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  Eventually, Boyd Warner came clean about his disintegrating health and why he brought Brynn into the fold the only way he knew how. When he passed, they all grieved the man who gave them a home and taught them how to be a family, and none of the brothers were surprised when their old man left a portion of the ranch to Brynn in his will ensuring she would always have a safe place to call home.

  As time went on, Lane and Brynn fell into an always awkward but easy pattern. She pretended not to notice he turned into the town Lothario, sleeping his way through every available woman—and even some who weren’t—he came across. He ignored the fact that Brynn was living the life he tried to give to her without him. Reasonably happy and content in the only place she ever felt wanted and safe.

  They were both miserable, but neither one knew how to break down the walls they constructed to keep the hurt that the other inflicted at bay. Now, with Cyrus getting married and settling down and Leo stepping up to be his partner in every single way, the role Brynn had played for so long was less defined and less necessary. She had been the one who took care of the Warners, but now they were all moving on and finding the women made for them. They found the other half of their hearts, and it was no longer up to Brynn to make sure they ate right, remembered to rest and didn’t work too hard. She was no longer in charge of holidays and making sure the strong-willed brothers didn’t bash each other to death with their stubbornness and egos. Brynn was sure they didn’t need her anymore, and that was scary, but nowhere near as terrifying as giving it all up and marrying Jack would be.

  “Brynn, honey, take a breath for me.” Leo’s voice was calm and soothing. Everyone in the room focused on the man whose heart she had just stepped on and abandoned, but Leo didn’t work that way. She always had an eye on the big picture, and there was no way she missed how hard it was for Brynn to hurt a man who didn’t deserve it. She took careful steps toward the woman who had become one of her closest friends, hands out like she was approaching a wild animal.

  Brynn merely shook her head again and bolted from the room, bouncing off Cy as she went. The big man caught her as he was coming back into the room, giving the top of her head a gentle kiss before letting her retreat. His looming presence and unspoken command had everyone in the room turning to look at him questioningly, except for Jack. Jack couldn’t tear his gaze away from the spot where the woman of his dreams had just disappeared. The man looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over, and no one dared to touch him because it was evident he was ready to break apart.

  “Lane left.” Cy’s raspy voice filled the room as he pulled his fiancée toward him.

  Leo barely reached the big man’s chin when she stood directly in front of him, lifting her hands to rest on his cheeks. Her fingers were pale against the salt and pepper scruff that covered the lower half of the man’s face making him look both distinguished and rugged.

  “What do you mean he’s gone? He probably just needed some air. I think we could all use some space to breathe.” Normally that would be when Brynn swooped in to offer everyone a drink or something sweet to eat, but considering the pretty redhead was the whipping winds of this particular storm it was up to the future lady of the house to smooth all the rough edges that were still very much working to slice everyone open. She motioned lightly to Brynn’s still-stunned little sister and told her, “Why don’t you go check on our girl. Tell her I’ll be up in a minute.” Her sharp gaze lit on Jack’s people and she inclined her head sharply in the direction of the dejected man telling the people who loved him, “I’m sure this is the last place he wants to be right now. Take him somewhere that has good whiskey and a dark corner. Don’t leave him alone.”

  The cousin and best friend jumped to do her bidding like she was a tiny, bossy general giving them orders for war.

  “I think it’s pretty clear the party is over, at least for today. We want to thank everyone for coming, but right now our family needs some time to figure some things out.” She plastered a pleasant smile on her face and congenially ushered everyone who wasn’t a Warner or soon-to-be Warner out the door. If anyone bothered to look closely, they would have noticed that Leo’s smile was more a baring of teeth because she was every bit the fierce predator that would do anything to protect her pride. She lived up to her namesake fully.

  Cy’s voice wavered, and his hands weren’t steady when he pulled his woman into his arms. “He’s gone, Leo. He got in his truck and told me he didn’t know when he was coming back. Said he didn’t know if he could ever come back.”

  The ranch was in their blood. Cy had never wanted it, Sutton had resented the hell out of it, but Lane…Lane loved it. He was his father’s son. When Sutton decided his happiness was somewhere other than the sprawling property in Wyoming, no one had been surprised. To hear Lane say he might never be back was unfathomable. He was the heart and soul of the Warner Ranch. If he abandoned ship—the place he’d always called home, his legacy, and a dream—it would be nothing more than soil and responsibility. There would be no love without Lane. There would be no light, no songs, and laughter. There would be no music. Everything would be quiet and dull.

  Leo rested her head on Cy’s heart. She ran her hands down the taut muscles of his arms and locked their fingers together. “He’ll be back.” There was no doubt in her tone.

  Cy heaved a sigh and leaned forward so he could rest his chin on the top of her head. Her curly strawberry blond hair tickled his face the way it always did when they were this close. “How do you know, Sunshine? How do you know he’ll be back?”

  Leo kissed the hollow of his throat and whispered with certainty, “Because he belongs here, and he would never let you down. Besides, Brynn is here, and we both know that no matter how far he runs he won’t ever be able to get away from the way he feels about her. It’s followed him around for over ten years. It’s time he turns around and faces it.”

  Cy heaved another sigh and wrapped his arms around the woman who brought the light back into his life. Everyone knew that if Cy had his way, he would never let her go. He knew better than anyone there were a lot of emotions you could ignore and overlook, but love wasn’t one of them. No, there was no escape from love once it got its claws into you. Sometimes the more you struggle, the more you hurt yourself when those talons dug into all your tender, soft places. All Cyrus Warner could hope for was that his youngest brother didn’t bleed out by the time he was done fighting the fate that he’d been running from for far too long.

  Chapter 1

  Lane

  Want or Need

  When I climbed into my truck with nothing more than my wallet, my boots and my car keys it didn’t occur to me that I was going to need much more than that to get to wherever it was I was going.

  I had to stop somewhere in Idaho to buy clean socks and underwear, and I needed to make a pit stop in Washington somewhere to pick up a couple of clean shirts and another pair of jeans. I hated shopping for that shit. I was the type who was still wearing crap that was lying around from my high school days. My ass hadn’t changed much over the years even if my thighs and entire upper body had bulked up and broadened. I was good with denim and cotton, with some flannel thrown in to keep things interesting. Everything I owned was variations of the same thing, so I hated having to work in new shit I didn’t know what to do with. I was very much an if it ain't broke, don’t fix it kind of guy, but that scene back at the ranch had been beyond broken, and there was no way in hell that I was going to be the guy who stepped in to try and fix it. I’d done that once before when Brynn Fox was in trouble, and it didn’t end well for me.

  When I tore out of the ranch like my ass was on fire and the devil was chasing me I had no real destination in mind. All I knew for certain was that I needed to put as much distance between me and Brynn—and her new fiancé—as I could. I felt like I was suffocating in that room. I was watching another man, who wasn’t me, jump in to save the day, and it killed me. Brynn was supposed to be mine to protect, mine to guard and shel
ter from all the terrible shit her mom landed her in. She was meant to be mine to cherish and defend, but I never got the chance because someone else was always there waiting to rescue the damsel in distress. Last time it had been my dad. Brynn was in big trouble; the kind silly kids couldn’t get her out of, and my old man stepped in with a solution that changed the one constant in my life that I’d come to rely on. She didn’t need me, and she didn’t want me. I wasn’t sure which of those daggers did the best job slicing my heart open repeatedly.

  Before she could say yes, promising herself to the hired hand, I bolted like the coward I was. I couldn’t hear it. Not again. I couldn’t stand to see the happiness on her face that was put there by a man who wasn’t me. She had always been unattainable and just out of my reach, but if Brynn married Jack, she would no longer be a Warner. She wouldn’t be my family, and I would go back to being the odd brother out. The one who wasn’t as ambitious or as focused as Cyrus. The one who never had any drive or ambition. I would go back to being the brother who followed Sutton around to keep him out of trouble when he got into one of his moods, the one who was always there for comic relief and to keep the other two from killing each other. Without Brynn in the family, there would be no one there who recognized I was a man who worked his ass off to make his family proud.

  Sure, I loved the ranch and everything dad left us—buckets more than either of my brothers—but that didn’t mean making a go of the business wasn’t backbreaking labor. Both the ranching side and the luxury retreat side were grueling. I wanted to do my dad proud and be the kind of man he was. One who gave everything to his family and put his neck and reputation on the line to help out a young girl just because his son cared about her. Nobody saw that I worked day and night to make the ranch a place my mother would regret walking away from. No one noticed that every move I made was to ensure that the Warner Ranch was going to live and thrive long after the original Warner blood no longer called it home.

  Nobody noticed how much of myself I gave to my family and our home except for Brynn.

  I was going to fade into the shadows, disappear in the small print on the bottom of the brochure, and become nothing more than a caricature of the perfect cowboy when she was gone. I was going to be a hollow shell filled with nothing more than the dust of my failures and disappointments when she left.

  Mindlessly, I headed west once I got out of Wyoming. At the time, I didn’t realize I was going to California. It didn’t hit me until after I spent a couple of days in Seattle and a couple more in Portland that I was making my way down the coast toward Sutton. Both of my brothers always had my back and would be there to offer me a stiff drink and some no-bullshit advice. Cy was too close in proximity to the newly engaged couple, so Sutton it was. I needed him, even if he was halfway across the country.

  My middle brother had managed to knock-up his new girlfriend within the first few months of claiming her as his own. It was hands down his best mistake to date. The woman was stunning, forgiving, and had a backbone forged of solid steel. My temperamental and destructive brother tended to create chaos with very little effort. Emrys Santos was the eye of his storm. When everything else around him was flailing in the chaotic winds of the maelstrom, she was the calm center and his safe place. With Em in Sutton and his young daughter Daye’s lives, it became clear that one could indeed dance inside of a hurricane if Emrys was around to offer a few moments of peace and tranquility. She was also pretty damn good at keeping other people from getting caught up in the storm that always seemed to sweep through when Sutton was around. They had pulled through some serious hardships together and at the end of the day decided some new scenery might be nice as they started their own little family. Em was originally from Northern California and during an extended visit with her folks after learning she was carrying her and Sutton’s baby, the first Warner in over a hundred years who had been born and bred on the ranch decided to make his home somewhere other than the sprawling property in Wyoming. Forging his own path with his newfound family, putting his hopes and dreams on a goal that didn’t involve Warner obligations…and I was damn proud of him.

  There was no question of my welcome when I showed up out of the blue with barely anything more than the shirt on my back and a face full of scraggly whiskers from over a week spent on the road. I made sure to stop and get Daye a present because she wouldn’t let me in the house without a treat, but other than that I was a man without a plan and with no sense of direction for the first time in his life.

  After a few days with my family, Em tried to bring up the proposal and mentioned she wanted to talk to me about how it all went down. I appreciated her concern and the fact she was worried about me, but I refused to engage in the topic. I had no desire to know what happened after I walked out of that room. I told myself it was finally time to let whatever this thing I had with Brynn go. It had been strangling me for more than a decade, and I needed to breathe. Em accepted my avoidance and let the topic drop. She skirted around the issue the rest of the time I was there and made sure all impending nuptial talk remained firmly on Cy and Leo’s wedding. Daye already claimed the illustrious role of flower girl, so there was no containing her youthful enthusiasm for flouncy dresses and the new wedding shoes that were going to sparkle.

  It was nice spending time with my brother, and I adored both his girls, but it was weird and hard to get my head around the fact he had a whole new life that I wasn’t around for. I’d been in both Sutton and Cyrus’s back pockets since I could toddle after them. They were my whole world, and everything I did was in search of them noticing me and approving of my efforts. I wanted to be just like them, but now one was having a baby, his second kid, and one was getting married for the second time. It took both my brothers a couple of tries to get things right.

  I was admittedly jealous that I’d never had the chance to screw shit up for the first time. Everyone who mattered the most to me was moving on and away from where we had always been, and it left me feeling hollow and aching all the way down to the center of my bones. For a man who thought he would live and die spending every minute caught between the shadows his brothers’ cast, I found myself thrust into the light of day and boy did that sun scorch when you weren’t ready for it.

  Sutton and Emrys didn’t mind letting me couch surf as long as I needed, with the understanding that I would check in with Cy every few days and assure him I was doing all right. I lied through my teeth and told my older brother that everything was fine; I just needed some space. What I needed was a whole new history and to have never stepped in and stopped Danny Turner from pulling on Brynn’s fiery pigtails when we were both in grade school. Even back then I knew she was a game changer. One look into those mysterious, secretive dark eyes and suddenly there was someone I cared about just as much as my brothers. I wanted her to stop crying and being scared. I tried to destroy everything and anything that dared to hurt her. She was my wounded bird with more than a fractured wing, and I knew it was going to be my job to teach her how to fly.

  Fuck…I missed her.

  The trip to the coast and the subsequent visit with my brother and his family was the longest we’d ever been apart. She was always there. One of the threads of my family that made the fabric tough and resilient. I couldn’t fathom what I was going to do when that material started to fray and unravel as her thread got yanked out of the weave.

  To distract myself from the constant worry and fear of how everything in my life was changing, I offered to take Daye to the beach one afternoon so Sutton and Emrys could have a couple of hours alone. They weren’t shy about showing affection or touching one another, but I could see the gleam in my older brother’s eye as he watched his woman when she wasn’t looking. He wanted to pounce, which he couldn’t do with his baby brother and his daughter hovering. I earned myself a steak dinner and a bottle of my favorite tequila for my troubles. Plus, I liked spending time with my niece. She was mouthy and bossy but sweet as could be. I missed having her underfoot and asking
me questions about everything under the sun.

  The weather cooperated by being temperate and slightly breezy the day of our outing. We didn’t boil and bake as Daye dragged me to the water's edge and splashed around gleefully. She demanded that we make sandcastles and then chased the remnants out to sea as the tide crashed into them and washed them away. We played a short-lived game of catch that ended when Daye dropped the ball and wasn’t fast enough to catch it before the waves claimed it. After that, we both plopped down on the huge beach towel Em had shoved into my hands on my way out the door, falling together into a fit of laughter.

  Daye’s blond ringlets were kinky and wilder than usual, but her dark green eyes that looked so much like her father’s eyes were steady and serious. She’d lost her mom recently and watched her father struggle with addiction and recovery. She also witnessed him fall in love and now had to share him with not only Em but also the new baby. She’d always seemed older than her years, but now, looking into those solemn eyes, I wondered if she knew more than the rest of us ever had. Knew that life wasn’t as complicated as it appeared to always be, but was as simple and as uncomplicated as loving hard and laughing often. As if she almost knew that adults muddied up the waters with pride and emotions and other things that didn’t matter.

  “Why are you so sad Uncle Lane?” She twirled a curl around her finger and kicked her sandy feet in the air. “You’re never the sad one. That’s always Daddy.”

  Perceptive little shit. God, I loved her something fierce. I gave her a grin and dragged my finger down her nose. “What’s Uncle Cy?”

  She giggled and stuck her tongue out at me. “He’s the mean one, and you’re the nice one. You’re the funny one who makes everybody laugh, but not right now. You haven’t laughed once since you got here. I don’t like it.” Her mouth contorted to a very practiced pout. Very rarely did she not get her way when she pulled that expression.