He’d spent the rest of the day riding his horse around the pastures, doing essentially nothing but trying to pound his balls into submission with tight jeans and a punishing day in the saddle.

Unfortunately, he’d just ended up replaying the scene in Sadie’s house over and over.

“Why are you scowling?” Connor asked from his position at the counter, where he was sitting on a bar stool and inhaling his pizza. “Scowling is kind of my thing, and I feel like you’re edging in on my territory.”

“Scowling is your thing? I thought the Robinson Crusoe look was your thing,” he said, indicating Connor’s beard and hair, which were both starting to get a little long.

“I can have more than one thing.”

“What’s my thing?” Kate asked, leaning forward on the counter, speaking around a mouthful of cheese.

“Bad table manners and objectifying construction workers, apparently,” he said, his words a little testy since, in fairness, it was Kate’s fault that he’d gone looking for her in Sadie’s house. It was his sister’s damn sex drive that had put him in this position.

Her cheeks turned pink and she looked down. “Thanks for ratting me out, bastard.”

“Objectifying construction workers?” Connor said in mock horror. “That’s shocking. Did you whistle at them and say, ‘Hey, baby! Why don’t you drop that hammer so I can watch the view’?”

“I did not,” she said, looking like she was about to fold in on herself.

“Missed opportunity,” Connor said.

“Whatever,” Kate said, pulling a piece of pepperoni off her pizza and putting it in her mouth. “You would lock me in my room if I ever did that.” She stuck her thumb in her mouth and sucked the grease off it loudly.

“Honestly,” Connor said. “I don’t worry much about you and men.”

Kate looked genuinely offended by that. “Why not?”

“I have my reasons,” Connor said.

Relationships, or hookups, which was the veiled content of the conversation, were not Eli’s favorite topic just now, so he was keeping his mouth shut.

“So what happened the other night?” Connor asked, his focus on Eli now. As if his older-brother sense told him that Eli was clamming up to avoid talking about something.

“Which night?” Eli asked.

“You dragged Sadie out of the bar and returned ten minutes later. She looked like she’d been scolded. You looked like you’d accidentally branded your own ass instead of a calf’s. What happened?”

“Why are you choosing this moment to start paying attention to what I do?”

“I always pay attention. It’s just you don’t usually have anything happening. And I want to know what’s happening with Sadie.”

He thought about earlier. Soft skin under his hands, her full breasts...what it had been like to take one of those perfect nipples into his mouth. How wet she’d been.

Mind-blowing, cock-busting sex.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Yeah, I don’t believe you.”

“They’re avoiding each other,” Kate said, looking at him almost apologetically. “Well,” she continued defensively when he shot back a mean glare, “it’s what she said when you were at the house earlier. When you busted us creeping on those guys.”

“I’m avoiding her because she’s a pain,” he said.

“And yet you told Jack to keep his hands off.”

Kate’s head whipped around to Connor. “Jack is interested in her?”

“Jack,” Connor said, “is interested in tits. Whether they’re attached to Sadie or not is immaterial. They are the new breasts in town, and therein lies the attraction.”

Kate lowered her head and mumbled something that Eli didn’t understand.

“What was that, pumpkin?” Connor asked.

“Gross,” she said, a little louder, and a little crisper.

“Men are. Your life lesson for the day,” Connor said.

Seemed like it was Eli’s lesson for the day, too. Since he’d done a fantastic impersonation of a pig today.

“To be fair, Connor,” Kate said. “I appreciate a man’s ass in a pair of Wranglers.”

Connor looked like Kate had hauled off and slapped him with her meat-greasy fingers. “Sure,” he said.

“I just meant Jack’s attitude is gross. Sex isn’t gross at all.” Kate was looking mutinous now, and Eli’s blood pressure was rising because he didn’t need sex talk just at the moment. And he needed sex talk from Kate never.

“That’s enough,” Connor said.

“I mean, if a guy wants to look at my tits I’m not going to—”

“Did someone spike your Diet Coke?” Eli asked.

“I’m just sick of this overprotective crap you guys always pull. ‘Boys are gross,’” she said, in a bad imitation of Connor’s voice. “‘You’ll get cooties if you touch them.’”

“I never said that,” Connor said.

“You told me penises had teeth,” she said, deadpan.

Eli’s head whipped around to face Connor. “Did you really?”

“I don’t remember,” Connor said.

“You did,” Kate said. “I spent the next two years concerned for the health and safety of the inner thighs of every boy I knew.”

In spite of his mood, Eli laughed. “I’m sorry, that’s just funny.”

“Brothers are horrible,” she said.

“I know, but we’re also the best you have,” Eli said. Poor Kate. They were all she had, and they fell short in so many ways it verged on tragic.