Her Four Cowboys

“Jesus,” I said, striding in and placing myself squarely in between Aaron and Andy. “I have no clue what the hell is happening, but all of you need to calm the fuck down.”

None of them looked less angry, but it seemed as though the tension had been cut by my entrance, like a pair of sheers through some hay.

I looked around at all of my brothers and breathed in deeply. “I have no idea what got all of your panties so wadded up that it made you act like this, but in case you’ve forgotten, we’ve got a storm to finish prepping for. We need to focus.”

I looked at Aaron, who normally steered us so fiercely that we knew exactly who ran this ship with a focus that could make the Hubble telescope jealous. His breathing had lengthened and deepened, despite the fury that was still written across his face. I raised an eyebrow at him, and his expression barely changed except for the slight dipping of his cheek, where he was biting down on his cheek with a ferocity that made me think he was about to bite off a piece of his face.

“It’s kinda hard to focus on prepping for a storm when you realize that you and your brothers are all sleeping with the same woman.”

I stopped, and my mouth dropped open as the full impact of his words hit me full force. That had not been what I’d been expecting, to say the least. I might’ve expected one of the younger brothers to be upset because of being expected to do more… probably Andy, who wanted more time to write. But the fact that all of my brothers had hooked up with the same girl….

Whoa. Just whoa.

“No.”

“Yep.” I turned to look at Adam, who’d emphasized the ‘p’ sound in his response. His face also hadn’t gained any color.

“Seriously?” I looked from one of them to the rest, waiting for them to tell me that they were messing with me. “You’re not pulling a prank on me? The three of you are really all plowing the same broad?”

“She’s not a broad,” Andy snapped, and I turned a wary glance to his hand, which still held the wrench. I looked up at his face, staring into his eyes steadily until he calmed down. “But… yeah. Apparently.”

I looked at the rest of them, still in shock over the news. It was just too much for me though, and I couldn’t help the crack that formed in my seriousness.

I started to laugh. The laughter began to burble out of my belly, emerging as a loud cackle that flooded out of me. Once it began, the floodgates were opened, and I just couldn’t stop.

“It’s not funny, man,” Aaron said through gritted teeth. His hands seemed to tighten on the clipboard he was holding.

“No, it’s not,” I said, wiping my eyes. “But it kind of is, you know?”

“No,” Andy replied flatly, and I shrugged.

“Fine, whatever,” I said. “You can’t see it now, and that’s fine. Who is this girl, anyway?”

“Lucy,” all three of them said, sounding equally out of sorts, and I immediately felt the blood drain from my face, ears, neck….

Pretty much all my upper extremities had gone numb, and my laughter stopped abruptly as the word settled.

Lucy? Lucy?

Of all the women in Colorado, the single woman that all of my brothers happened to be sleeping with was the single woman that I hadn’t been able to get out of my mind since she’d first come back to town and sunk into my head with her sass and beauty.

We hadn’t spoken much since the culmination of our night in my truck, but I hadn’t found it easy to get her out of my mind. She always seemed to be there. Sometimes, I even thought I smelled her scent in the front seat of the truck.

“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Wait, back up.” I couldn’t come up with anything to say, though, other than, “What?”

“All three of us are sleeping with Lucy,” Aaron said stiffly, as if the words caused him physical pain coming out. It felt that way as the words came at me. “Or, at least, all three of us have slept with her. At least once.”

Another laugh escaped from me, this one choked and filled with disbelief. “Make that all four of us.”

All of them had vastly different reactions to my words. Aaron broke the clipboard completely, Andy dropped the tool to the floor, its impact muffled by the hay and packed earth of the ground, and Adam froze completely. I nodded, unable to help the sarcastic little shrug of my shoulder as they all stared at me.

“Say that again,” Adam said, his voice going as dead as the rest of him.

“All four of us,” I spoke with measured words, “have slept with Lucy.”