Page 11 of My Three Mountain Men

Brook slammed a loaf of bread onto the counter. “Is that a joke?”

I rolled my eyes. “I mean get her out of here, not kill her, Mr. Dramatic.”

Brooks relaxed, but barely, and returned to making a sandwich for the princess.

“Yeah?” Ryder asked sarcastically. “How do you propose we do that?”

Both my cousins looked at me expectantly, and I balked, realizing they were waiting for actual suggestions. “I don’t know!” I replied defensively. “But she can’t stay!”

I stared at Ryder, waiting for him to agree with me, but to my dismay, the oldest of us didn’t respond with the affirmation I was expecting.

“Ryder!” I demanded.

He looked at me. “What?”

“You agree, don’t you?”

“Of course I agree,” he sighed. “But what do you propose we do with her? You know as well as I do that no one is going anywhere for at least another two months, maybe longer. She couldn’t have picked a worse time to show up.”

“Exactly!” I insisted, rising from the stool to pace the spacious kitchen. Brooks groaned, as if my response was annoying him. “What? You think this is a coincidence?”

“I think you’re paranoid,” Brooks replied honestly, slapping mustard onto the bread and sealing the pieces together before cutting them into diagonal triangles.

“Paranoid? Really?”

Brooks put the plate down and met my stare evenly. “You didn’t see her when I found her. She was in bad shape, Knox. Someone left her there to die,” he said bluntly. “And she should have died. There was no reason for anyone to have found her—probably ever. She was strategically placed in a location where she would have just been eaten by wildlife.”

I shuddered at the brutality of what he was saying, my stubbornness weaning slightly.

“She didn’t stage this,” Brooks went on. “This isn’t some publicity stunt.”

“I agree,” Ryder conceded.

Brooks returned to his meal preparation, and I sank back to my seat, rebuked by the facts before me.

“So what… we just let her stay here?”

“We don’t have a choice, Knox,” Brooks growled, picking up the tray to make his way back toward the stairs. “There’s no way to get her out of here.”

He disappeared toward the second floor before I could respond, my jaw twitching indignantly as I flipped my attention back toward Ryder.

“Don’t start, Knox,” Ryder told me warningly.

“We ration our supplies for the three of us,” I complained. “Like we do every winter. We can’t host an extra body.”

“We’ll make do,” Ryder muttered, but his face shadowed more than usual.

He’s already considered that,I realized, a smidgen of guilt shooting through me. Knowing Ryder, he’d considered every possible catastrophic outcome of having the girl here already.

“Nothing good is going to come of this,” I added.

Ryder slapped his hands onto the granite countertop and glared at me.

“Okay, and?” he challenged me.

I drew my head back. “And what?”

“Exactly. What else are we supposed to do? Throw her out in the snow and tell her to fend for herself? Contact the town and inform them, see if we can somehow get rescue services out here and out ourselves in the process? What would you like to do, Knox? Please tell me. I’m all ears.”

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