Make Me (Broke and Beautiful #3)(70)

I snatch up the boots and do a showman’s twirl before plopping down on the edge of my bed. “I look hot, don’t I?”

Kale’s face contorts like the time I convinced him a Sour Patch Kid was just a Swedish Fish coated in sugar. “You’re my sister.”

“But I’m hot,” I counter with a confident smirk, and Kale huffs out a breath as I finish tying my boots.

“You’re lucky Mason isn’t home. He’d never let you leave the house.”

Freaking Mason. I roll my eyes.

I’ve been back home for only a few months—since December, when I decided that getting a bachelor’s degree in music theory wasn’t worth an extra year of nothing but general education requirements—but I’m already ready to do a kamikaze leap out of the nest again. Having a hyperactive roommate was nothing compared to my overprotective parents and even more overprotective older brothers.

“Well, Mason isn’t home. And neither is Mom or Dad. So are you going to tell me how I look or not?” I stand back up and prop my hands on my hips, wishing my brother and I still stood eye to eye.

Sounding thoroughly unhappy about it, Kale says, “You look amazing.”

A smile cracks across my face a moment before I grab my guitar case from where it’s propped against the wall. As I walk through the house, Kale trails after me.

“What’s the point in dressing up for him?” he asks with the echo of our footsteps following us down the hall.

“Who says it’s for him?”

“Kit,” Kale complains, and I stop walking. At the top of the stairs, I turn and face him.

“Kale, you know this is what I want to do with my life. I’ve wanted to be in a big-name band since middle school. And Shawn is an amazing guitarist. And so is Joel. And Adam is an amazing singer, and Mike is an amazing drummer . . . This is my chance to be amazing. Can’t you just be supportive?”

My twin braces his hands on my shoulders, and I have to wonder if it’s to comfort me or because he’s considering pushing me down the stairs. “You know I support you,” he says. “Just . . .” He twists his lip between his teeth, chewing it cherry red before releasing it. “Do you have to be amazing with him? He’s an *.”

“Maybe he’s a different person now,” I reason, but Kale’s dark eyes remain skeptical as ever.

“Maybe he’s not.”

“Even if he isn’t, I’m a different person now. I’m not the same nerd I was in high school.”

I start down the stairs, but Kale stays on my heels, yapping at me like a nippy dog. “You’re wearing the same boots.”

“These boots are killer,” I say—which should be obvious, but apparently needs to be said.

“Just do me a favor?”

At the front door, I turn around and begin backing onto the porch. “What favor?”

“If he hurts you again, use those boots to get revenge where it counts.”





An Excerpt from





THE BRIDE WORE DENIM




A Seven Brides for Seven Cowboys Novel by Lizbeth Selvig When Harper Lee Crockett returns home to Paradise Ranch, Wyoming, the last thing she expects is to fall head-over-heels in lust for Cole, childhood neighbor and her older sister’s long-time boyfriend. The spirited and artistic Crockett sister has finally learned to resist her craziest impulses, but this latest trip home and Cole’s rough and tough appeal might be too much for her fading self-control.





Thank God for the chickens. They knew how to liven up a funeral.

Harper Crockett crouched against the rain-soaked wall of her father’s extravagant chicken coop and laughed until she cried. This time, however, the tears weren’t for the man who’d built the Henhouse Hilton—as she and her sisters had christened the porch-fronted coop that rivaled most human homes—they were for the eight multi-colored, escaped fowl that careened around the yard like over-caffeinated bees.

The very idea of a chicken stampede on one of Wyoming’s largest cattle ranches was enough to ease her sorrow, even today.

She glanced toward the back porch of her parent’s huge log home several hundred yards away to make sure she was still alone, and she wiped the tears and the rain from her eyes. “I know you probably aren’t liking this, Dad,” she said, aiming her words at the sopping chickens. “Chaos instead of order.”

Chaos had never been acceptable to Samuel Crockett.

A bock-bocking Welsummer rooster, gorgeous with its burnt orange and blue body and iridescent green tail, powered past, close enough for an ambush. Harper sprang from her position and nabbed the affronted bird around its thick, shiny body. “Gotcha,” she said as its feathers soaked her sweater. “Back to the pen for you.”

The rest of the chickens squawked in alarm at the apprehension and arrest of one of their own. They scattered again scolding and flapping.

Yeah, she thought as she deposited the rooster back in the chicken yard, her father had no choice now but to glower at the bedlam from heaven. He was the one who’d left the darn birds behind.

As the hens fussed, Harper assessed the little flock made up of her father’s favorite breeds—all chosen for their easy-going temperaments: friendly, buff-colored cochins; smart, docile, black and white Plymouth rocks; and sweet, shy black Australorps. Oh, what freedom and gang mentality could do—they’d turned into a band of egg-laying gangsters helping each other escape the law.