Rough Country (Tannen Boys 3)

“What crawled up your ass?” Brutal asks.

Oh, yeah, and I’m not alone to wallow in my failure, either. I’ve got my older brother trying to figure out what pissed in my cereal this morning and I don’t even eat cereal.

“Nothing,” I snap, focusing on the plums from the handful of trees we’re harvesting today.

“Hey, think fast!” That’s all the warning I get before one of the fruits is hurtling straight toward my head.

Reflexively, I catch it, pain shooting through my knuckle. I toss the plum to the bucket that’s already half-full. My sister, Shayanne, is going to have enough to make a fair amount of jam. She sells it at the local farmer’s market, to the restaurant at the tourist-filled resort in town, and to folks all over Great Falls and Morristown.

“What’d you do to your hand?”

“I didn’t know it was twenty-questions day. My hand’s fine.”

I yanked the Band-Aid off as I got dressed this morning, not wanting to invite questions. But Brutal’s got eagle eyes and probably noticed some small detail, like the speed of the middle finger I flip him or the tightness in my fist as I pluck plums, and that was enough to clue him in that something’s wrong.

He hums his disagreement and is quiet for a moment, seeing if I’ll fill in the blanks. When I don’t, he theorizes for me.

“You played at Hank’s last night. Fan’s jealous husband?”

I told Willow that I’m not a hothead who throws hands all the time, but it probably says something about my family that it’s an often-enough occurrence that we don’t so much as blink when it happens. Another day, another tussle, sometimes with each other, sometimes with someone else.

I cut my eyes his way, throwing daggers that should shut him up. Instead, he takes my glare as an answer about the imaginary jealous husband.

“Or not. Well, you didn’t get arrested, so it must not have been too bad. And you don’t have a scratch on you, other than the swollen knuckles, so the other guy must’ve been a pussy.”

He’s trying to throw me off. It won’t work.

“Unless you started it and took him out with one sucker punch?”

“I know better. I let him throw the first punch—weak, like the guy.” Fine, it worked. And now I’m amped up again, growling, “Asshole had the new bartender bouncing in his lap like a fucking Tilt-a-Whirl.”

Brutal grins, knowing he got me. To anyone else, his smile looks like a promise of death and dismemberment, but I’m not scared of him, even if he is a huge motherfucker who looks like he eats steel for breakfast and shits out bolts. The men in our family aren’t known for being tall, dark, and handsome. It’s more like tall, dark, and scary, each of us damn near replicas of our dad’s black hair, dark eyes, tanned skin, and broad build. Brutal’s the scariest of us all until you get to know him, then you see that he’s the mushiest guy ever, wrapped around his wife and son’s fingers.

“I saw one of those carnival rides when I took Allyson and Cooper to the fair. They wouldn’t let me on, said I ‘exceeded the weight limit’ or some shit.” He throws up dirt- and sap-covered fingers in air quotes, rolling his eyes. When he sees the set of my jaw, he laughs. “Not the point, got it. New bartender, asshole, Tilt-a-Whirl. I vote we talk about the new bartender because I didn’t think Hank would ever hire help.”

Delight dances in his eyes. I’m the ‘last man standing’ in our motley crew of blended family. All three Bennett brothers are married now, one of them to my younger sister Shayanne, and both of my older brothers are in relationships, Brutal married and Brody doing the no-marriage-but-committed thing with his woman, Rix. All of which inconveniently leaves me as the only single. My sisters-in-law have tried to remedy that, repeatedly attempting and failing to play matchmaker.

But my focus has only been on music.

At least until last night.

I’m not getting out of this. Brutal has his ways, one is easy and the other is hard, so I can spill my guts now or after he tackles me to the dirt and forces it out of me. Sounds barbaric, but it’s our way and done in brotherly love. Mostly.

Still, I try to keep to the bare bones. “Bartender’s name is Willow, and she’s Hank’s niece.”

“And?” he prompts threateningly.

“And nothing.”

He takes one giant step closer, and I’m on the edge of doing this the hard way. I consider it for a moment. Getting out some of this liquid uncertainty in my veins would be nice, but I’m already down my right hand and we’ve got shit to do. Words it is, I guess.

Hey, Universe! I notice a running theme of my last twenty-four hours. Try these words on for size . . . fuck off.