Colters' Woman (Colters' Legacy #1)(27)

But would it work out?

A shadow of doubt marred her jubilation. She’d thought Mason was the answer to her dreams. Wealthy, seemingly doting on her, protective. The stuff a girl’s dreams were made of. Or nightmares.

Was she making the same mistake again? She sure hadn’t given any more thought or care to this decision than she had the one to marry Mason, and it had landed her in a kettle of hot water.

She frowned. If there had never been a Mason, if she had never made such a monumental mistake, if she hadn’t desperately needed a place to run and hide, would she have been drawn to the brothers and what they offered?

She fought to try and place herself in the frame of mind she’d been in before she’d ever met Mason, but found it impossible to match the woman she’d become to who she’d been.

Her head hurt. She was trying too hard to analyze her feelings. She knew what she thought she felt for the brothers, but what if she was wrong? What if her attraction to them was merely a measure of self-preservation? Gratitude for the safe haven they provided?

Fuck a duck.

It wasn’t fair to them. They wanted a woman who could love all three of them, not a woman who couldn’t think for herself, who was a weak mess, one who’d made one bad decision after another.

“If you frown any harder, you’re going to screw up that pretty face of yours forever,” Ryan said mildly.

She glanced up, guilty heat suffusing her cheeks. She hadn’t even been paying attention to him, her horse or where they were going. And Ryan knew it.

“Sorry,” she said in a low voice. “I was just thinking.”

Ryan shrugged. “It’s why I asked if you wanted to go out for a while. You looked like you could use a break.”

He turned back around in his saddle and stared ahead, silence looming between them once more.

She sighed. He wasn’t pushy. She liked that. But then none of the brothers had pushed her hard. Adam could be demanding. Any fool could see that, but he hadn’t pressed her boundaries.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said, focusing her attention on Ryan.

He nodded. “No place on earth is more beautiful than the Rockies.”

He loved it here. She could tell by the way his eyes scraped across the landscape. Some of the bleakness and torment he wore like a permanent tattoo disappeared, replaced by satisfaction.

“How did you all end up here?” she asked.

He shrugged again. “We grew up on a ranch. It was only natural that we’d want one of our own. And we like to hunt. So we decided to combine those factors and make our living at it.”

She thought on that a moment. The cabin they lived in was large. Though they didn’t take meals in the dining room, the room sported a table that could easily sit two dozen people. And there were several rooms she hadn’t explored yet. An uneasy thought crept into her mind.

“So when it’s hunting season, there’ll be lots of hunters in the cabin?” she asked.

He studied her for a moment as if delving into her thoughts.

“Are you worried about what they’ll think?” he asked, his tone slightly challenging.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I mean I don’t know how I’ll be presented. How do you introduce me to other people?”

“As our woman,” he said.

Her stomach turned over. On the one hand, it did funny things to her, the idea of three sexy as hell men claiming her as their woman, but on the other hand, it could be awkward as hell.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said.

She felt her cheek warming again as another thought struck her. One she hadn’t considered, but in light of their very different relationship, she wasn’t sure.

She cleared her throat, wondering how to present such an awkward question.

Ryan sighed. “Just say it, Holly. Whatever’s on your mind. I don’t bite.”

She stared up at him, sure she was growing redder by the minute. “It’s just that I wondered, that is I wasn’t sure…” She took another steadying breath. “You won’t want there to be others, right?”

His eyes darkened and a scowl twisted his features. “I’ll kill any other man who touches you.”

Her breath eased from her in relief.

Ryan scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Holly, just because we have a different situation, in that all three of us are f**king the same woman, it doesn’t mean we’re going to be sharing you with every man who crosses our path. You’re ours. You belong to us, heart and soul, and if another man so much as looks at you, we’ll rip off his dick and cram it down his throat.”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. Then she sobered. “I hope you all aren’t making a mistake,” she said quietly.

He tipped up his Stetson to get a better look at her. “Are we making a mistake, Holly?”

She flinched under his frank appraisal. “I don’t want you to be making a mistake,” she whispered. “I don’t want any of this to be a mistake.”

“Maybe you’re rushing things,” he said. “There’s no hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

She drew comfort from his words. And maybe she had felt rushed. As if she should immediately feel right with the situation she found herself—no, that she chose to be—in. Relationships took time, even if she had a habit of hurling herself into them. It sounded as though they were more than willing to grant her time, and for that she was grateful.