Page 58 of Christmas with Three Cowboys

“You did,” I say.

“Then put it out of your mind,” he replies. “Whatever happens next, we’re going to face it together. There’s no way in hell I’m going to let some fucking cartel make your life any harder thanit’s already been. And the next time I see Jake Miller, I will pound him into a pile of mush.”

Colton clears his throat. “We might need him alive. Or maybe you can pound a confession out of him first.”

“As long as I get to pound him,” Ethan grumbles.

I don’t know what kind of plan it’s supposed to be, and I certainly don’t know what my odds are against the Esparza cartel at this point. There’s a lot I don’t know in the short term, let alone as far as next year. I do know there’s a child growing in my womb, and one of these incredible men is the father. I know I should tell them about this sooner rather than later.

But the unknown, the fear…

They take up too much space in my head, hijacking my decision-making process. Today, I choose to take another sip of my cinnamon tea and devour another cookie as I admire my present.

Outside, the snow is so high it nearly reaches the windows.

“Somebody’s going to have to shovel all of that,” I mutter.

Colton follows my gaze and smiles. “Yeah, Kyle and Jason are not going to be too happy about it.”

“That’s mean,” I giggle. “We should at least help.”

“We’re going to handle breakfast,” Mitch suggests. “They’ll handle the snow shoveling.”

“Well, hold on, if you’re handling breakfast, what will I do? Pretty sure you hired me for that,” I reply.

Colton shrugs. “You can assist us if you want. Today is Christmas Day. It’s your day off.”

Of course. Once again proving how kind and generous they are. It only makes me fall harder for them. I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help it.

18

Colton

“There’s two ways we can go about this,” Mitch says.

We’re three days away from New Year’s Eve, and while the blizzard has stopped, most of our work revolves around keeping security tight on the ranch while shoveling snow into piles along the more traveled routes.

“About what?” I ask. I’ve been so lost in thought regarding Melissa that I may have tuned out of the current conversation.

“About Jake Miller,” Mitch replies.

Ethan snarls. “I could just handle it.”

“We both know that’s not an option,” I tell my twin. “Just as we know you left that version of yourself back in Bosnia.”

“Well, he’s not that far off from what I was going to suggest,” Mitch says, half-smiling as he shovels another pile of snow out of the way. “Option number one is we take this to the sheriff’s office. We exhaust every possible legal channel before anything else. If the Esparza cartel is operating in the region, the sheriff will want to know about it.”

“Kavanaugh might want to know about it, but I doubt he can actually do something about it, especially in the middle of a rabid Nebraskan winter,” Ethan says.

I agree with Mitch. “He needs to know what’s going on in his county.”

“Should the first option fail, however, option two is that we use our resources, our people, our network, and put together a strategy to get those assholes in a RICO bust.”

Ethan gives him a hard look. “You’re giving us solutions for the cartel but not for Jake fucking Miller. He’s going to keep hounding Melissa for that money. I roughed him up a bit, but I doubt it was much of a deterrent, not for his desperate ass.”

“If the cartel falls, they’ll take Jake down with them,” Mitch says.

About fifty yardseast of our position, the northern gates of our ranch rise proudly from the snow, their steel pillars glistening under the sharp-toothed sun. The skies are clear, and there’s plenty of sunlight to enjoy, though the snow is a blinding white.

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