Page 133 of Rocky Mountain Home

Because they were living with Joel and Vicki, he got to spend more time with his twin than he had in the years before he left. That was a sweet enough reward to put up with the moments when he wanted to slap himself silly for his past sins.

And Dare was there. The woman was a bundle of positive energy, and every time he found himself slipping toward brooding, she would subtly, or sometimes not-so-subtly, remind him to mind his manners.

Like the time they were sitting around the bonfire in the evening, a couple more of the cousins and their partners joining the conversation.

Out of the blue Dare stood, stepping on his foot in the process before stumbling into his arms and clinging to him like a princess in need of rescuing.

“Oh, my hero,” she declared dramatically before kissing him thoroughly. Appreciative wolf whistles exploded from the rest of his family.

“Not that I’m going to complain about you kissing me, but what was that about?” he asked as they made their way hand-in-hand back to the trailer a while later. “I didn’t think you were into public displays of affection.”

She shrugged. “You were glaring at Vicki. You weren’t even aware of it, so I thought a little distraction all around might go a long way.”

Jesse cursed. “I don’t even know what I was thinking. Why would I be glaring at her?”

Dare tugged on his hand. “Old habits die hard. Do you still feel horrible inside when you look at her?”

“Guilty?” Jesse thought it through. “Yes, but it’s different now. Less intense. Honestly, every time we’re in the trailer and I feel it, I get up and clean something.”

A burst of laughter escaped her lips. “I wondered what was up with your Mr. Clean imitation.”

“You think it’s stupid?” Jesse asked.

“Nope. I think it’s a brilliant way to redirect your need for punishment into something that is good for everybody.” She offered him a sweet smirk. “I like that there is less for me to tidy.”

So daily he got up, reluctantly uncurled himself from the bundle of heat that was Dare, then headed into a full day of work followed by an evening spent doing something with her.

They visited with each of his brothers and their wives, and with Mike and Marion, but they also did more ordinary dating kinds of things, and those were the moments he’d catch himself forgetting the reason they were together was because of one hot night back in cold February.

Sitting in the movie theatre holding her hand felt right.

“Hey. Stop daydreaming and get moving,” Matt ordered, leaning on his shovel at the other end of the ditch they were digging by hand.

Jesse blinked himself back to the here and now, which was a distant field at the edge of Coleman property where they needed to fix a broken standpipe. “Shit. Sorry about that.”

Matt glanced at his watch. “Coffee break. You and me are both foggy today.”

“You skipping sleep to party?” Jesse teased.

“Colt’s teething, and Hope has a summer cold. They’re both miserable.”

A moment later they’d both climbed out of the hole, sitting on the ground with cups of coffee. Jesse popped open his lunchbox to discover Dare had snuck in a pile of brownies, and he passed one over to his brother.

“Vicki makes the best brownies.” An appreciative sound escaped Matt an instant after he bit into the chocolatey goodness. He took a sip of his coffee then gave Jesse a strange look.

“What’s that about?” Jesse demanded. “I sacrifice one of my brownies, and you make a face?”

“How’s it going, living with Joel and Vicki?”

That was a question to stop a man in his tracks. Ever cautious of Dare’s warning in the back of his brain to keep his stupidity on the down low, Jesse considered what to say. He didn’t want to flip off something nonchalant, but there was no way he could explain how earth-shatteringly monumental it was to slowly accept his mistakes and move on.

“Did you ever have something you spent a lot of time and energy on before realizing you were focusing on the wrong thing?”

A derisive snort escaped his brother.

Jesse eyed him in confusion.

“You’re asking a man who wasted years trying to make someone happy when the one woman who means everything to me was right there under my nose.” Matt leaned forward on an elbow. “Sometimes I kick myself for having been so stupid, and then Hope catches me and points out that we can’t change the past, we can only enjoy the future. So that’s what I do, every damn day.”