Trevor shrugged. “I think she had a change of heart.”
“About us?” Doc asked, concerned. He had been worried from the start. Relationships were complicated enough but trying to jumpstart a relationship with five men? That had to be tough.
“Yes,” Trevor replied, stopping in the middle of the street. “She had doubts and we talked about those earlier today.”
“And?”
Harley snickered. “She must’ve changed her mind while she was firing all those bullets into the ground.”
“What are you talking about?” Doc asked, not following him.
“Draegan took out old man Tabor.”
“I thought Sable shot him.”
“Psht! Thank God she didn’t,” Harley said. “You should’ve seen her. When she was close enough to kill him, she turned her head, pulled the trigger and shot up the dirt but that’s about all. Other than a bug or two, I doubt she hit anything specific, maybe the old man’s toe.”
Doc grinned. “Does she know?”
“Yeah,” Harley replied. “Nicholas told her.”
“She wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she’d been the one to kill him.”
“What was she doing out there?”
A faraway look washed across Trevor’s face as they approached their vehicles. As if Sable knew they were talking about her, she turned around and gave them one of those million dollar smiles. “She was doing what she’d been taught to do.
“She was protecting her family.”
* * * *
Hours later they were down by the river with a blazing bonfire and country music blaring through the speakers of two McCall pickup trucks. Sable leaned her back against Nicholas’s chest and placed her hands on his, loving the way he’d tease her every now and again by lifting her shirt and caressing her belly.
“Is it always like this around here?” She noticed how Allister passed off Ellie to Ryan, carefully and lovingly lifting her hair long enough to place a kiss on her nape. “I mean do the groupings get together down here often?”
“Groupings?” Mac laughed. “Is that what we are? Groupings?”
“What would you call us?” Sable asked.
“This one is on you,” Mac said, tilting his red plastic cup at Doc.
Before Doc could answer, Harley spoke up and asked, “What do you want to call us, Sable?”
The first word that popped into her head was “family” but families knew so much about one another and she really didn’t know much about these men.
“Say it,” Trevor told her, his voice firm and raw. The masculinity in his tone left her nipples hard and she leaned forward a bit so Nicholas would take the hint and tease her.
He rubbed is forearms against her breasts and smiled at her ear. “What are you thinking right this minute? Say it.”
“I’m thinking I couldn’t be happier.” She let her gaze work over one man and then the next. “I’m thinking I don’t deserve this kind of happiness.”
“And why don’t you deserve it?” Doc tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Why would you deserve any less than any other woman here?”
Feeling as if she were under scrutiny then, she glanced around the crowd and noticed Ellie watching her. She smiled and Ellie returned the gesture.
Maybe she would fit in here after all. She certainly hadn’t “fit” with the McCoys.
At the thought of her past, her eyes watered and she looked away from Doc, scared then that he might see what kind of person she’d been.