Cowgirls Don't Cry(53)

“Okay, okay, I get it. Bad uncle. No more jumpin’ on the bed. And I’ll make sure since I’ve introduced this bad behavior that all bedrooms doors will be shut from here on out.”


“Good.” After they trooped back into the living room and Jessie said, “I didn’t plan anything for supper because I didn’t know if you’d be here.”


“I don’t expect you to cook for me every night.”


“I like to cook. So do you have any requests?”


“I’m feelin’ like pizza.”


Jessie frowned. “That’s the one thing I don’t have the stuff for.”


“Don’t you have frozen pizza in the freezer?”


“Nope.”


“We could go to the Pizza Barn in Moorcroft?” Brandt suggested.

After the last public appearance at Dewey’s, fielding a dozen questions about Landon and why she was torturing herself caring for a child that wasn’t hers… Nah. Not an experience she was anxious to repeat, especially not in front of Brandt with Landon tow.

“You not wantin’ to be seen in public with me?”


Her gaze caught his. “It’s not about you, paranoid man. Just remembering the scream therapy I needed last time I ventured out to a restaurant. So I’d rather stay in.”


Tension left Brandt’s posture and he smiled. “How about if I call in an order, pick it up and we eat it here?”


“Sounds like a plan.”


While Brandt was gone, Jessie fed Landon and bathed him. She dumped out the jumbo Legos on the coffee table and they sorted the pieces by color. Landon was fascinated by how the different sized parts fit and he was pleased as punch when he figured out how to snap them together by himself. Every day at the daycare and at home, she watched Landon learn something new. And rather than getting a sense of pride, it humbled her to see how hungry he was to learn.

Jessie ate the pizza one handed because Landon demanded she hold him while he drank his bottle.

Brandt returned from settling Landon in his crib with that get-nekkid look in his eye.

Good thing she’d taken the time to brush her teeth.

Tell and Dalton showed up at Jessie’s around noon on Sunday. Luckily they’d called first and hadn’t walked in on him and Jess going at it in the shower.

Or on the couch.

Or on the kitchen counter.

Man. They could not get enough of each other. Within a few days they’d become intimate on a level he’d never experienced. As freakin’ awesome as the sex was, Brandt knew it wasn’t the only reason they’d become so close. They’d let their guards down and hadn’t put those walls back up.

So far.

He hadn’t announced that he and Jessie had become more to each other than Landon’s guardians.

Would Jessie shy away the first time he showed affection in front of his brothers?

Nope. She’d gone him one better and kissed him. With tongue.

She was a natural fit to their Sunday afternoon tradition—flipping back and forth between football games and waiting for Chase to compete in a televised PBR event, knocking back a few beers. Even Landon refused to nap so he could hang out with his uncles.

But at suppertime Landon staged a crying, screaming tantrum. The thought of wrestling the crabby kid into the bathtub made him shudder, but he wouldn’t pass the duty off to Jessie either. Somehow Tell and Dalton ended up bathing the ornery boy. The bath time screams Brandt expected were largely absent, replaced by giggles.