Mark (Mallick Brothers 3)

There was only one answer to all of those, regardless of how too-soon it might have been.

I was falling.

And, all things said and done, it wasn't that soon.

Shane knew Lea was important almost immediately.

Hunt knew Fee was something special.

Ryan knew he needed Dusty after one night where she was too freaked out with a panic attack to even have a fully normal interaction with.

It was how it happened with my parents too.

Maybe it had something to do with all of us being ladies men before. We had gotten enough of a taste of what wasn't right to know the taste of what was.

Maybe we were all just lucky.

We didn't have to spend weeks or months sitting across from someone in restaurants before we realized they were right. We didn't need to make pro and con lists. We didn't need to weigh the options.

We just knew.

I just knew about Scotti.

It was as simple as that.

Was the situation maybe less than ideal? Well, she was a fucking armed robber hellbent on leaving the country, so... yeah.

But what man didn't like a challenge?

Nothing good in life ever comes easy.

If Scotti was maybe my chance to get a taste of what Hunter, Shane, Ryan, and my parents had, then, yeah, I was willing to put in the work.

Which included keeping her strong enough to talk to her brothers. So we needed to get out of the tub and into clothes before they showed up. Otherwise, I'd likely be getting nothing but death glares though they all damn well knew their sister was no starry-eyed virgin that I deflowered. I guess brothers had to be that way with their little sisters.

"Come on, baby," I said, dropping my hips to slide out of her.

"My legs are Jell-O," she grumbled as I stepped out and started drying off.

"Alrighty then," I said, tying a towel around my waist, and reaching down to haul her up. "You hold onto me, and I'll dry you off," I offered, already reaching up to scrub the towel into her dripping hair.

"What? No. I can..."

"Let me take care of my woman? You sure can do that. So quit your bitching," I said with a smile that she returned as I slowly moved to towel her off, noticing her skin getting flushed as I moved slowly over her. When I chanced a look at her face, her eyes were heavy-lidded again. This woman could wear me the fuck out. I didn't even think that was possible. I also decided that this needed to be a form of foreplay at some point in the future. But not right then. Right then we needed to get dressed before we were invaded. "How are they feeling now?"

"How are what feeling now?" she asked, voice doing that sexy far-away thing that it did when she got turned on.

"You're killing me, woman. Look away or something. My stomach needs some fuel before my cock gets near you again."

She laughed at that, moving to take the towel from me and stand. "Well, I guess I can feed you then," she declared, moving away from me and toward the bedroom. She slipped into jeans and a black tee, leaving her feet bare, and moved off toward the kitchen. "Oh, crap. Literally."

"What?" I asked, walking back out, still shrugging into my shirt.

"The damn chick. We forgot all about him and... well... he is not house trained. Ugh. Gross. You little shithead," she said in a crooning mama-bird voice, picking him up, and moving to hand him to me. "Go give that back to his mother while I clean up. Oh, and grab some spinach from the garden. I can make omelets. Oh, yeah and here, take this basket and get the eggs."

"Well, I a-reckon I can fetch you some eggs for a-breakin'-the-fast, little lady."

"Ha ha," she mocked my stupidity, but was genuinely smiling. "Get moving while I chop potatoes."

So then I got moving, a chirping chick in the basket, happy as can be. It really was a nice place. Especially after a life of living in places like the shack she had been staying in for so long. The land was sprawling, making my two acres that, in my area, was practically an obnoxious amount of land, seem like an itty bitty backyard in a major city. The air was clean. There were no car sounds or neighbors.

I could see why she found a little peace here.

It was a place to breathe, to clear your head, to reevaluate.

And that was exactly what I hoped she and her brothers would do that very morning. Because I knew I was right. I was so right, damnit. They didn't have to leave. In fact, amongst trolling the news for new robberies, I went ahead and researched all the old ones. She was right when she said they disguised themselves. Not one single report was the same. Sometimes there were redheads, brunettes. Sometimes there were blue eyes, green, gray. Sometimes she and her brothers were thin, buff, fat. Sometimes they spoke in fucking accents or other languages that no one else understood, which I figured for made up. They covered their tracks. A trained bloodhound wouldn't be able to sniff them out. There hadn't even been any suspicion about there being five of them.