Page 3 of Rescued By the Ranger

A silver Lexus sits perfectly parked in the driveway.

Probably Shane’s new ride. The lawyer always has to have the best of the best. Spoiled.

I do adore his two little girls though. They make my pompous brother almost tolerable. It’s not the fact that he’s gay. It’s that he’s so fuckin’ perfect. The dashing and perfect family. The perfect partner who adores him. The perfect job that pays for his every wish. The perfect four-bedroom house. The perfect Lexus, apparently.

Plus, I’m still a little irked that he never came out to me. But I suppose I never told him I was heterosexual either. Fairisfair and honestly, I kinda knew. He had a poster of Justin Timberlake on his wall. He said it was because of Timberlake’s music… I suspected otherwise.

I still love Shane just the same and he makes it a point to tell me that he loves me more often than I’m comfortable with.

Well, fuck…

They’re probably here to surprise me. What the fuck is he thinking? He knows I hate surprises.

My heart taps my chest wall. It’s a little wonky after my service and one of the reasons why I’m out of the military.

I start to drive forward when I see a deliciously curvy, forest nymph come from the back side of the house, her hand wrapped around the hand of a little girl older than a toddler, but maybe not quite school age. I’d guess around Kyla and Maya’s ages, and they’ll enter kindergarten next year.

I bet they’re lost.

But with this snow coming down, I can’t imagine they can go anywhere.

I’m not going to worry. I didn’t put them here. I didn’t get them into this mess. I’m not the one… trespassing. And the rules mean something. The rules are important. People get hurt when the rules are broken.

I park and her eyes meet mine when I step out.

“Hello?” she says as a question. Her voice is more direct than I imagined.

“Hello.” I walk toward her and every step seems I’m stuck in some sort of tractor beam.

“Honey, get in the vehicle and wait for me.” She opens the door and the little girl hops back in. The car beeps as the woman locks the locks.

Do I look like untrustworthy? Maybe…

The look in the woman’s eyes is sheer terror and a part of me sees myself in that vision.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

“No. You can’t. But I need you to leave the premises.”

“I have permission to be here.”

“No, you don’t. My family owns this place and I’d know if someone?—”

“Shane told me I could be here.” She crosses her arms with attitude, making the valley between her breasts more prominent. Before it was distracting, now it’s plain annoyingly attractive and alluring.

“Well, Shane doesn’t rule everything.”

Her head tips. “You’re Rhodes.”

I stumble back a step. “How’d you know that?”

“Shane’s talked about you.”

Oh shit…

My heart beats fast. Shane doesn’t know everything about me, but the shit he does know isn’t flattering.

I was discharged from the Army, honorably. But twenty years in took a toll on me. I’m not the same man I was going in, as the one who came out.

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