Only Mine (Honey Mountain #5)(95)

Travis’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of his little sister’s decision to come back home for a few months. I wouldn’t bring up the fact that my dick had also stiffened at the sight of her last night. She’d always been gorgeous and sweet, but hell, when she left Cottonwood Cove four years ago, I’d looked at her more like a kid. But Lila fucking James wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d just graduated from college and returned home. I’d called her Snow for as long as I could remember because the girl had watched Snow White more times than any one kid should, and her dark hair and all that sweetness made it an easy nickname to hold on to.

Travis loved the shit out of his wife, Shay, but anyone that knew him well knew that his kryptonite was Lila. They’d been through a shit ton at a young age, and he’d been looking out for her our entire lives. The number of dudes the three of us had threatened on her behalf over the years was countless. And when she’d left for Northwestern in Chicago on a full cross-country scholarship, he’d been proud as hell. But I knew that it was tough for him having her so far away, as it had always been the two of them against the world.

“She’s refusing to stay with me and Shay because she says we’re newlyweds and are expecting our first baby, so she thinks we deserve some kind of bullshit privacy. My dad is a fucking train wreck, but that doesn’t stop Lila from wanting to fix him. She’s too fucking loyal. Too fucking stubborn. And too fucking good to be dealing with his shit. I’m sure it’s a big adjustment. She’s been racing and competing for so long, and now that part of her life is over. As much as I want her to come back home, I don’t want her to get sucked into my dad’s bullshit. She deserves better. She deserves more.” He shook his head.

“Fuck, Trav. You’ve got to chill out. She’s a grown-ass woman. I say this because I also ran into her last night when I stopped by to have a beer with this fucker,” Brax said, raising a brow at me as if I didn’t remember. “She was just leaving, and damn, your baby sister has grown up into a fine woman.” He whistled, knowing it would get under Travis’s skin. We’d seen her over the years since she’d gone away to school, and we’d always given him a hard time about how pretty she was.

“Fuck you. Don’t be looking at Lila like that. She’s still young. Far from a grown woman.” Travis shot Brax a warning look. “She got offered a job at that big, fancy company she interned with this past year. She’s so damn smart. They agreed to hold the position for her until the beginning of September so she could come home for a while and make sure Dad was okay. The man isn’t going to change, so I don’t know why she’s insisting on putting her life on hold.”

I understood his need to protect her because I had two sisters my brothers and I were protective of. But this was different. My siblings and I had two parents who worried about all of us plenty. But Travis was all Lila had unless you counted their father, who had checked out years ago.

“Let her come back for a little bit and spend some time with you and Shay. Maybe your dad will clean up his act while she’s here, and then she’ll head back to Chicago. She said the job is waiting for her, so let her take a few months and just relax.”

“Jeez, man. I agree. The girl has worked her ass off. When we were younger, I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t out on a run or training. It took her to college, where she spent four years going to class and racing. Let her have a break.” Brax shook his head, and I chuckled because the dude was rarely logical, but this was the wisest thing he’d said in a while.

“She seems happy to be home. She’s probably exhausted,” I said.

“That’s true. But I don’t like her living at Dad’s house. He runs with some shitty people, per usual. I don’t want her around all that, you know?” Travis balled up the paper that had been wrapped around his sandwich and set it on the bar.

I understood his concern. We’d always looked out for her. There were a few years between us in age, and at times, I knew she resented the way Travis, Brax, and I treated her like she was a little kid. And if I were being honest, I didn’t particularly like the idea of her staying at her father’s house, either.

“You know, I’ve got the casita at my place. I’ll offer it to her when she comes in this week to talk about the job and what she’ll be doing. Georgia plans on moving in there after she graduates, but that won’t be until after Snow heads back to Chicago.” Georgia was my baby sister, the youngest of us Reynolds kids. We were close, and she had already called dibs on the casita after I bought the run-down cabin two years ago and completely renovated it.

He was nodding around a mouthful of food. His shoulders had completely relaxed.

“Thanks, brother. I owe you one for this.”

“Should I be offended that you didn’t ask me to hire her? We can always use an extra hand at the office, and I’ll bet there’d be a lot of dudes in Cottonwood Cove buying homes if Lila was working there,” Brax said as he waggled his brows mischievously.

“Fuck you, dickhead. Not a chance. Hugh would never cross that line, but you think with your dick too much.”

I barked out a laugh when Brax gaped as if he’d just been slapped in the face.

“Hugh thinks with his dick, too. Just ask Tory Hopkins. She drunk-cried to me last week about the way you rocked her world and then left her high and dry.” Brax finished off the last pull from his beer.