Page 35 of My Three Mountain Men

CHAPTER16

Ryder

She needs to go. There’s no way she can stay here for another three months. I can’t deal with it.

Everywhere I went in the cabin, her scent lingered in the furniture, the sex remaining in the air as Simone, Brooks, and now Knox overtook the cabin shamelessly.

On some level, I was grateful that my cousins had found some outlet for their years of repression, but not now, in the dead of winter, when I could have no escape of my own. And Simone was a temptress.

I’d heard Knox call her that the first time they had been together, two weeks earlier, in the living room. The characterization was fitting. What made it so much worse was that Simone didn’t even know how beguiling she was. It wasn’t as if she was trying to seduce us all, but her vulnerability made it impossible to ignore.

I had to find a way to get her into town. The people in town could figure out how to get her back home once winter subsided.

I called Knox into the woodshed to discuss it.

“The snow has stopped for now,” I informed him.

“Gee, thanks, weatherman,” Knox replied caustically. “I didn’t notice.”

I glowered at him. “We might be able to snowmobile the girl into Loganville.”

The blood drained out of Knox’s face, answering my question without him speaking. It was too late. He had already grown too attached to her.

“What?”

I turned away, cringing internally. I shouldn’t have waited so long. I shouldn’t have let things get so far. But I really hadn’t had much of a choice. The snow hadn’t given us many options, and Loganville was still twelve miles out.

“We have plenty of gas,” I explained, but that wasn’t Knox’s concern in the least.

“And if it starts snowing again?” he challenged, already thinking of a litany of excuses. “Or what happens when we get there?”

I spun around to face him. “We leave her there. She’s a fully grown adult. She can find her way home.”

“You want her to just rely on the help of strangers? She doesn’t know anyone there!”

“We’re strangers to her, too,” I countered.

“She doesn’t have any of her belongings!” he continued.

I rolled my eyes, splaying my hands over the cutting board. “We can set her up with some funds to get where she needs to go.”

“She doesn’t have any of her identification!”

“We’re not her babysitters, Knox!”

“No, but the second Brooks picked her up, she became our responsibility.”

I ground my teeth, sensing that none of his arguments had anything at all to do with getting Simone home. Just the opposite. He didn’t want Simone to leave at all.

Steeling my temper, I stared at him. “Fine,” I agreed. “Then we’ll stay in Loganville with her and ensure she makes proper arrangements to get home.”

“And what if it starts snowing again? We’ll all be trapped in Loganville. Or worse, in the woods on the way back.”

I exhaled in a whoosh of breath. “We’ll keep an eye on the weather.”

“That’s notoriously unpredictable, and you know it.”

I glared at him. “Knox—”

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