Harper’s eyes turned thoughtful. “Are you afraid you’ll get bored being Kyle’s wife?”
Never. “No. But what if I need something else?” Celia had to stop and think. Was she addressing this now and laying the groundwork for their inevitable divorce? So Harper and Lainie could say they saw it coming early on?
“I don’t see Kyle as the type to fault you for that.”
Celia sighed. “Do you think the guys are out there talking about this stuff?”
“Chances are high they’re discussing cows,” Lainie said.
“Cows?”
“Yes, cows are a major topic of discussion. All the freakin’ time,” Harper complained.
“But Hank and Abe have complained that all Janie and I talk about is babies,” Lainie pointed out.
“And Bran reminds me that if we have Renner and Tierney over, all we talk about is the Split Rock Ranch and Resort.” Harper’s eyes twinkled. “So maybe we oughta talk about one thing that’s always on our minds. Sex.”
Lainie frowned. “I think I hear Brianna.” She scooted out of the kitchen.
Talk about abrupt. Was Lainie uncomfortable talking about this because Hank was Celia’s brother? Or because Lainie had been with Kyle during that summer she’d traveled the circuit with Hank and Kyle?
Harper leaned forward. “Spill the juicy details, Cele. You and Kyle.”
“The man is amazing in bed. Like gold-medal amazing.”
“I bet that was on the plus side of you deciding to marry him, huh?”
Celia spun her coffee cup around. “Believe it or not, Kyle and I didn’t have sex until after we were married.”
“Seriously?”
“It truly was one of those we-looked-at-each-other-and-everything-just-fell-into-place type of moments.” She grinned. “So the fact he has the mad bedroom skills is a serious bonus.”
She dropped the subject when Lainie returned with Brianna. Although it kept popping into her head that her husband had had sex with Lainie. Kinky sex. She was starting to wish she didn’t know the backstory between her new husband and her brother and his wife. She wasn’t jealous. Okay, she was jealous, but how did she bring it up with him?
So…Kyle, is there anything that you, Hank, and Lainie didn’t do together that you wanna try with me?
Brianna held out her arms for Celia and thoughts of various threesome positions were forgotten. She kissed her niece’s head, the coppery ringlets tickling her nose. Brianna had her mother’s hair, but her eyes were exactly like Hank’s.
Celia wandered to the window and looked out, but didn’t see Kyle or Bran anywhere.
Maybe they really were out in the pasture talking about cows.
Kyle took Bran into the barn and they sat across from each other on the ATVs.
“So you and Celia? I ain’t surprised. You’ve wanted to tap that for a long time,” Bran said.
“No lie. Always made me feel like a f**kin’ pervert.” Kyle grinned. “Still makes me feel like a pervert when I think of all the raunchy stuff I can do with my sexy wife any freakin’ time I want.”
Bran laughed. “Ain’t that the truth.” He sipped his beer. “I just gotta throw this out there. Hank and Abe were wrong. And you get props from me for not knocking them both on their asses. I had to stop Harper from goin’ over there.”
Kyle couldn’t help but smile, thinking about sweet-mouthed Harper marching over and giving the gruff ranchers what for.
“They’re good guys, but they’ve treated Celia like she was eleven long after she ain’t been eleven. We all kinda did it too, up to a point, but never like her brothers did. And it pissed me off how they threatened us with bodily harm if we ever touched her. Took her a long time to see herself as an attractive girl—woman—and not as a tomboy. I hated that we played a part in that.”
Kyle was glad he wasn’t the only one who’d seen that. “Me too.”
“Hank and Abe will come around. They already have, according to Lainie, but I guess I don’t blame you and Celia for needing some time to cool off.”
“We sure as shit got plenty to do around here to keep ourselves occupied.”
“How shocked were you to find out Marshall Townsend was your father?”
“Ask me when the shock wears off. It’s like I’ll wake up and find it’s all a damn dream. I went from saving as much money as possible to buy my own place to inheriting a place complete with cows, horses, a house, and barns.”
“Why do you think your mom didn’t tell you?”
“Who the f**k knows? I gotta be honest, I’m too pissed off at her right now to be civil, so I’ve warned her to give me some time.” Kyle shook his head, thinking back to his most recent conversation with his mother and her insistence on explaining things. “I’m pissed off at him too, even though he’s dead. He looked me right in the goddamn eye that night at Cactus Jack’s. He f**king talked to me and never said a word about any of this.”
Bran frowned. “Wait. You mean that time a bunch of us went out in Rawlins a few years back when Hank and Lainie were dating?”
“Yeah. He approached me. Babbled some drunken bullshit, but nothing like, Hey, I’m your father, lemme buy you a drink and we’ll talk.” Kyle counted to ten. “In the fourteen years since he learned the truth about me, he never tried to get in contact with me. Then he has an attack of conscience on his deathbed and reaches out?”