Landon made a noise and she saw him watching them with wide-eyed wonder.

“Hey, buddy, how’s the ear? Better?”

He blinked at Brandt and refocused on the TV.

Brandt laughed. “Thrown over by a cartoon bear. I’m gonna hit the shower.”

Less than a minute later the water kicked on.

Landon pointed at the TV and bounced on the couch cushions when Tigger appeared on the screen.

Animation and cartoons were new to him, if his total absorption in them was an indication. Jessie doubted Landon’s mother used the TV as a babysitter.

Once she heard the bathroom door open, she headed down the hallway, inhaling the steam that held hints of Irish Spring soap and lime shaving cream.

She stopped in the doorway to her bedroom. Ooh. Naked Brandt. The man had such a hard-toned body. All ropy, bulging muscles and pure masculinity. Virility. Luke had been built more rangy than bulky and she’d never appreciated the differences in the male form as much as she did right then.

“Getting an eyeful, are you?”

She let her gaze drop to his groin. “Definitely got more than a mouthful going on there, Brandt.”

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“Christ, Jessie,” he sputtered, “that’s—”

“A great idea?” she supplied. “Or shocking?”

“Both, actually. And if Landon wasn’t…” He made a growling noise in his throat. “We’ll finish this later.”

“Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.” She watched Brandt slip on a pair of navy colored boxer briefs. Then a pair of faded Wranglers. “Last weekend you took Landon back to your place. Are you sticking around this weekend now that things have changed?”

Brandt didn’t miss a beat buttoning his flannel shirt. “Do you want us to stay?”

“Yes. I can’t imagine spending the weekend by myself.”

Then he was in her face, kissing her almost before she finished the sentence.

She heard a thump in the living room. She broke the liplock to go check on Landon, and as she turned around, the little wild man smacked into her knees. “You afraid we’re having fun without you or something?”

He tried to hoist himself up on the bed. Soon as she set him on the mattress, he started jumping in his best Tigger imitation.

“You little monkey. Where’d you learn—” Jessie’s head whipped to Brandt when he snickered. “You let him jump on the bed?”

“All kids jump on the bed. Besides, I was there the whole time.”

“What happens if you’re not there? What happens if he sneaks into a bedroom and starts jumping while you’re doing something else? What if he flies off the bed and breaks his neck?”

Brandt snagged Landon around the waist and propped him on his hip, much to Landon’s displeasure.

“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.

Giggles?

What the hell?

He poked his head in the bathroom door and saw Tell, on his knees in front of the tub, and Landon—

with Dalton’s help—was spraying Tell in the face with the hand-held shower sprayer. Tell, being even keeled Tell, just let them do it and laughed right along with them.




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