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She’s grown up a lot. We all do, it’s not like I expect the laws of the universe to press pause on her specifically. Her dark hair is mussed, her eyes glassy from sleep, and her lips pouty. She’s got on some ridiculous flannel shirt and soft stretchy yoga pants.

Just looking at her twists me up inside and I want to shake her. Because she’s at the cabin and she’s not fucking supposed to be.

“What are you doing?” I bark.

Her lips skew downward like she doesn’t enjoy being interrogated this way. She definitely threw me for a loop, but she made a mistake coming back into my life. Now, specifically.

And judging from the way she refuses to answer the question, the way she goes jittery underneath my fingers, there’s a lot more going on.

“Gillian, I asked you a question. And I don’t like to repeat myself.”

Her chin juts out further in outrage and defiance.

I swallow over a groan and my cock twitches in my boxers. My eye bugging goes epic wide. Oh,hell fucking no. That’s not happening.

I blame the dry spell of the last few months on my physical reaction.

Just because she’s female, and just because she's got agreat ass and a great set of tits pressed to my chest doesn’t mean I need to sport a half chub.

I know nothing about her or her sisters and that’s the way I want it. There’s no such thing as an instant family.

Ihada family once. My parents and me. Until my whoring father couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Divorce was a natural progression at that point.

I never expected Alistair to marry his side squeeze, to take her from the trailer park to our mansion, exchanging his family for another one.

I saw what it did to my mom.

“I needed to get away for a bit,” Gillian says at last. “I knew about the cabin. Your dad said we were free to use it whenever we wanted.”

“Go back to your hellhole trailer,” I urge. “You’re used to it by now.”

“I’m staying.” Gillian grows roots.

“Why?”

“Because your Dad offered. What’s mine is yours. Do you remember?”

I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Alistair and his altruistic crap.

“And you decided you didn’t need to pick up the phone and let anyone know you were coming?”

She scoffs. “Would you have answered?”

To be fair, she doesn’t have my number, and I don’t have hers. That’s the way I want it.

These crazy women and their mother… My life turned upside-down after the wedding but at least college distracted me. I had my cousin and my friends.

Who did my mother have? No one.

Gillian pulls against me, shaking like one of those tiny designer dogs who have to be carried around in a purse.

I shouldn’t come to the cabin out of principle and a deeply rooted hatred of Daddy Dearest. But I do, if only to piss him off.

Now Gillian takes it on herself to come for a reunion?

Why? What’s going on?

“No,” I admit. “I wouldn’t answer your call.”