Page 16 of The Hardest Part

“I love you with every breath,michante.” My heart. “You know that.”

Spent and speechless, Emily could only nod against his chest.

“Say it,” he commanded, gently lifting her chin with his finger. “Tell me you feel it in your bones.”

“I do.” She wet her lips. “It’s just that sometimes…”

“I know. You need to feel my hands on you.”

And your lips. The taste of your tongue.

Not daring to say it, she closed her eyes and basked in the feeling of his fingers tracing her spine. The heat coiling between her legs. Without a coat, the November air was frosty, but in his arms, she was burning.

“I need you, too, wild one.” His dick poking at her belly, he pressed in. “We just have to wait a little while longer.”

“But it’s so hard.”

“I know it is.” Threading his fingers in her hair, Jake bent her head and kissed her crown. “It’s the hardest part.”

Another six inches of snow fell during the night. Buried in it, Billy could barely find the stakes he and Jake set out a couple of weeks ago. He walked along the icy creek, an offshoot of the stream that tumbled down the mountain, imagining the view from their back window. Children playing in the meadow. Emily’s garden in the spring.

It had to be perfect.

He and his brother weren’t just building a house here. They were creating a family with Emily—a life.

From the time Elijah Brooks and Levi Gantry laid the first cornerstone, Brookside had an unwritten tradition—a man provides a home for his wife. Back then, folks came together and built an entire town. These days, more often than not, an existing structure would be renovated for a newlywed triad to move into together.

Emily likely thought they’d make their home in one of the houses in town, as most folks did. Jake’s work was there. Their parents. The shops. School. But for a good, long while now, Billy and his brother had something else in mind.

This place.

An equal distance from the ranch, her mother’s Dutch barn, and town, the location was ideal. They’d build her a home with their own hands while bonding as brothers, and surely that would lay a solid foundation for their future. He and Jake had put a lot of thought into it.

Matthew Brooks and the town council granted their approval. They only had to meet with an architect to come up with a design, start construction, and keep their project a secret from Emily. Billy could already see the look on her face. Bringing her home here after the wedding was going to be the best surprise ever.

He kicked a rock into the creek. “Jake, get your ass over here. I just got an idea.”

“What is it?” he asked, calling out from yards away.

“C’mere, will ya?” Billy waved him over as if that might hurry him along. “You won’t be able to see what I’m sayin’ from all the way over there.”

A flash in front of his eyes, the vision came to him out of nowhere, striking him like a lightning bolt.

His sheepskin coat flapping as he went, Jake trudged through the snow. “Okay, I’m here.”

“We need to move the stakes.”

His brows pulling in, he cocked his head. “Why?”

“Because we’re gonna move the house.” Noting his brother’s flat gaze, Billy went on before he could protest. “Just a little bit. See how the creek curves right here?”

“Yeah, and?”

“Instead of putting the house alongside it, let’s build over it.”

“Uhh…”

“Hear me out. Say we put a few bedrooms and the kitchen here on the downhill side. A big ole screened porch and an outdoor fireplace…” Billy took a leap across the six-foot-wide channel, landing on his ass in the snow. “…and our room can beover here on the far side. Maybe an office for you upstairs. Then we can have a living room with enormous windows on either side spanning across the creek. What do you think?”

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