6 Mountain Brothers for Christmas

“You guys know what you want to eat?” she asked.

“I’m gonna have your spaghetti with garlic bread. Kyra?”

“Um… chicken parmesan?” I asked.

The waitress nodded and left to put in our orders.

“Their finest Italian red wine?” I asked as the waitress walked away.

“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “Harper’s the foodie of the family. I figured ‘finest’ meant it wouldn’t be shit.”

I chuckled and shook my head before I raised my eyes back to his. He was studying me intently. That much, I could tell. He was still sorting through things, just like I was, and even though I knew he was upset, it was still comforting to be in his presence.

“You remember that time you tried to cook a massive spaghetti dinner for us and your father?” Owen asked.

“Yes, I do,” I said, snickering. “I burned the noodles instead of boiling them.”

“Still don’t know how you managed that,” he said.

“That was also the night we all learned Harper could cook,” I said. “And I couldn’t tell you how I did it if my life depended on it.”

I could feel myself blushing as the color cascaded down my back. My body heated up under the embarrassment of the memory but part of my body heated because of the gaze Owen had me trapped under. I wiggled in my seat and sat back, trying to find an appealing and embarrassing memory to regale him with.

But before I could say what popped into my mind, he startled me with his blunt admission.

“I care for you, Kyra.”

I whipped my shocked gaze up to his as his words hit my ears at one hundred miles a second.

“I’ve had a crush on you for years,” he said. “Ever since you were in middle school. You were so beautiful, Kyra. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I felt like shit, having a crush on you when I turned eighteen. You were still sixteen and I knew your father would just bury me in a hole if he knew some eighteen-year-old had feelings for his daughter.”

“You kidding? He’d bury you now,” I said, grinning.

He chuckled but his mouth went right back to running away from him.

It was so unlike him… and incredibly refreshing.

“I’d given up hope on my crush when you got engaged. But now that you’re here and I’ve—we’ve—experienced all we have with you, I can’t keep it cooped up any longer. Not with what you’re going through. Not with how close I could be to losing you forever.”

His gaze panned up to mine and I saw the hurt behind his eyes, the betrayal I’d enacted simply by taking that bullshit lunch. I saw a vulnerable man with the body of a rocketing comet thro

ugh space and the heart of a lover with a broken soul. Suddenly, Owen’s strength and musculature didn’t seem so intimidating.

Suddenly, I saw him as that eighteen-year-old boy with a hopeless crush instead of the rugged, strong, calloused I.T. businessman he’d become.

“I’ve always liked you, too, Owen,” I said.

“You’re just saying that. Look, you don’t have to—”

“No, Owen, I’m serious,” I said. “I was serious about what I said that night. That I could never choose between you guys. Do you remember all those summers we spent at the swimming hole?”

“Of course,” he said. “There’s a reason I always volunteered to get in the water and stay there.”

“I always wondered what you looked like without your swimming trunks on,” I said, grinning.

“Glad to know I wasn’t the only one envisioning someone naked there.”

The two of us laughed while Owen’s gaze flashed from insecure to primal. In an instant, the air grew thick around us as the bottle of wine was set down. Our glasses were already full and I grabbed it to sip on but I could feel Owen’s sexual energy pulsing toward me.