Page 35 of Hero for the Holidays

And she knew she could have had it the whole time. She did.

“Thank you.”

Because she wasn’t going to turn it down now that she had it.

And as they rallied around her, calling their husbands and letting them know they wouldn’t be home, she felt a piece of herself that had been broken for a long, long time knit itself back together.

CHAPTER SEVEN

LANDRYGOTUPEARLYand made himself some coffee. Then he made a second cup of coffee and decided to do something heneverdid.

Venture into enemy territory.

He was going to Sullivan’s Point, without making an announcement. He was taking his life into his hands.

But Fia wasn’t just an ex-girlfriend anymore. She wasn’t even his enemy.

She was hisco-parent. And he figured it was time for them to come up with a real strategy.

He was going to bring Lila over in the afternoon when she finished her schoolwork, and before that, Fia and himself would probably benefit from a meeting. Asummit. Landry King liked a plan. He had a plan for how he was going to handle all of this with Lila, and it hadn’t gone smoothly.

So now he was on plan B. And this one was going to have to involve Fia, rather than cutting her out. He could acknowledge that his part in that had been a little shady.

And so he would come bearing coffee.

He went to Sullivan’s Point as often as anybody, because the lake was there, and they had lots of different events down at the lake. Plus it was where they had their town hall meetings. It had become a pretty normal thing. But even so, he was always aware that he was a stranger in a strange land.

That he was not a single Sullivan’s favorite person. And hell, they hadn’t even knownwhy.

Just that Fia wasn’t a fan. So neither were any of them.

What the Sullivan parents lacked in loyalty, their daughters made up for, and then some.

Well, everyone was going to have to get accustomed to his face.

The one place he didn’t go habitually was the farmhouse. But then, he never had. It wasn’t like they’d had the kind of relationship where you went home and met the parents. No. It was more stopping somewhere in the woods for a blow job in the back of his truck and then continuing on to meet people at the lake and pretend that wasn’t what had just happened. Of course, he was an equal opportunity kind of man, and he’d spent just as much time with his face between her thighs as she’d spent on him.

She’d always been pretty. Now that she was a woman, though, if he looked at her too long he felt a kind of deep ache that permeated his whole being. Took over his chest. Took over his whole body.

He didn’t care for it.

He had dismissed it as anger for all of these years. But the truth was, he knew.

He had never stopped wanting her. He had wanted her while she stood in front of him and broke his heart all those years ago.

It didn’t matter if there were other women or a huge space of time, it didn’t change the facts. He had never felt for anyone else what he felt for her.

Justice and Denver were absolute whores. They screwed around with every pretty woman who wanted them. At a certain point Landry had figured he should test that lifestyle out. It hadn’t lasted long. It just hadn’t...excited him. He felt like he’d peaked at sixteen. And maybe it was the phenomenon of never being able to forget your first. But sex had never felt so sharp or dangerous, brilliant or mind-blowing in the years since.

He was closer to living like a monk now than being like any of his brothers.

The problem was, sometimes he looked at Fia, and he felt more just looking at her than he did when he was actually inside another woman.

Not the best thing to think of as he pulled up to the farmhouse, and grabbed both cups of coffee, then headed up the stairs.

He needed to get himself together.

He rolled up and knocked on the door. The place was so bright now. Impossibly feminine. There were ostentatious lanterns hanging from the weeping willow out front. A table and chairs sat out there, all mismatched and pretty.

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