Hells bells.

My brother was half a block away, still grinning like a loon carrying his flowers, heading toward me when suddenly I wasn’t walking toward him anymore.

Instead, an arm hooked my waist, my body shifted, my forward momentum shifted with it and I found myself slamming front-to-front into a long, hard frame.

I knew that jacket. I knew that scarf.

I looked up.

Gray.

He was grinning and his was huge too, dimple and everything.

“You didn’t leave.”

Hells bells!

“Uh –” I mumbled.

“Yo! Bro! Can I help you?”

I turned my head and saw that Casey was right there. Then I turned my head again and saw that Gray had turned to my brother.

“Hey,” he greeted, extending a hand to my brother. “I’m Gray.”

“And I’m tickled pink,” Casey returned rudely. “Now, you wanna get your hands off my sister?”

Gray looked at Casey then down at me. I tried to move out of the curve of his arm.

It tightened.

Oh dear.

Gray looked back at my brother.

“I’ll repeat, I’m Gray. Gray Cody, a friend of Ivey’s,” Gray stated, still attempting civility but he’d dropped his hand.

“Ivey doesn’t have any friends,” Casey returned and, like a spasm, Gray’s arm curled even tighter around me.

He was silent and I looked between the two of them seeing they were in stare down on the sidewalk in the town square.

This was not good.

“Uh –” I began again.

“You’re wrong,” Gray said quietly. “She does. Me.”

I battled and succeeded and therefore didn’t bite my lip.

Casey’s eyes sliced to me. “You know this guy?”

“I told you someone stepped in last night and that someone was Gray,” I answered carefully but not carefully enough.

And this was when I knew Casey had made assumptions. Casey assumed that some out-of-shape barfly had taken my back. Casey had not considered that a young, tall, handsome man with a confident manner and a natural authority had stepped up for me.

If Casey considered this, we would be three and a half hours out of Mustang, him falling in love with a class act or not.

His eyes narrowed on me and I felt their sting. This was because Casey found this a betrayal. He said no connections. He demanded I play it safe. And me making a friend, even against my will, with a handsome stranger was not playing it safe to Casey.

Then they cut to Gray. “Right then, got my gratitude, bro. Now I’m on duty, move along.”

Gray didn’t move along. Gray didn’t tear his eyes from Casey and I didn’t know him all that well but you didn’t need to to know he really didn’t like what he was seeing.

Then Gray’s eyes flicked to the flowers and back to Casey’s face before he said low, “Shoulda been on duty last night…” pause then, “bro.”

Oh jeez.

Casey’s back went straight or, I should say, straight-er.

“All’s well that ends well,” he clipped and Gray shook his head. Once.

“I reckon you know, bein’ a guy and all, you’re her brother but you’re also obviously not blind. She’s out, way she looks, way she moves, even havin’ a quiet night, keepin’ to herself, that shit might happen. That shit happened. You were not on duty. I wasn’t around, shit coulda got worse,” Gray pointed out.

“Well, it didn’t,” Casey shot back. “And as I said, got my gratitude. Now, I’m here and, can’t say it straighter, in two seconds, you’re not.”

This was all happening right there, right with me right there.

But all I could think was…

The way I look?

The way I move?

Casey was wrong. In two seconds, Gray was not gone.

Instead, he used those two seconds to dip his head to the flowers and ask, “Those for Ivey?”

“None of your business…” pause then, “bro.”

“They’re not,” Gray whispered, his eyes locked on Casey, his arm still locked around me, my front still tight to him but he’d shifted to facing Casey so I was tucked to his side.

“What’d I say?” Casey whispered back. “None of your business.”

“Plans tonight,” Gray deduced.

Casey opened his mouth to speak but Gray looked down at me.

“You’re free for steak and me.”

My belly flip-flopped, my heart squeezed and my legs went weak.

Casey got in our space and thus in Gray’s face.

“That is not gonna fuckin’ happen,” he growled.

Gray turned his head and tipped it down the two inches he needed to stare down Casey. This gave me confirmation of his height. Casey was six foot. I was five foot eight. This placed Gray at six foot two.

See? Tall.

“Why?” Gray asked.

“Again, none of your business. Now, one last time, move along.”

I could tell by Gray’s vibe and the tenseness I felt in his body that things were deteriorating. I knew by Casey’s vibe and the look on his face that they were already gone.

I needed to wade in.

“Casey, he’s a nice guy. It’s okay.”

Casey’s eyes cut to me. “Stay out of it,” he bit off and that made me mad.

Suddenly mad and really mad.

For a lot of reasons.

A lot of reasons that had been bugging me, not just then but for a long, long time.

But just then, he was connecting with some woman, buying her flowers, throwing away money I won putting my ass on the line. Gray was right. He was off having fun and I, as usual, was not.

Casey didn’t have a lot of fun?

Casey didn’t laugh a lot?

I wasn’t shits and grins?

Well, he wasn’t either.

He was a pain in my behind.

And he had been for awhile.

If he could decide Mustang just might be where we put down roots then who was he to decide I couldn’t make a connection?

Just one.

Just one since I was twelve stinking years old.

He “connected” all the time.

Not me.

And I was not twelve anymore. I was twenty-two. I could drink legally in every state in the Union. I could drive a car. I could vote. I could join the Army.

I was an adult, darn it.

And I had been awhile.

I didn’t need my big brother looking out for me and, frankly, if we were honest about it (though, that was something Casey would never be) for the last at least five years, it had mostly been me looking out for Casey.

I turned to Gray and said firmly, “I’ll be ready at five thirty.”

The tension slid out of his body, Gray looked down at me and grinned.

With dimple.

Darn but I liked that dimple.

I smiled back.

“That’s not happening, sis,” Casey warned, his voice trembling with fury.

I looked at him. “It is.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he hissed and that made me even more mad.

“Seriously?” I asked. “Do you see that cut on Gray’s forehead, Casey? He got that for me. I put those plasters on. You were off having fun and I was in danger and Gray stepped up for me. You should be thanking him not getting in his face. He’s a nice guy. He has a lovely Grandma. She makes really good preserves. And I’m having steak with him tonight.”

Casey’s eyebrows shot to his hairline. “You met his Grandma?”

“Yes, and she makes really good preserves.”

That was when Casey’s eyes narrowed on me. “Thinkin’ there’s shit you left out this mornin’, sis.”

“You’d think right but I don’t ask, you don’t tell and I don’t ask because even when I did, you didn’t tell. My turn,” I fired back.

Casey scowled at me.

Then he whispered, “I’m not likin’ this shift, sister.”

I knew he wouldn’t.

But at that moment, standing in a pretty town square pressed up against the warm hard body of a handsome man who was a good guy who took care of his Grandma, a Grandma that, even in a wheelchair, made delicious strawberry preserves, I didn’t care.

Therefore, I made no response.

He kept scowling at me.

I held it and as I did, Gray held me.

Then Casey’s eyes cut to Gray and he demanded ridiculously (and embarrassingly), “I want her home by ten.”

Gray burst out laughing.

I rethought my rebellion hearing it and knowing I loved it.

Yes, loved it. It was love. It went down to my bones. That was to say, I loved it with not a small amount of intensity. I’d heard it twice and that was how deep his laughter had rooted into me.

Yes, definitely rethinking my rebellion.

“I wasn’t jokin’, bro,” Casey warned and Gray sobered, kind of. Mostly he chuckled while smiling and looked back at Casey.

Then he said, “You gonna be at the hotel at ten to know?”

Casey’s teeth clamped and his jaw tensed.

That meant no.

And Gray knew it.

“Right,” Gray muttered, still sounding amused.

Casey leaned even closer, rolling up on his toes and I held my breath when he got nose-to-nose with Gray.

“I think you get I’m not likin’ this, you do anything to my Ivey, you got a problem,” he whispered.

“And I think you don’t get that all men are not like you,” Gray returned on a low growl, no longer even minimally amused. “I would never do anything to Ivey or any woman they didn’t want me to do. Now back off before I do somethin’ to you Ivey won’t want me to do.”

Oh dear.

Casey held Gray’s steady stare.

Gray returned it.

I held my breath.

Then I couldn’t anymore and therefore announced, “If you two don’t stop it, I’m gonna pass out.”

Surprisingly instantly, Casey leaned away. When he did, Gray moved back taking me with him.