The Alpha's Fine Print novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Against the Door

By seven in the morning, I had been awake an hour and there was a truck at the cattle guard.

"It's gone," Lorcan said from the kitchen window. "Black Ford, out-of-county plates. It sat there with its engine running and then it left."

He was shirtless again, barefoot, with a mug of coffee in one hand.

I was wearing his gray T-shirt and nothing else, and I was trying very hard to look like a lawyer.

"Dahl Timber," I said. "They own the mill in Ennis Falls. The lease lapsing means four thousand acres of old larch go on the market."

"And you know that how?"

"I read the county records on my phone at three in the morning while you were guarding my door."

He looked at me over the rim of his mug.

"You're frightening," he said.

"You're welcome."

The back door banged open.

"Morning!" Bess said, striding in with a bucket of eggs. "I smell sex, coffee and bleach, and not in that order."

She stopped.

She took in his bare chest, my bare legs, the T-shirt, the two mugs.

A grin split her freckled face from ear to ear.

"Oh, this is the best day of my life," she said.

"Bess," Lorcan said.

"I mean it. I have waited twenty-eight years to see my brother's face when a woman tells him no."

She set down the eggs and wiped her eyes.

"Did she tell you no? She did, didn't she? Say it again, Tilda."

"No," I said, mildly.

Lorcan went rigid, mid-sip.

The mug stopped an inch from his mouth and stayed there, trembling.

Bess laughed so hard she had to hold the counter.

"Oh my God," she said. "It's real. It's so real. He can't drink his coffee."

"I'd like to," Lorcan said through his teeth.

"Yes," I said. "Go ahead."

He drank.

He set the mug down very carefully and looked at me, and the look went through me.

"Do that again in front of my sister," he said, "and I will carry you into the barn."

"Is that a threat?" I said.

"It's a request."

My heartbeat jumped in my throat.

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