Crazy Heifer (The Valentine Boys 2)

Callum, who I just realized had walked out onto the porch, chuckled and wrapped his arm around his sister.

“You didn’t drink when you were pregnant with them. But there was that one time you dropped Booth on his head,” he reminisced.

“That was me,” Nico supplied. “I also accidentally left them at Walmart once.”

“That wasn’t an accident because you left me, too.” Georgia reached out and slapped her husband across the belly.

Nico didn’t even flinch.

I finally let Bourne go, then ruffled his hair. “Come help me make pancakes.”

He didn’t protest my order and followed me in dutifully.

Callum’s nieces and nephews were definitely a handful. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was due to who their parents were. Maybe it was due in part to their strong personalities. Whatever the reason, the first time I met them they had this hard, crusty shell that I’d had to break through.

Codie had done her own brand of shell breaking. Me? I spoiled them rotten. Both ways were effective, but there were still times when I felt like I was still breaking through.

Booth and Bourne were by far the easiest to crack. Their appetites were on another level, and the growing teenage boys were definitely a lot more amenable to doing things when they got something out of it. Like an endless stack of pancakes.

I wasn’t surprised to find Booth already in the kitchen waiting for us.

“Hello, Booth.” I grinned at the other twin. “You’re quite adorable today.”

Booth glanced down at his outfit. He was wearing much the same as Callum had been wearing. Dusty boots, Wrangler jeans, and a tight black t-shirt.

But unlike his uncle, Booth’s jet-black hair wasn’t covered with a cowboy hat.

“I’m wearing clothes,” he said.

I snickered. “That you are. Are you going to help your uncles today?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Riding fence. We’re also going to repair the back fence for about forty feet. Uncle Callum asked us to come help so we could go out to dinner tonight to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” I asked as I began to dig out ingredients.

“Uncle Callum didn’t say,” he answered. “I just know that I’m being forced to spend time with y’all despite having a date planned.”

“Your date is a hoe anyway,” Bourne said. “You should really stop dating all the upperclassman chicks and find someone in our grade. At least their vaginas haven’t been used by every boy in the school.”

I blinked. “Aren’t y’all like thirteen?”

“Fifteen,” Booth answered. “And that’s the reason I’m going out with her. She’s easy.”

I gasped and turned to him. “Easy chicks are a dime a dozen, buddy. What does that say about you that you’re willing to settle for easy when you could easily earn something much better?”

Booth scrunched up his nose, and Bourne started to laugh.

“She has you there, bro,” Bourne teased. “Didn’t you say that you had a thing for that bookworm, though?”

“What bookworm?” I asked as I started to heat my skillet.

“The bookworm that won’t give me the time of day,” Booth muttered. “I swear to God, I get close to her, and she pretends really, really hard that she’s so into her book that I’m not even there. And when I talk to her, she looks straight through me.”

“That’s likely because she sees you with all the ‘easy’ chicks and thinks you’re gross,” I pointed out. “Girls don’t like to see the guys that they’re into chasing after other women. Trust me on this, I would know.”

Booth was thoughtful for a few minutes as I went about starting the first batch of pancakes. I had about twelve done before he said, “How do I get her to talk to me?”

I looked over at the mini-version of Nico and said, “You need to clean up your act first. Stop sleeping around—if that’s actually what you’re doing. Talk to her. Hang out with her. Find out what her interests are, and then go out of your way to see if she wants to do any of those things with you.”

“She’s a twin,” Booth said. “Her sister is more my style, but she has a thing for Bourne. The girl thinks that I don’t like her because I would normally go for her sister who’s a lot more outgoing.”

“Show her that you’re not interested in her sister,” I suggested. “Better yet, why don’t you get Bourne to talk to her sister.”

“I’m not doing shit with Delanie Drew Davidsdottir,” Bourne interjected. “She hates me.”

I turned my gaze to the ceiling. “Why does she hate you, Bourne?”

And I refused to call him on the fact that not only did he know her first and last name, but he knew her middle name as well.

Though, just sayin’, but it was a very cool name.

“Because Bourne gave her shit for her dyslexia,” Booth explained.

I gasped, as did Codie who’d just entered the kitchen. “Bourne! What the fuck?”