Long Road Home (The Barker Triplets 4)

He was flying blind and putting on a face that said he knew what the hell he was doing, but it was a bald-faced lie. He didn’t know shit except that he’d loved Bobbi Jo since the first time he laid eyes on her. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

It had been a night not unlike this one, hot and muggy, with a sky full of heat lightning and the smell of rain in the air.

“Shane, you’re an idiot. If you fall from there, you’ll break your damn neck. It’s too shallow on that side.” He turned as his pal Logan shook his head and glanced up at him. They were out on the lake at a buddy’s cottage, and at the moment, Shane Gallagher was on top of the boathouse, half-drunk on the whiskey he stole from his father’s stash. It was Memorial Day Weekend and they had the place to themselves, at least until their buddy Dave arrived with a bunch of girls he said he was heading to town to fetch.

“Nah, I’m good,” he replied, wobbling a bit as he tipped the bottle of whiskey and took a swig. It burned like fire down the hatch, but it was a fire he liked because it shut down the noise in his head. He couldn’t believe his dad was seeing another woman so soon after his mom’s death. Fuck him, he thought.

Fuck him.

He took another swig and nearly lost his balance when he turned to see who Dave had managed to bring along for a weekend of partying in a cottage with no adults. It was too dark to see clearly, but the moonlight gave him a glimpse of what looked like three girls, Dave and--he squinted a bit--Matt Hawkins. That guy was crazier than Shane, and as they walked up the dock that led to the boathouse, he wasn’t surprised to see two of the Barker triplets walking along behind him and some other girl he didn’t know.

The Barker girls, Bobbi, Betty and Billie, had always been on the radar of most folks. A small town like New Waterford being home to identical triplets was something most people knew about. Especially since one of them, Billie, was a bona fide hockey star. She wasn’t around much because she was always at some kind of training camp, but the other two were always in the thick of something.

Shane took another swig and stared down at the group. He knew Betty right off the bat, and man was she hot. Her dark hair hung halfway down her back, nearly to her ass, and she always wore the most outrageous clothes. Like barely there kind of stuff. Most guys in town walked behind her dragging their knuckles like they were cavemen. But she and Matt had a weird thing going on, and Shane had no desire to tangle with him over a girl. Heck, Shane had just broken up with Trish Downey because he was nearly eighteen and who the hell wanted a girlfriend over the summer?

He eyed the second triplet a bit more closely, trying to figure out which one she was. In the end, he decided to ask, because why not. He was just about to when she stepped around Matt and looked up at him. Even in the dim light, he saw that her lips were as red as a valentine. Her jet-black hair drifted just past her shoulders, a wild mess of waves. Dramatic eye makeup made her eyes seem larger than life. She wore a pair of white shorts that barely covered her ass, and a tight black T-shirt with The Doors across her chest.

It was a pretty good-looking chest for a girl who couldn’t be more than seventeen. If that.

“What are you doing up there?” she asked, smiling at him in a way that made his heart race.

“He’s being a dick, is what he’s doing,” Logan replied, shaking his head in disgust.

“He’s not going to jump,” Betty said.

“I’m the only one with balls enough to do it,” he retorted.

“Gallagher, you coming down anytime soon?” Logan shouted.

“I don’t know,” Shane said, eyes on the second triplet. “Depends.”

“On what?” Logan was more than a little pissed.

“On her.” He pointed and grinned when she made a face.

“I have a name, asshole,” she said, scowling.

“Yeah? Which one are you?”

“Bobbi.”

Shane bent forward and raised the bottle of whiskey. “Well, Bobbi Jo Barker, why don’t you come up here and get me?”

Bobbi stared up at him while the guys laughed, and just when he thought she wouldn’t take the bait, she headed for the ladder he’d placed alongside the boathouse. They all protested, her sister the loudest, but Bobbi Jo climbed up and walked toward him like she was walking along the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon instead of the angled roof of a boathouse. Without hesitation, she grabbed the bottle of whiskey from his hand, and the whole time, Shane kept thinking that her eyes were fucking incredible. There was something in them he’d never seen before. Or maybe she just didn’t give a shit, which made her different from most of the girls her age, because most girls preened and walked around like peacocks trying to get his attention.

She handed him back the bottle, took off her shoes, and, without another glance, jumped over the edge into the lake.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

Bobbi’s voice brought him back from the past, and it took a moment to shake the image of the girl she’d been.

“I was thinking of that first weekend we hung out. At Dave’s cottage.”

She glanced down and then back up at him with a small smile. “That was a crazy weekend. Betty and I caught hell from Dad for lying. We’d told him we were spending the weekend at Lora Murphy’s house. Didn’t think he’d find out because Billie was in some training camp and we knew he’d be with her at the arena all weekend, and Gramps never seemed to notice when we were gone. But he ran into someone who saw us with you guys. We were grounded for the entire month of June.”

“Grounded, huh?” He cracked a smile. “Is that why you made me meet you at the end of your road every night?”

She nodded. “I had to sneak out my window and shinny down the drain pipe.”