Huck and I were public servants. We were used to helping the community. Hell, we put our lives on the line every time we took a shift. But this was definitely a new twist.
Thatcher went around the kitchen island and snagged a carrot chunk from the board and popped it in his mouth. Alice slapped his hand but gave him an indulgent look. “If I’m going to be forced on a date with the highest bidder, I don’t want it to be Miss Turnbuckle from the library,” he advised. “I want to use my time wisely.”
I had a feeling wisely meant in bed with his head between a woman’s legs as she screamed his name, but I wasn’t going to say that. Not in front of Alice.
I’d like to use my time wisely with the gorgeous redhead who’d shot me down. I’d gone down in flames, hard core.
No. Fudging. Way, she’d said.
With those words, she’d made it pretty damned clear she wanted nothing to do with me. I’d watched her walk inside, and I’d stood on the playground, stunned. It wasn’t as if I’d asked her to hop in my bed. I hadn’t told her what I’d been thinking, about how I wanted to bend her over the side of my bed and fuck her hard, to find out if a good girl like her liked to get her ass spanked. Or how those plump lips looked spread wide around my dick. Any of those would have deserved a knee to the balls.
But I hadn’t said any of that, and she’d practically ripped me a new one. Any sane guy would have gotten the message and headed in the opposite direction, but I’d gone inside to apologize and make it right, which had gone so fucking wrong.
“I’m sure Selma Turnbuckle will be there and might just bid on one of you and win. If she does, you will be a proper gentleman,” she warned, waving her knife in each of our directions. The woman was the ranch’s housekeeper and all-around mother hen. And she wanted us married.
That was all fine and good, but I didn’t want to be sold to the highest bidder. I wasn’t fucking a cow. I’d sure feel like a piece of meat up on the community center’s stage as women bid on what they saw; me and my brothers and the other men who’d been wrangled into participating.
Part of going on a date was the hope of not being a proper gentleman at the end of it. But Miss Turnbuckle, the town librarian, had to be seventy if she was a day. She had gray hair when I was a kid. I had nothing but gentlemanly thoughts where she was concerned. Maybe she wouldn’t be a bad date. She always loved that Momma had named us after Mark Twain characters. I’d escort her home and be done.
It had been a long time since I’d felt any kind of real attraction to a woman. Years. Until earlier. Until Kelsey. The first time I’d seen her across the playground I’d felt like a cartoon character with my eyes popping out of my head and my dick instantly hard. She was just that fucking pretty. I was thirty-fucking-four years old and was far from a monk but had never once felt this way. Like being hit by a fence rail upside the head.
I wanted the whole deal. The heated looks, the flirting, the foreplay, the sweaty sex. Instead, I’d gotten a knee to the crotch. I must be insane because I still wanted Kelsey. Maybe more so because she’d stood up to me. For what, I didn’t know. But I’d find out.
I should have my head examined because females were crazy. I’d had a woman who I’d thought was the real deal, but that had turned to shit. Tina. Thinking her name had the same effect on my dick as thinking of Miss Turnbuckle. I shifted the peas, winced.
“You said you want us happily wed,” Thatcher said, snatching another carrot chunk.
He might be the youngest, but he was the biggest pain in the ass.
“Alice, a date with one of your friends isn’t going to get us to the altar,” he added.
She set her knife down and sighed. Wiped her hands on her apron. “I want you each to find a good woman.” Her gaze shifted to mine when she said that, the importance on the word good because we all knew I’d found a woman—Tina—and that had been bad. “Make some babies.”
I’d had no expectation of ever finding a good woman. Turned out, Tina had wanted the Manning land and the money that went with it more than me. When the pre-nup I’d presented her had brought out where her true interests had been, she’d left me. And the area.
No way could she fuck the town’s fire chief then fuck him over and stay around. The Bend was too small for shit like that to fly. The chances of finding The One in rural Montana, who’d make me smile and make me come hard were fucking slim to none. I instantly thought of Kelsey. She’d made me smile. And she’d make me come so fucking hard—as soon as my balls recovered.
As for making babies, I was up at least to practice. A lot. I didn’t even need a bed. I’d be all over practicing with Kelsey bent over my desk or in the back stall of the stable. A blanket in the south pasture. Even in my fucking shower.
Fuck, I was in trouble if I was imagining doing all that with a woman who clearly hated my guts.
“You got Claire out of me,” Huck reminded Alice.
Alice’s face softened at the mention of Huck’s daughter. The woman had been part of the family since before I was born and had stayed on to take care of us after our parents died when I was fifteen. She wasn’t a blood relation, but she was definitely Claire’s honorary grandmother. “I did. Now get a woman, too.”
Huck titled his head back and laughed. Claire’s mother was a piece of work and long gone. Huck was better off without her. So was Claire.
Maybe Alice was right in her putting us in this auction. Clearly, Huck and I sucked at picking women. As for Thatcher, no woman had turned out to be a gold digger or shown up pregnant for him, but he was still single, and that was his fatal flaw in Alice’s eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” Huck said, appeasing Alice.
“The auction was organized through the community center,” she said, picking up the cutting board and sliding the cut carrots into the pot on the stove. “You have to admit it’s something different than last year’s holiday wreath sale.”
It sure as hell was. Selling some holly bows was one thing, selling myself another.
“Rev. Abernathy will be the MC,” she added, as if that made it better.
Thatcher laughed. Huck groaned. I did, too, but inwardly. We’d gone to church as kids with our parents, but we’d veered from that flock.
“Are these dates chaperoned then?” Huck asked. “Hang on. This isn’t some bait and switch way to have us married then and there, is it?”
I stilled, thinking the possibility was real.
“Huckleberry Manning, did you hit your head? It’s a fundraiser not entrapment.” Alice gave him the eye again. “Women not just from The Bend will come and bid. I expect some from as far as Helena. It’s not often the Manning brothers are up for sale.”
Often? More like never. We may have chased skirts in the past, and Huck even may be a father now, but we Manning brothers were selective. At least discrete. We sure as shit didn’t kiss and tell.
She eyed the three of us up and down.
We were all over six feet and had our father’s broad shoulders, square jaw and blue eyes, but we’d somehow come out with different hair color. My hair was almost black. Huck’s was blond and Thatcher was a carrot top. I remembered our father had always said Momma had two-timed it with a few cowboys to get boys looking so different, but they’d been so much in love that there wasn’t a chance either of them had strayed in their marriage. It was a perfect union I wanted for myself, too, but doubted I’d get. I was getting old and, it seemed, only desired for my big bank account or my big dick. Or both.