Page 86 of Tempting Promises
I smile and then look up at the sky. “This is one thing about Sugarloaf that I will never get tired of.”
“The stars?”
“Yeah, it’s so magical, sort of makes you remember we’re just a tiny part of this world.”
“That we are,” Rowan agrees. “Sugarloaf has that effect on us. I know Michigan felt like its own world too.”
I nestle against him, exhausted after the intense bout of sex we had once he got to my house. “Tell me about when you moved here. I know it was for Brynn after your mom died, but it couldn’t have been easy.”
Rowan’s arms tighten around me and he shifts me to his other side. “It wasn’t easy, but it also wasn’t a hard decision. Brynn was young and she needed her family. I was definitely not in any position to be her guardian, that was all Asher, but I could be her friend.”
“So you just packed up, left Michigan and school?”
“Pretty much.”
I smile, resting my head on his shoulder and seeing a shooting star fly across the dark sky. “No wonder she thinks her brothers are all amazing.”
“It’s also because we actuallyareamazing.”
I roll my eyes, even though he can’t see it. “Your mom was always so nice to me. I remember she made the best brownies in the bake sale. She’d always sell out before anyone else and it upset Mrs. Cooke so much.”
Each year she had to make a bigger batch and it always irritated the other moms because she sold out no matter what.
“She put coffee in them,” Rowan says, almost absently.
“Coffee?”
“That was her secret ingredient. Brynlee makes them for our birthdays after she found the recipe buried in a false drawer.”
I turn to look at him. “What?”
He smiles and nods. “She substituted used coffee grounds for something and it worked. She loved to bake. I remember that as a kid.”
“What was your childhood like?” I ask, snuggling back in.
Rowan had the picturesque family. He and his brothers were all close in age and they had a little sister to dote on. I would’ve given anything to have had the life he did. I was an orphan at six, ripped away from my life in a city I loved, and stuck out in cow country with Aurora who was angry at the world.
But I had my gran and pop. They were what made all of it okay. Her kind words and his warm hugs always made me feel better.
Rowan sighs heavily. “It was nothing like you’re probably imagining.”
“How so?”
“For one, my father was a piece of shit. He took off after I was born, and after that, my mother was...well, a mess is a kind way of saying it.”
“You’re right,” I tell him. “I was definitely not picturing that. How was your mom a mess?”
I try to remember something about her as a person, but I really just remember the way she was always there for Brynn.
“For one, she got married three times in three years.”
I sit up, turning to look at him at that news. “Three in three years? How is that possible?”
He laughs once. “She got married a week after her divorce was final to my father, divorced him a month later because she met someone else, married him, found out he was a donkey’s ass, left him two months later. I guess that one was at least double the other. Then, she met husband number three and stayed with him for about six months until she caught him cheating and that was the end of that one.”
“Wow.”
“It gets better, then she met Howie, who is Brynlee’s father. Howie was a piece of shit that I almost killed one night.”
