Hunter (Stud Ranch 2)

“Um,” she swallowed, glancing from the food to everyone still staring at her. “No, thanks,” she tried again. “That’s okay. I’ll just—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Reece laughed. “There’s plenty.” Then he started heaping food on her plate.

She made a strangled coughing noise but Reece just kept on shoveling food until Jeremiah jumped up from the end of the table.

“Enough already.” He took the plate from his twin. “Sorry for my brother’s enthusiasm,” he apologized to Isobel, offering a warm smile with dimples identical to his Reece’s. Apart from their hair and the way they dressed, they looked exactly alike. “He equates hospitality with feeding people. It’s a Southern thing.”

Isobel couldn’t help but smile gratefully at Jeremiah as he scooped half of what Reece had put on her plate back into the trays.

Nicholas looked up from his food. “Texas barely counts as the South.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Reece said, waving a hand.

“I’ll take more of the vegetables,” she said as Jeremiah reached them.

“Are you vegetarian?” Reece winced. “Sorry, I should have asked.”

“No, no. I just…” She scrambled. “You know. Being on the road. I’ve been eating a lot of junk food. Vegetables would be nice for a change.”

God, that didn’t come off too awkward, did it? Maybe it would have been easier to just say she was a vegetarian. But then she’d be locked into that and she did like meat. But rarely and usually only when it was boiled. She’d already cheated this week with the burger last night.

At least her neurotic thoughts weren’t playing across her face, or if they were, the guys were too oblivious to notice. Jeremiah handed her plate back and then Reece tossed an arm around her shoulders, pulling her away from Jeremiah. He flashed a friendly grin down at her, dimples on display. “You’re in for a treat. Nick cooked and the food’s always the best on his nights.”

“Because I grew up in the actual south and we do food the right way,” Nicholas said.

“Stop hogging the beautiful woman all to yourself,” Liam jumped up and pulled Reece’s arm off Isobel’s shoulders. He took Isobel’s hand and dropped a kiss to her fingertips. “Will you please do me the honor of sitting beside me?”

“Oh, um,” she looked around at all the guys. Then she shrugged. “Okay?”

“Excellent. Let me carry this for you.” Liam took her plate with one hand and hooked his arm in hers. He led her over to the table and then waved at Jeremiah. “Move your books out of the way, ya gobshite.” Liam shoved aside a couple of textbooks that were open beside Jeremiah’s plate.

“Oh, I can just sit over—” Isobel started to gesture at the empty chair at the end of the table but Liam and Jeremiah were both shaking their heads.

“It’s fine.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Jeremiah moved his plate along with his books and sat down. Isobel glanced at the books. One was Statistics and the o

ther was Europe in the Twentieth Century.

“A little light reading?” Isobel lifted her eyebrows.

“My big brother’s a college man,” Reece said, taking a seat across the table from them, between Mack and Nicholas.

“Oh, is there a college around here?” Isobel asked, a little surprised. She hadn’t seen anything except scrub brush and endless rolling hills the last hour of her drive yesterday. “Or do you commute?”

“I’m taking online classes from the U of W,” Jeremiah said. Then he clarified. “The University of Wyoming.”

“Oh, cool. I’ve taken a couple online classes before.” She’d been so far into her advanced degree program at Cornell, she hadn’t been able to take many—most of the upper level courses involved labs of one kind or another, but she’d taken a couple online biology classes during undergrad.

She was about to sit but then hesitated, thinking about her afternoon spent sweating while she scrubbed the reception area at the clinic. “I should really go grab a quick shower. It’ll just take ten minutes and then—”

Everyone at the table laughed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Liam put a hand on Isobel’s forearm to stop her. “If we all showered before dinner, we wouldn’t eat until ten o’clock.”

“Liam should be especially ripe since he was out raking the compost beds today.” Mack smirked and crossed his arms behind his head, tattooed biceps flexing.