The Outsider Series: The Complete Omnibus Collection

Chapter 4-1

Chapter Four

After lingering in a warm bath, full of lavender oil, Emily pulled on the short cotton nightgown that Brad had ordered from Victoria’s Secret. In fact he had ordered a dozen, which she’d never be able to wear outside the bedroom and were not made to keep her warm at night. But then, when Brad came to bed, every one of those silky, lacy gowns found their way to the floor. He reckoned he wasn’t doing his job if she was cold at night, which was the one thing she wasn’t—cold that is. Brad warmed her nicely every night after he’d fully loved her, which always settled her in for a good sleep, snuggled in his arms.

Brad was in the shower as she pulled the covers back and slid into bed. It had been a crazy night. Emily imagined how wide her eyes had been as they darted between Brad and his brothers; at dinner, and then afterwards in the living room, the way they poked at each other with barbed insults, and then chuckled and shoved each other on the shoulder. At first she assumed they were fighting, but each one had a mischievous twinkle in their eye.

Becky must have picked up on her wariness because she explained in the kitchen that it was the brothers’ way of saying they loved one another. To Emily, it looked as if they’d just as soon plant a fist in the other’s face, but then she’d never been around so many alpha males in one room in her entire life. One thing was certain—each one was trying to up the other.

Jed was an absolute puzzle. The way he watched her with those mysterious brown eyes was as if he hadn’t made his mind up about her. She felt that she was on probation. Becky explained that Jed did things his own way, and that included figuring people out. Jed wasn’t a people person at all, but kept to himself; even more so after falling out with Brad over his ex-wife, Crystal, right before he married her. Becky said the woman had played the brothers off by flirting with one and then the other. She didn’t know everything, but the rift Crystal created had been long and deep. This was the first time that Jed had been back to the ranch since their estrangement.

The news had Emily sitting up and taking a good look at Jed. No wonder he was studying her. Maybe he expected her to be like Crystal. The woman had turned everyone’s lives upside down, including Emily’s, when she first met Brad. But there was something about Jed, which, she now realized, was a deeper hurt that he wasn’t sharing with anyone. He was his own man, and, as Becky said, the first Friessen man to walk away from everything to which he was entitled. He worked hard, and what he had was from his own sweat and two hands.

The Friessen family were a wealthy bunch. This ranch that Brad owned had been in the family for generations. Rodney had passed it down to his oldest son, while he and Becky had retired, and bought a ranch on the Yucatan peninsula ten years earlier. Neil had joined his father in that ranching venture, cattle, horses and a resort he was negotiating with the local authorities.

Emily didn’t notice that Brad had finished his shower until he slid under the duvet and pulled her towards him, once again disposing of the lacy negligee, which fell to its spot on the floor, where it ended up every night.