Page 42 of Smokin’ Situation (Masked Men of Sage Springs #3)

Tristan

Hurrying down the wooden steps, I rounded the corner for the front door, my chest slamming into my cousin’s shoulder.

“Dude, where’s the fire?” he chuckled, grasping me by the shoulders.

Footsteps thundered down the stairs behind me, and I braced for the impact, but Jay skirted around us, flinging the front door open.

“Fuck, did she leave?” he asked, looking back at our cousin expectantly.

Reid glanced between the two of us, a hesitant smile pulling at his lips. “You two gonna play nice now?”

“Where did Annie go?” he asked again, practically bouncing in place. If I wasn’t still irritated by the way he’d talked to and about her earlier, I might have found it comical. The dude was almost as hyper as his golden retriever, Jameson, sometimes.

“Didn’t answer my question, Jay,” Reid drawled, and I shook my head, pulling out my phone before I remembered she still didn’t have a replacement phone. A frown formed as I tried to think about where she would go.

“Yeah, yeah. He screwed my—” his voice cut off abruptly at the dark look I aimed in his direction. She might not be mine, but she sure as hell wasn’t his.

“If he stops talking about women like property, we’re good. ”

“I’m sorry. We’re good,” he replied, gesturing toward me impatiently. “You gonna just stand there, asshat, or are you going to go after her?”

Reid crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes at me. “I take it you’re planning to go find your girl?”

“I…”

Would she even want me to? I suddenly wasn’t convinced.

Maybe I’d just been romanticizing our time together.

Now that we’d come out of our forced proximity and the adrenaline had worn off, maybe being involved with me would be too much.

I couldn’t control who I was related to, but I could see how this situation would feel impossible for her.

She just didn’t stick around long enough for me to tell her I didn’t care that she’d been involved with him.

“Hazel isn’t exactly happy with either of your behavior,” he said, eyes still narrowed.

“Where did your girlfriend take her?” Jay asked, crossing his arms and staring right back at Reid.

“Not sure I should tell either of you, because that girl has been through enough and doesn’t need more of your competitive bullshit.”

“Did Hazel take your balls with her?” Jay asked, stepping forward.

I tried not to laugh at the way our cousin raised an eyebrow. Jay had apparently decided to poke yet another bear today.

“What is your fucking problem?” Reid asked, stepping forward and placing the back of his hand on Jay’s forehead.

“Nope, no fever. So why exactly are you coming for everyone’s throat today?

And you better not make some joke about needing to get laid, cause I won’t hold Tristan back this time if you do. ”

“I’m just…” he sighed, deflating a little. “I need something to distract me right now, and since I thought I’d be able to come home and blow off some—”

“Nope,” I cut him off, shaking my head. “Not going down that path again. ”

“Fine. You want to know what’s wrong? I just had to literally get down on my knees and beg the woman I thought I was going to marry someday to come work with me, and she laughed in my face. Again . She laughed in my face again for the second time in as many months.”

My eyes widened, and I met Reid’s gaze. There was only one woman he’d ever been in a serious relationship with. While I knew she was a chef, I also never thought Jay would ever talk to her—or about her—again after his meltdown when he heard she’d gotten married abroad six years ago.

“So, she said no?” I asked, unsure how the topic swung so wildly away from what’d happened with Rhey earlier, but also kind of invested in the answer to this question. If he wasn’t fixated on his former friend with benefits, then maybe he’d be okay with her being something more than that to me.

He shook his head, pacing by the front door. “No. She said yes, after she stopped laughing at me. But then she started again right after she let her feral kid shoot me in the face with a water gun.”

“And she’s moving here to help you open the restaurant?” Reid asked cautiously.

“That’s the plan. There was a unit available in my building, so I put down the security deposit yesterday when I got back to town.” Jay sounded like he was annoyed, but he almost seemed strangely excited by the fact his ex was going to be living close by.

“Mack is going to live in the same building as you—with a kid? Are you going to be able to handle that?” I asked, knowing part of the reason he acted like he did was because of her.

And that while he’d been devastated by her abrupt departure to a study abroad program shortly after he’d confessed he wanted to drop out of culinary school, it was her getting married to one of her instructors and having a baby right away that’d really done him in.

“Yeah, she’s in a two bedroom with Hardy. He starts kindergarten in the fall. So, she’s moving in soon.”

“I thought you weren’t breaking ground until next spring?” Reid asked. He’d been helping Jayden out at the distillery when he needed it. Now that I was healed, he promised to get me up to speed on how much his operation had expanded, but it sounded like he was going to have his hands full.

“I’m not. But she wants to be involved when my architect buddy comes in to draft the construction plans. Apparently, she doesn’t trust me to know how to put together a commercial kitchen properly.”

Reid laughed at Jay’s irritation, but I could see where Mack was coming from.

When Jay was younger, he had the tendency to follow the thrill, and when culinary school had turned into more work than he thought it’d be, he dropped out.

While I could admit he’d matured since then and seemed to be dedicated to perfecting his craft at the distillery, he still didn’t have enough experience in a commercial kitchen to know what a professional chef needed.

“Enough talking about how I’m going to regret my decision to bring her on, why are we just standing around?” Jay asked, gesturing toward the front door again.

“I don’t even know where she went.” Looking at Reid, he shrugged his shoulders, but I had a feeling one call to Hazel, and he’d know exactly where his girlfriend had taken Rhey.

“Do you even know what you’re going to say to her?” he asked.

“I’m gonna ask her to not hold the family I was born into against me and remind her I knew she was with someone before me.

” Jay shook his head, but I had a feeling he knew he’d fucked the way he’d initially handled this up spectacularly.

For someone who claimed to be her friend, he hadn’t treated her with much respect.

“And that I don’t give a fuck if my brother saw her first.”

“Saw her naked,” Jay muttered under his breath, but he had the decency to look embarrassed when I stared him down.

I should have listened to Rhey earlier instead of walking away. But the sight of my brother with his hands all over her had been enough to send me into fight-or-flight mode—only she beat me to the flight part.

Jay cleared his throat. “I know we talked it out upstairs, but please be careful with her. She’s lost a lot in her life, and there are scars buried deep that she hides from everyone.

I think that’s part of why she stayed with me so long, she knew I was safe because I didn’t expect love to be a part of our relationship. ”

Pausing, I gripped the back of my neck, and the lingering nerve pain surfaced as my skin stretched. It was background noise to my thoughts. I hadn’t been lying to him, I’d already fallen hard for this woman, and if she wasn’t capable of the same…

“If she doesn’t want—”

“Fuck,” my brother cursed, shaking his head.

“Just keep fucking today up, don’t I? Tris, I wasn’t implying that she couldn’t love you, I just want to make sure she isn’t just someone to pass time for you.

She looked devastated when she thought you were going to leave, so if you don’t feel the same… ”

“I do.” I didn’t even have to think about it. She wasn’t someone I could walk away from now, and maybe never.

We’d clearly bonded during some stressful situations, and there were still so many things I wanted to learn about her… But I felt like I could finally breathe around her, though. And that wasn’t something I could just move on from without even trying. “She’s…” the love of my life.

“Then let’s go,” he said with a smile, but the sliding glass door to the back patio opened, and our moms walked through before I could follow him out the front.

“And where do you think you’re going without giving me a hug, Tristan?” my mom, Clara, teased, holding her arms open.

When I looked toward my brother on the front porch and back to her waiting, she lifted an eyebrow, and I knew I wasn’t getting out of this house without a distraction.

Shaking my head, I resisted the urge to punch my smirking cousin in the arm on the way past and wrapped my arms around the woman who’d raised me. She laid her head on my chest, squeezing tight, but keeping her arms around my waist and away from my scars.

“Someone told me you brought a date,” she said once she released me .

“About that…” I trailed off, but she crossed her arms, giving me a look I was very familiar with.

“Well, where is she?”

Glancing over my shoulder, I could barely see my brother ducked down near the rear passenger side of my truck, clearly trying to avoid being seen by our mother. Chicken shit.

“Is she out front? We’re really not that scary, Tris,” she laughed, moving to skirt around me on a mission to ambush my supposed date. “Why is your brother trying to hide behind your truck?”

“I’m staying out of this,” Reid laughed, hooking his arm with his mom’s and leading her out the back door. “Let’s go find you a fresh drink, mama.”

When I returned my gaze to the front door, my mom was marching across the front yard, my brother trying to escape behind another car.

“Jayden Lucas, what did you do now?” she yelled, hands braced on her waist as she paused a short distance away from him. Jay was notorious for trying to hide from people when he’d done something, so she knew the signs when he was up to no good, even as a grown adult.

“Why do you people always assume I did something?” he hollered back, and I laughed loudly, heading for the driver’s side of the truck. While I would love to watch her give him shit, I had a woman to convince that my feelings for her hadn’t changed.

“Because you’re an idiot,” our mom yelled back, her gaze focused on him.

Letting him provide a diversion, I pulled open the driver’s side door and started the truck, keeping my gaze focused on my mirrors while I turned around.

My mom had stepped off the front porch, eyes lasered in on my ridiculous brother, and I considered his distraction a small token toward repairing the damage his behavior had done earlier.

Now, I had a girl to get.

Only after I pulled the truck up to the cabin did I realize a significant flaw in the plan to find Rhey. I didn’t know where the fuck she was—and she still didn’t have a cell phone.

I already knew she wasn’t inside before opening the door, but her presence lingered in the air.

My eyes found her ruined dress hung over the lip of the kitchen trash can, the hairbrush she’d used this morning still lying on my nightstand, and her dirty work boots sitting on the tray by the front door which meant she hadn’t stopped here first to claim her things.

But I couldn’t just sit here and wait for her to return.

Sitting down on my bed, I pulled up a text message with Reid, hoping he’d tell me where Hazel took her.

Tristan: She’s not at the ranch.

Reid: I know.

Tristan: Can you ask Hazel where she took her?

Reid: You gonna use the information wisely?

Tristan: Jay is a dick and you’re holding it against me ?

Reid: You were about to get in that truck and leave her there.

Tristan: I didn’t want to take my anger at my brother out on her.

Reid: You don’t run away when you love someone.

Tristan: Since when are you a love guru?

Reid: Since a woman chased me down for leaving before we had the hard conversations.

Tristan: I know I helped screw this up, but I’ve never felt this way about a woman before. Please tell me where to find her.

Reid: Answer the door, the cavalry is on the way.

Frowning at my phone, I tried to figure out what the hell that meant, until someone started pounding on the front door.

“Tripp, get your ass out here!”

Charley West was standing on my front porch, her hot pink tipped blonde pigtails riddled with pieces of straw.

“Finally,” she sighed, grabbing my arm and towing me onto the porch. “Let’s get moving. Hazel called and told me what happened. Time for damage control.”

“What?” I laughed, following along as she towed me toward the barn.

Seraphina was saddled up and waiting on the walkway outside the barn, the horse nickering softly when she saw me.

“Why is Phi saddled? She’s supposed to be resting,” I asked, running my hand down her mane.

“Because she needs to help with your grand gesture,” Charley replied, rolling her eyes.

“Grand gesture?”

She sighed, nudging me out of the way with her hip. “Annie is fully prepared to hide until she thinks this has blown over. She asked Hazel if she could stay at the apartment and implied that she’d already started over once this week and would do it again if she had to.”

“Fuck.” Maybe my hope that she’d come back to the ranch wouldn’t pan out.

“Yeah, Tripp , fuck. You kinda fucked this up if she doesn’t know how you feel about her. And don’t even get me started on your idiot brother. ”

Turning toward her, I frowned. If she’d known who I was… “Why didn’t you tell her who I was if you knew?”

“Because not everything is about you, Tristan,” she shot back with a dramatic eye roll.

“I didn’t know who you were until this morning.

When my dad only referred to you as Tripp, I didn’t stop to connect the dots that you were Reid’s cousin.

And I was kind of busy helping my dad get his ranch— my childhood home —ready for a fire to potentially burn everything to the ground. ”

“Noted,” I replied, backing down. “I only thought she was someone who worked with him at the distillery. He never told me about her specifically. I knew he had a long-time friend who he hooked up with, but I’d have remembered if he’d ever mentioned her name.”

“And now we’ve got work to do since y’all seemed to only be communicating with your private parts over the last few days instead of sharing your family trees. So, here’s what you’re going to do…”