Page 14 of Taken By Storm

Kasi nodded. “Yep. Heard him roaring down the driveway around two a.m.”

He reached out and ran his thumb gently under her eye. She knew exactly what he saw there. The same dark circles that had become a permanent part of her makeup these days. She’d started referring to it as her “extreme smoky eye” look.

“So he woke you up,” he grumbled in a tone that shouldn’t sound so fucking sexy.

Kasi shrugged. “I fell right back to sleep.”

That was a lie. She’d tossed and turned, replaying her evening with Levi, then stressing out about the ever-growing pile of bills, before making a mental list of which chores needed to happen first today. There was no way she could do everything that needed to be done around here, so she’d started prioritizing the tasks, much like her mother used to do for Daddy.

“Which room is Keith’s?” Levi asked.

“Why?”

Levi raised one eyebrow. She recalled him mentioning that they’d have problems if she kept questioning everything he said and did. She couldn’t help but wonder what kind of problems he meant.

She pointed to the steps. “Top of the stairs, second room on the right, but?—”

Before Kasi could point out that her brother wouldn’t crawl his lazy ass out of bed before noon, Levi was climbing the stairs.

“What the hell?” she muttered, moving to the bottom of the stairs curiously.

She heard Levi pounding on Keith’s door, though she couldn’t make out her brother’s murmured reply. She had no trouble understanding whatLeviwas saying because he wasn’t exactly using his inside voice.

“Get out of bed,” Levi bellowed.

Keith muttered something indistinguishable.

“You either get out of that bed on your own, or I’ll drag your ass out,” Levi threatened.

More mumbling, and then footsteps.

Kasi had shuffled away from the stairs and back to the kitchen when she spotted a furious Keith, in just his boxers, coming downstairs with Levi hot on his heels.

“What the fuck, Kasi?” Keith said, the second he walked into the kitchen. Her brother had been the mildest, most gentle ofsouls before Mama passed, so it was still jarring for her to see this new, always-present angry side.

Levi, who’d followed him to the kitchen, whirled him around, putting his finger in Keith’s face. “Don’t you dare talk to your sister that way. The animals need to be tended to. Get dressed and do it.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Keith spat back.

Kasi thought perhaps she should caution Keith that his response was stupid as shit because, Jesus Christ, Levi had at least half a foot on her brother and probably fifty extra pounds—all of it sheer muscle.

Levi beat her to that warning. “You want to rethink that answer?”

Keith blinked a few times as Levi’s deadly tone penetrated, clearing away whatever lingering drowsiness was impacting her brother’s ability to think. He’d only been in bed a couple of hours, and it looked like Levi caught him right in the middle of a deep sleep.

Keith swallowed hard once, then looked away from Levi. Unfortunately, that shifting gaze landed on Kasi like he expected her to save him or something.

For one thing, she couldn’t win herownbattles with Levi, and for another—and more importantly—she didn’t want to win this one. Because she wanted Keith to do exactly what Levi was telling him to.

Before Mama’s death, the animals had always been Keith’s to care for, and he’d done so with enthusiasm, naming each of his precious chickens and bottle-feeding any baby goats whose mothers died or rejected them. Daddy used to call him Dr. Doolittle, claiming there wasn’t an animal alive that Keith couldn’t “horse whisper” into undying devotion toward him.

“Your sister has her own chores to do,” Levi continued, when neither she nor Keith spoke up. “Toomanychores. So you’regoing to take some of them on. As of today, gathering the eggs and taking care of the animals is your job. You got it?”

Keith clenched his jaw, but it was obvious he didn’t want to go up against Levi—so he turned on Kasi.

Because of course he did.

Kasi had been Keith’s whipping boy for eight months, the recipient of every single drop of rage in his system. The first time he’d lashed out had been three days after Mama’s funeral, and the utter venom he’d spewed on her had left her so numb and taken aback, she’d gone to bed and stayed there for fourteen hours. When she crawled out, she’d discovered Keith gone and Daddy sitting in the living room, staring at a picture of Mama. Nothing had been done on the farm, and that was when she realized she didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.

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