Page 23 of The Secrets She Keeps

She didn’t want her babies growing up afraid. She just didn’t.

Heather just didn’t know how to stop it.

Heather led the way across the snow.

16

Her brother looked horrible,even two days after she’d flown to his rescue. Powell studied him where he sat, in a big recliner right in front of a massive fireplace in the lobby of the Talley Inn. Brandt could barely move. He was battered and bruised, and it hurt to see him like that.

Powell wanted to take himhome.Where she would be able to take care of him herself. But there was a stubborn look in his eyes. Brandt was determined to make his own empire—and he wanted to do it in Wyoming.

Because of Meyra Talley. Her family ran the Talley Inn, where they were right now. Powell had met Meyra a few times before. Meyra was very quiet and reserved, definitely hard to figure out.

Brandt was watching Meyra, a look in his eyes Powell had never seen on this particular brother’s face before. Brandt was planning something. Powell was almost certain of it. Brandt usually was.

“Erickson’s back yet again. Look,” her brother Alex said from where he sat next to her. “There he is. Want to run and hide like you did last night?”

Powell shot Alex a glare. He could be a grumpy jerk sometimes. No denying that. Both her eldest brothers fit that description, though Mac had a wickedly funny sense of humor. He was really playful too. When he wasn’t going into Intense-Mac-Monster mode.

They were also some of the kindest, most loyal, most beautiful men she had ever known. They could just be a little too arrogant sometimes. Well, a lot too arrogant most times, really. They were spoiled—she had long believed that.

It was her job to keep them in check.

But Powell was going to be a bit too busy to wrangle them going forward. She had a Viking baby to worry about. That was going to take a lot of her focus, after all.

Powell would have to come up with a plan on how to handle her brothers now. It was probably time to just marry them off and everything. Give them over to some other poor women to handle.

They needed good women to knock them down a peg or two. And she wanted nieces and nephews someday. She consciously resisted covering her stomach, where her little secret grew.

She wanted her baby to have cousins to play with. It would have to be her brothers to provide them—the father of her baby was an only child, after all. Powell was just going to have to find decent women crazy enough to fall for her two older brothers. Fast.

Where should she even begin, though? Her brothers were very complicated creatures. Ordinary women just wouldn’t do. Not for those two.

Brandt was busy working on his own plans already. He’d always been the cleverest of the boys—she had trained him quite well, after all. She was going to give this serious consideration.Aftershe dealt with the father of her baby.

Gunnar Erickson. What was he doing now?

Powell’s stomach tightened with nerves. Her hands slicked, fast. She watched him. That was the most beautiful man in existence. It was too hard to look away. But something had happened. She could see it on his face.

He had been out of the inn long before she’d even made it downstairs to the dining room that morning. She’d escaped after dinner the night before while he had been speaking with the sheriff of Masterson. It had been cowardly of her, but her stomach had been riding its own individual roller coaster at the time. And she just had not wanted questions from her goon squad.

Powell tensed. She just knew something else had happened. And it wasn’t good at all.

The father of her baby was storming across the lobby of the inn—a look of fire and irritation on his far-too-beautiful face.

Fear for her friends in Finley Creek was strong. It had been ever sincethatnight. The choir hall shooting. It had changed them all.

He had Charlotte next to him. With a slightly confused look on her face. Gunnar had told Powell he was going to be caught up in his OPJ case the entire time he was in Masterson. He’d had meetings late into the night last night.

But he’d wanted to have dinner withhertonight. Powell had promised him she would. She hadto find a way to tell him about the little Viking baby version of him she was baking right now. Very, very soon.

The man just deserved to know.

“What’s wrong? Has something happened?” Powell asked. She hated it when he looked like that—when something was obviously upsetting him. He took on too much. She could see that for herself. She just wanted tofix itfor the man. Every single time. Someone needed to take care of him sometimes too. “Did someone come from Major Crimes?”

He’d told her someone was meeting him up there, and he wouldn’t get in her hair this time. That he wasworkingand she was to keep herself safe at the inn with the bodyguard and her brothers until he was finished.

Then they’d have dinner together, and she could seduce him again—as many times as Powell would like. But they’d have to be quieter since her brothers were on the same floor this time.

---