Page 14 of Gather the Storm

And she definitely should have figured it out because the Daisy Hammond that had been gorgeous as a teenager — all that dark hair and the banging body that made the freckles scattered across her nose look wrong in the best way possible — was a goddamn knockout as a twenty-year-old girl.

No, not a girl. Daisy had become a woman.

Was it okay to call Daisy — Blake’s little sister — a woman? Or was that weird?

I didn’t know, but I was used to not knowing things like that. Life and all the feelings and emotions that came along with it had always been like a game everyone else was playing while keeping the rules a secret.

I just followed along as best I could.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, opening the door wider so we could file into the old house.

I went first and caught a whiff of her — roses and a hint of vanilla that made me think of cake — that went straight to my dick, which admittedly had been pretty lonely over the past five years.

A fire was blazing in the room right off the entryway but I waited for Daisy to walk past us into it because even though it seemed like the fire was a sign — a literal smoke signal, haha — the room was our intended destination, I didn’t want to assume.

Except Daisy didn’t walk past us because Jace — fucking Jace — stalked into the room like he owned the place. And to be fair to Jace, he did seem to own the place. He seemed to owneveryplace.

Always had.

Wolf and I had gotten used to his swinging dick over the years but Daisy still seemed surprised when he walked past her to the fire and turned to face her with his arms folded across his chest.

“What the fuck do you want?” he demanded.

She flinched a little and I had to force myself not to tell Jace to stop being a dick. There wasn’t any point because he was always a dick and I’d learned that people were who they were and changing them was what my dad called “a fool’s mission.”

Plus, we’d agreed to keep our distance, and Jace’s prickly exterior was the best instrument around for keeping Daisy at a distance.

She took a deep breath and walked past me and Wolf into the room with the fire.

I looked around as I followed. I’d always liked this old place. I’d liked it when Blake first showed it to us as kids — the perfect spot for tag and hide-and-seek — and I’d liked it when we were teenagers and we’d come up here to smoke and drink, removingthe old sheets from the furniture and acting like we owned the place, which Blake kind of had, I guess.

Except now I remembered that this was Daisy’s house, left to her by their mom, along with the cherry-red Mustang parked outside. Blake had been more than a little bitter about it even after Wolf had reminded him that he’d end up inheriting his dad’s money, which was way more than the old house was probably worth.

“Do you… do you want to sit down?” Daisy asked.

She looked so nervous, so fucking pretty, that I had to force myself not to go over and give her a hug.

Keep your distance, Otis. You agreed.

I cursed myself silently. I shouldn’t have agreed. Not in a million years. Because the Daisy Hammond standing in front of me was a perfect doll, the kind that needed care and protection, and I was feeling pretty damn eager to take the job.

“No,” Jace said.

Wolf sighed and rubbed his thumb against his lip, obviously frustrated with Jace, or maybe with the whole situation, or probably all of the above. “Maybe just tell us what this is about, Daisy.”

I wondered if he was having second thoughts about keeping his distance too.

She took a deep breath. “Right. First of all, thank you for coming forward about… about Blake.” She hesitated, probably because it was hard to thank the three guys who’d murdered your brother for doing you the solid of confessing to it. “You could have let me take the fall and you didn’t. I… I appreciate that.”

“We didn’t do it for you.” Jace’s voice was cold, his eyes even colder.

It was a lie. We had done it for her.Everythingwe’d done had been for her.

She licked her lips and I tried not to stare. Staring made people uncomfortable, but sometimes, so did not looking them in the eye. It was fucking exhausting trying to figure it all out so I usually erred on the side of caution and looked somewhere else, or if I had my shit together, maybe at someone’s forehead or nose.

But none of those options were easy with Daisy because her sweet pink tongue gave my perverted mind all kinds of ideas, making it impossible not to stare and just as hard not to look away.

What could I say? My cock had a mind of its own, and after five years in prison, who could blame it for wanting to be heard?

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