Page 17 of Tempting Promises
“That’s all I get?”
“Yup.”
My brother sighs. “I think the box is in the loft. Did you look up there?”
I’m going to kill him. “You knew where they were?”
“I said Ithink.”
Asher attaches the wooden ladder as I navigate my way through the mess I’ve made. Once I get there, he’s already halfway up to the loft, but he doesn’t fully go up. “Yup, they’re here.”
“I really hate you.”
“Sure you don’t.”
“I need the poles, boots, backpack,” I tell him. “And the tent. Oh, and can you get the box with all the other gear for emergencies?”
He looks down at me. “Anything else, princess?”
“No, that should be good.”
Asher tosses down all the stuff I asked for and a lot of shit I didn’t ask for, but I can’t really complain since he did find it all. Although, the asshole moved it to begin with. Once my pile is complete, he heads down and detaches the ladder.
“You’re going camping in the freezing cold?”
Camping was something that Asher and I did every year. We’d get our gear, head to the mountains, and just get lost. It was fun and my brother was always up for an adventure, until he got himself shackled.
“I am, wish you could go?”
His gaze moves toward his home, and he shakes his head. “I’m good here.”
“Pussy.”
“I get it on the regular,” Asher quips back.
“I’m happy for you, you got what? Two more weeks of celibacy coming your way?”
Asher’s face falls slightly. “Your point?”
“Just that . . . you must be awfully familiar with your hand again.”
“As are you. By the way, what was the outcome of the meeting?”
Deciding to stop our normal bickering, I fill him in on what happened with Damon Knight and how they want to come out here to see the place. However, it’s been a few weeks, and I haven’t heard shit. They said they’d be in touch for the visit, and I assumed it would’ve happened already, but I have no idea.
“I’m proud of you.”
Asher is the oldest of us, and even though there are only five years between us, he’s always been more of a father than anything else. When our father took off, he stepped in. When we had shitty stepfathers, Asher protected us.
“Thanks. I couldn’t have done any of this if it weren’t for you,” I say in a moment of honesty. “Well, all of you really.”
When Mom died, Asher inherited the farm. Instead of taking the land for himself, he immediately divided it up between each of us. I took a larger portion of the land because my siblings knew I hadplans to actually farm on it. And when I asked if they’d be willing to sell me some of their acreage, they’d said they wouldn’t be. Instead, they gifted it to me.
“You did what Grandpa would’ve wanted. He loved this land as a farm.”
“He wanted us all to raise families here. And you’re the only one doing it so far since Grady lives with Addison now.”
Asher laughs. “Let’s be real, none of us thought he’d ever come back here.”
