The Triple Threat (Love In Dayton Valley Book 1) Read online

  “Not just his parties,” Bronte replied. “His aunts are pretty wild too. And as for that hot piece of ass dad of his.”

  I shook my head and gave my best friend a look that said I’d labelled her as sick. Jefferson Delaney was indeed a good-looking man, but the thought of Bronte riding him while wearing her favorite cowboy boots was not an image I relished. He was forty-eight and literally old enough to be her father; he was our parents’ best friend for God’s sake. Recently though, Bronte had insisted on telling me her fantasies whenever we bumped into him, ergo she wanted to ride him while wearing her favorite cowboy boots.

  “You do know I caught him in a store cupboard at the hospital fucking Miss. Watkins from behind. I mean do you want to go where our most hated teacher from high school has been?”

  Bronte thought about it for a few seconds and then shrugged as she took a swig of her beer. “Probably not, but it’s great material for when I’m feeling horny.”

  She smiled and tapped her temple. I couldn’t help but laugh. She was crazy but I loved her like a sister – shit, I’d swap her for my brother as a sibling anytime, he was such a dick.

  “Just one question.”

  “Yeah,” I replied.

  “How come Miss. Watkins was being fucked in a hospital store cupboard?”

  “She was in having a tonsillectomy.”

  “Ah okay,” Bronte said with a nod as she looked out over the busy bar. “That’ll explain why she wasn’t sucking his dick, because I’ve got to tell you, Ellie if it were me, I’d be all over that. I bet he’s built and real smooth.”

  As she grabbed her crotch and thrust her hips, I almost spat my beer out.

  “You’re disgusting,” I groaned and wiped the alcohol from my chin, unable to stop the smile from breaking free.

  “Yeah but you love me. Okay,” she sighed, “tell me how hot Hunter looks tonight and how does he smell? Woodsy and sexy?”

  “None of the above.” I turned my back to her and took a sneaky look over at the pool table where Dusty and Jimmy were now firmly wrapped around the two girls.

  “Whatever,” she scoffed. “Like I believe that you didn’t get a lady boner when you were over there messing with him.”

  “I have no idea where you get this idea from that I think Hunter Delaney is hot. I don’t even like him.”

  Bronte’s eyes went as wide as saucers as she let out a loud burst of laughter. “Oh, Ellie honey, you really are dumb if you think I believe that. Anyway, what did you say to him and your brother to make them look like you’d pissed in their porridge?”

  I grinned and pushed my shoulders back with pride. “Told them the two girls at the pool table had been with Pauly Jansen and probably caught his STI.”

  “No shit. Who told you that and who are they?”

  I chewed on my bottom lip for a second as I studied my brother and his best friend. They had their backs to me, their heads close together as they laughed and joked, occasionally looking over at the pool table.

  “Well?” Bronte urged.

  “No one told me. I heard they’re tourists from Portland passing through.”

  Bronte chinked her bottle with mine, winked at me and then laughed her cute little ass off.

  Hunter

  “Oh, Hunter honey,” my aunt Janice-Ann called in that sweet voice of hers that I knew meant trouble. “We need you.”

  With one foot on the bottom stair, I let my head drop back and looked up to the huge vaulted ceiling.

  “What is it Auntie J?” I called, muttering a couple of fucks under my breath.

  “You’ll see,” Lynn-Ann her identical twin sister added.

  “Shit.” When they were both together there was no getting away from them. They were like a pair of Black Widow spiders waiting to pounce. “Coming.”

  I strode across the hall to the den where they usually set up camp for the day, wondering what crap they were going to get me to do for them now; move some furniture around maybe, do some gardening for them, or more than likely run into town and get them something or other that would be highly embarrassing. Last week’s errand had been for hemorrhoid cream, for their eyes and not their asses, apparently.

  I loved my pop’s eldest sisters I truly did, but they were each as crazy as bed bugs. The fact they were identical twins only added to the craziness, they even dressed exactly the same—more often than not like they lived in the 1940’s. You see their favorite film was The Notebook and they just loved how Ali dressed. What they failed to understand was that they were almost sixty-five and Rachel McAdams had only been twenty-five when she played the part. They couldn’t quite pull it off. That being said, they didn’t give a shit and it wasn’t unusual to see them at church wearing pill box hats, faux leopard print swing coats and satin gloves.

  The rumor in the family was that they weren’t actually my grandpa’s kids, but that Grandma had them out of wedlock when she was only sixteen years of age, which was why there was a twelve-year gap between them and my uncle Miller. Then came my pop followed three years later by my Aunt Sherilyn. Pop said no one ever dared ask Grandma though and that Grandpa doted on them much more than the rest of his kids, so they never ever found out if it was true or not. They sure were different to the rest of the Delaney clan though, so I thought it was probably gospel. The crazy old sweets now lived with me and Pop.

  A few years back they lost all the money that Grandpa had left them to a fucking crooked real estate guy. He’d persuaded them to invest in some big housing complex that didn’t actually exist. They were devastated mentally and financially, so Uncle Miller offered to take them in. I think he felt it was his duty as the next oldest child, plus he had a huge six- bedroom house on a horse ranch over in New Mexico which he ran with my cousins, Turner, Mackenzie and Anderson. Thing was, my pop had always been the twins’ favorite, so when Mom passed away of a heart attack at just thirty-nine, the sisters procrastinated no further about New Mexico. They told Pop they were moving in to look after us. Truth be told I think Uncle Miller and his wife, my aunt Debra, heaved a sigh of relief, but at least they had them to stay for three weeks every summer. As for Aunt Sherilyn, well she and Uncle Brad moved to Australia a little over three years ago with their twelve and ten-year-old girls Aurelia and Aurora. That meant for forty-nine weeks of the year Pop and I were the ones who had to cope with the crazy, which was why I wasn’t particularly surprised to see Pop in the den holding his arms out to his sides and being measured by Lynn-Ann.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, forcing a smile and acting like I didn’t know that we were being measured for Christmas sweaters, just like they did every year exactly a month before Thanksgiving.

  “It’s a surprise,” Janice-Ann chimed. “We can’t tell, can we, Lynn-Ann?”

  “No, we can’t, you’ll have to wait and see.”

  I looked over at Pop as he smiled down at his sisters as if they’d hung him the damn moon. He really did indulge them too much at times.

  “You’re going to love it.” Janice-Ann clapped her hands together.

  I doubted it very much. Each year was worse than the last and seeing as last year’s sweater had displayed a naked Santa except for his hat, dread rushed up to me and slapped me across the face. Pop and I had laughed at the time, but when Santa’s penis was all we could see when we looked at each other, it kind of spoiled our appetite for pigs in blankets when dinner was served.

  “Arms out.”

  I held my arms to the sides and smiled at my aunt as she began to measure and then write down the numbers down in a notepad.

  “When you going to get yourself a nice young girl, honey?” Lynn-Ann asked as she held the tape against Pop’s arm.

  “You talking to me or Pop, Auntie L?’

  She giggled and smacked at my pop’s arm indicating for him to lower it. “You Hunter, we all know he’s never going to get another girl to take his heart like your momma did.”

  “There was that nice girl, Kitty,” Auntie J offered. “You
were real smitten with her.”

  Pop sighed. “I was fifteen and she moved to Florida with her folks. Broke my heart though, gotta be said.”

  “That’s not the point,” Auntie J replied as she wrote down one of my measurements. “The point is all the girls you’ve met recently are far from nice.”

  “Hey, what about Wendy?” Pop looked affronted. “She made you a chocolate cake.”

  “Hmm which tasted like she’d scraped it from the cow shed,” Lynn-Ann muttered.

  “I didn’t like hearing her making all that noise either. We couldn’t get to sleep could we, Lynnie?”

  “No, Janice, we could not.” She poked Pop in the chest. “I have no notion of what you were doing to that girl, Jefferson, but whatever it was she was felt God could help her in some way.”

  Pop’s face drained of color as he looked down at his sister as she wrapped the tape measure around his waist. I grinned at Auntie J who was giggling quietly to herself.

  “She was better than the other girl though,” Auntie L announced.

  “Which one?” Pop asked gruffly, dragging a hand through his silver hair that was swept back like he was some damn hipster popstar—the good-looking bastard.

  “Now, what was her name?” she mused. “You know Hunter, the one with the…” She rolled her hands in front of her chest to indicate what I assumed was big boobs.

  “Oh, Carrie,” Pop said with a sly grin. “What was wrong with her? She never even stayed the night.”

  “She didn’t need to.” Auntie J moved around to my back, stretching her tape. “She got what she needed in the barn.”

  “How the fu-hell do you know that?” Pop’s beard quivered as he glanced between his two sisters, looking a little afraid.

  “They know everything, Pop.”

  “He’s right, we do but if you don’t want us to know you’re servicing your lady friend like a bull serves a cow, then shut the damn barn door.”

  “Reverend Roberts was here for afternoon tea,” Auntie J explained to me. “And when he heard her shouting for Jesus, the Lord Above and Mother Mary he asked us if we had someone who needed guidance in our midst.”

  I bust out a laugh and leaned over to slap Pop’s back. “All three of the almighty’s, Pop, that’s some going.”

  “Shit, you never told me the Reverend was here, I wouldn’t have taken the opportunity if I’d known.”

  To be fair to him, Jefferson Maxwell Delaney did look a little upset, even if it proved him to be a damn stud. Pop was a legend and I hoped I was like him when I reached forty-eight.

  “Didn’t think we needed to tell you. You were supposed to be watching the bulls sire the cows!” Auntie J replied. “Not siring your own heifer.”

  I roared with laughter as Pop’s eyes went huge.

  “Janice-Ann,” he scolded. “Watch that dirty little mouth of yours.”

  “Well you watch where you pull your Johnson out of your pants in future, Jefferson, and I’ll repeat, shut the damn barn door next time.”

  “Yes,” Auntie L added. “Apart from anything else I do not want to see your little peach. When you were five years old was one thing, but not now it’s a little hairier, and a lot less pert. Now stand still so I can measure your girth.”

  As she pulled the measure around Pop’s waist, the laughter built from deep within my gut and I started to shake.

  “You stand still too,” Auntie J said with a wink. “I need to see if you’ve grown since last year.”

  She had all our measurements from every year in the same notebook, so she didn’t really need to bother, unless I’d been working my muscles harder and eaten more. I knew I hadn’t because the last time my measurements had been any different, I’d been nineteen. It was the year I’d had a growth spurt and I was pretty much as tall and muscular as Pop through helping out with the cows. It had also been the year Mom had passed away. She’d only been gone a couple of months when it came time to measure us and by then the twins had moved in. All I’d wanted to do was go to my room and not come out until Thanksgiving and Christmas were done. That year, as Lynn-Ann measured Pop and Janice-Ann measured me, as was tradition, I watched Pop watch them. We both knew how excited they were and how hard they were trying to make things better for us, so I stood there and held in the tears and the anger that my mom wasn’t there. She wasn’t going to watch the usual fussing that went on and to bring us all hot chocolate when they’d finished, but I smiled at my aunts and told them I couldn’t wait for my surprise. When I went to bed that night, I heard Pop cry and beg for Mom to come back to him. It was then that I became determined to enjoy my life and cherish all those I loved—which was why, right now, when Janice-Ann dropped her knitting bag on the floor, I didn’t flinch or say a word when I spotted a picture of a sweater with two penguins having sex.

  “You okay to check the herd,” Pop asked as he yawned and stretched his arms over his head, cracking his spine, after dinner.

  I nodded, more than happy to oblige. He looked tired and I actually loved the stillness and quiet of the cooler night air when I did my last checks of the day. My aunts always went to bed fairly early as they liked to get up with us at five-thirty and make us breakfast, so last thing at night was pretty much my only quiet time. I was more than happy to do the last checks for Pop.

  We didn’t have a huge herd – just ten sires and forty-five cows, but presently we also had twenty calves, a mixture of bulls and cows, which were almost ready to go to sale. Seeing as Beefmaster, our breed, were good for milk and beef they were pretty valuable. It wasn’t unknown for rustlers to decide they wanted a slice of the action. That was why we housed our herd every night. Our land wasn’t huge, but big enough that we needed horses to get around which meant plenty of places for rustlers to hide out and take our stock. Experience had also made Pop extra vigilant; when he was kid pretty much the whole of Grandpa’s herd had been taken one time.

  “How come you’re so tired anyway?” I asked as I got up from the table.

  Pop gave me a knowing look.

  “Shit, Pop, do you really have to act like you’re sixteen and just discovered your dick?”

  I grimaced and picked up the plates to take to the kitchen.

  “Hey, I’m in my prime. I have needs. You’re mom and I—”

  “Nope!” I exclaimed. “I do not want to know what you and Mom got up to.”

  Pop’s eyes shone, and even though he still had a smile on his face I knew happiness was the last thing he felt. Emotion would be stuck like a huge, brittle ball of whicker in his throat. I knew this because it’s how I felt every time I thought of my beautiful momma who had a heart disease that was discovered just before her and Pop married. The doctors advised her not to have a baby, but Pop said she was stubborn and determined. Apparently, they both cried when I arrived, weighing just over 9 pounds and screaming like a banshee. That was also why I was an only child. The way my aunts tell it is that Pop put his foot down when Mom wanted another baby and refused to go near her until he’d been and had a vasectomy. Mom was so mad she didn’t speak to him for three weeks, but Pop eventually used his charm to bring her around and by the sounds of the stories I’d heard earlier, it must have been a come to Jesus and God moment for my mom.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” Pop asked tentatively which roused me from my thoughts. “That I see women.”

  “God no.” Why would he even think that? He’d mourned his wife for four years when he was still a fairly young man, now he deserved some happy times. I remained grateful I didn’t have to hear them too often.

  “It’s just no one will ever come close to how I felt about her, you know that, right?”

  As I passed by his chair, I slapped a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, Pop, I do know.”

  “I do have a favor though,” he called after me as I walked through to the kitchen.

  “Yeah, what?” I put the dishes on the counter and went to stand in the doorway that joined the kitchen to the dining room.

 
; “Jim and Darcy Jackson have invited us over for dinner tomorrow night, with Henry and Melinda.”

  “Who, me and you?”

  “No, you idiot. Me and Jojo, the lady I’m seeing. I was wondering if you’d drive us over there so that I can kick back and have a drink. I don’t want to be worrying whether Sheriff Bennion or one of his goons is lurking in the hedgerows trying to catch someone out.”

  I groaned inwardly. I knew it would take me almost two hours to do a round trip out to the Jackson’s place, but he was my dad and he’d done enough for me in the past.

  “Yeah sure, no problem. Just let me know what time.”

  “Thanks, son,” he said and got up from his chair. “I’m gonna go up, don’t forget to lock up when you come back in.”

  “Will do. Night, Pop.”

  “Night son, love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  I waited to hear his tread on the stairs and smiled thinking about the conversation we’d had earlier with my two aunts. As much as I missed Mom and knew that he did too, I didn’t want him to be lonely—yeah, he had a few hook-ups, but not one of the women seemed to have given him what he needed. I was worried that my mom was the only woman who would ever do that for him. That thought pulled me up short. They were married with me by the time that they were my age, yet I’d never met anyone I was remotely interested in settling down with. What if I was like Pop at forty-eight but had never experienced what he had with Mom? It was a sobering fucking thought as I remembered them laughing and joking in this very kitchen and Pop bending Mom backward over the table to kiss the breath out of her lungs.

  Could I even imagine myself doing that; share my life, this home with one woman for the rest of my life?

  I thought about it and looked through the window into the dark, and when the face of Ellie Maples popped into my head, I dropped one of Mom’s favorite plates.

  Ellie

  I looked in the rear-view mirror at my folks sitting on the backseat of my 1982 Oldsmobile Omega. Okay so it was damn ugly and the color of baby poop, but it was reliable, and my parents were currently making out on the large back seat.