wouldn’t do anything, but sometimes I would catch him looking at me…” She sighed, rubbing one hand over her face. “It doesn’t sound so bad when I say it, but trust me, it was messed up. I was so uncomfortable.”
“I totally understand.” People thought that because of how Lulu looked, she was used to being ogled. Of course, what Leo had done went way beyond, which only made it worse for Lulu.
“When you sent that text that you were up here, I figured I could get away. With my job being remote and the rent being month to month, I don’t have anything really holding me to that place. Although it’s so… I mean, being propositioned by my roommate’s boyfriend? And her too?” Lulu spread her palms wide to show how ridiculous it all was. “The family curse, I guess.”
Pippa thought it had more to do with how beautiful her sister was than anything to do with the family curse. But Lulu didn’t need to hear that.
“Of course you can stay.” Pippa put all her fierce love for her sister in her voice. No way was Lulu going back to being harassed by that asshole. “This is our house.”
As she said it, something massive released in her, like a dam holding back her emotions had broken. Her sister was here. She wasn’t alone. Of course this should be her and Lulu, rebuilding this house, fighting off whoever wanted to take it from them. It was so right Pippa couldn’t believe she’d been convinced she could do it alone.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe; she was so happy. So relieved.
“That guy didn’t seem to think so,” Lulu said. “He comes every morning? With a tractor to tear it down?”
Pippa pursed her lips. “To be fair, it’s only been three mornings so far. And it’s kind of our thing now.”
“Right,” Lulu said slowly. “Your thing.”
Pippa waved that away. “Don’t worry about him. We’ve got the lawyer, and he’s going to fix everything. In fact, I’m meeting him this evening. You should come. And drop me off at the feed and seed so you can say hi to Annie.”
Her sister visibly brightened. “Oh, Annie. And I can watch you try to haul sacks of grain. How much do they weigh? Like a hundred pounds? You are going to have killer arms after all this.”
Pippa wasn’t certain she liked that idea. “I don’t think they’re that heavy. But I need to get moving since I’m supposed to start soon. And we’ve got kind of a big problem.” She gestured at the nearly empty room. “There’s nothing here. No furniture and only one bed.”
It was a joke that Sasha would make, only she’d work in the wolf-shifter cowboy and Pippa being the one stuck with a single bed. And then true love would follow.
None of Sasha’s romances seemed to involve the hero threatening the heroine with a tractor. Or the single bed magically appearing when needed.
“Oh, that’s not a problem at all,” Lulu said with more of her usual carefree breeziness. “The moving truck with my stuff should be here soon. I’ve got a dining table and a bed.” She cast a wary gaze at the sofa. Howie let loose a lung-shattering snore. “No couch though.”
That did it; Pippa was really going to cry now. “Whatever you brought is plenty. You just being here is more than enough.”
“They’re multiplying?” Thorne’s entire face twisted with disbelief. “You were supposed to get rid of the one that was there, not add more.”
“This wasn’t my fault.” Bear had to work to keep his voice down since they were in the bucket section of the feed and seed. The one that was there was likely to come out at any moment, her little ears burning. “She’s working here, so don’t shout about it.”
“I wasn’t. And don’t grab that one—it’s too small.”
Bear’s hand tightened on the rim of the bucket. “This is for the chickens. Get five of those black ones”—he gestured to the larger but shallower buckets on the bottom shelf—“for the lambing jugs.”
The sheep were Bear’s business, not Thorne’s. Sure, all four Westfall kids had raised their share of market lambs for the fair, although they’d preferred raising steers, but an entire flock to manage year-round wasn’t quite the same as focusing on one lamb for a few months. Bear was the one doing all the research and testing for it—he didn’t need Thorne telling him about buckets.
And if this sheep operation failed, it would all be on Bear. Thorne would for sure say I told you so. But they’d all suffer because they couldn’t undo the new pasture, barns, sheep handling chutes, and about a hundred ewes they’d invested in. Yet more money they’d sunk into the operation without knowing if it would pay off, money they’d never get back.
Sometimes ranching felt like walking two tightropes at once, constantly bobbling between one potential disaster and another, knowing the rope under your feet was way too narrow to ever feel secure. And react too slow to a wobble and the ground would rush up to crush you. Except it would be all his siblings crushed too, not just him.
Except for Sayer. He’d cut himself loose. If the Fall West fell, he wouldn’t come down with it. And when it rose—which Bear was determined it would—Sayer would be left behind. Telling himself that was what Sayer wanted didn’t make it any easier for Bear to swallow.
He pulled out the buckets he needed. One problem at a time. The ewes and lambs would need water—that was a problem he could solve.
“How many of them are there?” Thorne asked.
Bear knew he wasn’t talking about the buckets. “Four. Unless there’re other cousins she didn’t tell me about.”
Thorne audibly ground his teeth. Bear winced at the noise.
“And two of them are already here,” Thorne said. “Are the others coming? Are they filing claims?”
“She didn’t say. Attorney-client privilege.” The way she’d said that, so sassy—it hit him in a way it shouldn’t.
“Goddamn Vince.”
Bear’s sentiments exactly. And yet… “If he wasn’t so pissed at you, he wouldn’t have taken them on as clients.”
Immediately Thorne’s back was up. “Are you saying I was wrong? That fire road needed clearing.”
“Yeah, but you could have asked them before you went over and did it yourself.”
“I did ask—they didn’t take care of it. I was being neighborly.” The grudge in Thorne’s tone was anything but.
Vince’s parents—and Vince himself—had called it trespassing when Thorne had taken the dozer over the property line to their place and cleared the fire road himself. Their land being within the boundaries of the reservation had made the matter that much more explosive. If Thorne had gone and asked permission before doing it, things might have gone very differently. But instead, his brother had demanded Vince’s dad clear the fire road, and when the older man hadn’t, Thorne had trespassed to do it himself.
And now Vince was leading a legal fight against them solely out of spite.
“Was it worth it?” Bear dropped his voice because there were too damn many people in the store who might overhear. “To be right all the goddamn time but piss everyone off?”
Thorne merely stared at him. “If you’d shoved her out of that house the first day, we wouldn’t be in this situation. And her sister wouldn’t be moving in either.”
“You’re right—I should knock the house down around their ears.” Bear winced as he heard his own voice. Too loud. They were attracting attention.
“Not what I said. I’ve got to get Noah on the phone now.” Thorne turned back to the buckets. “Are we done here? I still need to get on the phone with the processor about their freezer once I’m done with Noah.”
Yesterday, the freezer at the butcher they used had failed, ruining several thousand pounds of meat and losing them tens of thousands of dollars. Thorne was going to see if anything could be saved while Bear dealt with some lost vaccinations that should have been at the ranch a week ago and meant they were behind on routine vet care for the entire herd.
It never stopped. And while Thorne could be a pain in the ass sometimes, he was committed to the ranch, willing to work as hard as necessary. Or even harder than that. Especially since Sayer left.
Which was also partly Thorne’s fault.
Bear resisted the urge to sigh as loudly as he wanted to. “Sure, we’re done.” Best to get out of here before they saw Pippa.
A high, rolling laugh as they walked to the register told him his luck hadn’t held though. He’d never heard Pippa laugh before— How did he know, deep in his gut, that it was her? Probably because his gut had done odd things when he heard it.
“Oh, I remember that!” Her voice came from the dog aisle.
He turned toward her as helplessly as a magnet toward iron.
She was there with Ansel and her sister, Lulu, the three of them smiling like old friends. Or long-lost cousins.
“Whatever happened to that wagon?” she asked. “It was so cool. We took pictures on it.”
She meant the old horse-drawn wagon that used to sit out front of the feed and seed. It was a rite of passage as a kid to get your picture on it. Santa would come during the holidays to sit on it and hear what the kids wanted for Christmas.
“We had to take it down,” Ansel said. “It was falling apart, and we couldn’t fix it.”
Pippa’s eyes met Bear’s right as Ansel said it. “What do you mean, you couldn’t fix it?” Her question was loud enough to rattle around the exposed rafters. “It was too cool to just throw away.”
“Some things can’t be repaired,” Bear said. “It’s best to get rid of them before they hurt someone.”
“So that’s them,” Thorne said mostly to himself.
Bear nodded.
Pippa looked past Bear at his brother. Her eyes went wide.
Bear loosed a tight smile. It seemed dear Annie hadn’t told Pippa Thorne was Bear’s twin.
She was dying to say something, her lips twitching as she held back. Lulu looked less impressed, more like he’d pulled a tired trick on her. Ansel looked a bit tense, probably because Bear had threatened to eat Pippa up last time.
The thought still held a hell of a lot of appeal.
Bear gestured toward his brother. “This is Thorne, my brother. Thorne, Filippa, with an F. And Lucretia. Like the Borgias.” Bear leaned toward Pippa, dropped his voice to a more intimate register. “Thorne’s the evil twin.”
She looked him up and down. “I refuse to believe you’re the good twin.” She brightened. “We’re going to plant a garden.”
Thorne exhaled sharply. “Is your lawyer okay with that? Since there’s a lawsuit pending.”
Lulu gave him a cool look. “We’ll ask him tomorrow when we see him.”
“You can’t use the garden boxes at the house without replacing the soil,” Bear told Pippa. “It’s full of Bermuda grass—it’ll choke everything out.”
“You’re giving her advice,” Thorne said flatly at the same moment Pippa said, “You just have to ruin everything by being a doomer. ‘Your house is going to fall down, your chicks will die, your garden will fail.’”
Both hit him at the same time from opposite ends. He couldn’t speak for a second because he couldn’t decide who to snap at first.
Pippa beat him to it. “I’m sorry.” Her words were quiet, and she directed them to his feet. “That wasn’t fair.”
It wasn’t, but his gut twisted guiltily anyway. Because he wasn’t exactly being fair to her either, pushing her out of her house. No, his house. Or whatever.
He made a noise that might have been a strangled No problem.
She kept looking up at him through her lashes, little glancing darts. He felt each and every one.
“I’ll be sure to replace the soil.” Her voice was stronger, her glances quicker.
His pulse picked up in response. He could imagine her struggling with a shovel, hauling out however many pounds of dirt scoop by little scoop. It’d be hard as hell, but she’d do it.
Bear could barely suppress the urge to tell her he’d do it with the dozer. Thorne would have a coronary. As it was, he looked like he was desperate for some ice to chew. Or maybe some nails.
“Good,” Bear said gruffly. “But that house will fall down before you’ll even be able to harvest anything.”
Pippa’s answering smile was small, no bigger than the space between the two of them. “Well, you’ll be there to dig me out when that happens.”
Something strange took root in him, not quite warmth—it was too uncomfortable for that—but maybe its cousin. It started just under his heart, growing slowly but steadily.
It kind of scared the shit out of him.
Bear was suddenly aware of everything that wasn’t Pippa, the entire feedstore watching and listening, because of course this promised to be a great show. No doubt every person in town had heard the details the moment Pippa climbed out of her car.
“Isn’t it so nice,” Lulu said with poisoned sweetness, “to meet the neighbors?”
Ansel made a choked noise that might have been a suppressed laugh or a strangled groan. Bear completely sympathized.
“It is,” he said.
That made Pippa grin, which almost made him grin back.
“I should get back to work,” she said, still looking only at him. “I have to check the salt licks.” She said it confidently, although Bear was pretty sure she’d only learned what they were today. If she had at all.
“Byyye,” Lulu said with a wave of her hand. She finished with a steely stare at Thorne and Bear. That included you.
“We’re done here,” Thorne said shortly.
“Let me help you at the register then.” Ansel’s tone was flat, as if he was warning Thorne not to make a scene.
Bear didn’t think his brother would show his ass, but once they were in the truck, he was almost certain Thorne would swear never to walk into the feed and seed again out of spite. Thorne held a grudge like nobody’s business.
“Thanks,” Bear said with a significant look at his brother. “You’re supposed to get in more sheep drench tomorrow. Okay if we pay today and Lark picks it up?”
One of them could pick it up just as easily, but he was reminding both Ansel and Thorne that Lark had business with the feedstore, lots of it, and there was no need to jeopardize that over Thorne’s surly attitude.
“Of course,” Ansel said, back to his usual self.
Thorne said nothing, but he did head to the register. Thankfully, his brother didn’t catch the smug little smile playing on Lulu’s face.
Bear didn’t miss it, but he didn’t acknowledge it either. However, he did allow himself one last glance over his shoulder at Pippa as she walked away.
She wasn’t looking back at him, the line of her spine straight and true. She didn’t walk so much as march, eager to get to whatever was coming next. And her hair…
He tried to remember if he’d ever seen her curls pulled back or even barely contained. He didn’t think so. He hoped they never would be.
Bear hadn’t even realized he’d sighed until Ansel said, “She’s doing fine, you know. For her first day.”
He snapped his gaze forward. “I wasn’t concerned.”
“Sure.” Ansel sounded as mild as ever, but Bear knew he wasn’t fooled.
He followed his brother out before he could embarrass himself over Pippa any further.