Page 64 of Wrangled Up

She bolted upright. Tucker followed, fists clenched and body tense.

“Claire!” came from the yard.

She leaped from the bed as if it were a runaway horse headed for a brick wall. Wild panic made her search frantically through a pile of discarded clothes for her panties. No thought lived in her mind besides getting herpanties on before her daddy burst into the bedroom and found her with two men.

“Who the fuck is that?” Christian asked, voice slurred with sleep and pleasure.

“Claire’s father,” Tucker said at the same time she said, “My father.”

She paused with one leg in her lace panties and swung her gaze to Tucker’s. How did he know…?

Oh yeah. He’d been pow-wowing with her father while on the run.

She dropped her gaze and rushed into the rest of her clothes. Tucker and Christian dressed too. If she wasn’t so keyed up that her father was about to beat down the door to get to her and possibly attempt to defend her virtue, she might have taken more time to sigh over the touching way Tucker handed Christian his jeans and Christian straightened the collar on Tucker’s shirt.

Boot thuds in the kitchen.

Her heart surged into her throat. In a flurry, she ran to the bedroom door and ripped it open. She didn’t know which guy had the presence of mind to shut the door but she was grateful not to be faced with looking up in thethroes of passion to find her daddy standing there.

“Claire!”

“Daddy,” she said breathlessly as she rushed from the room. She met him in the living area and stopped dead.

Barefoot, disheveled and smelling of sex. Hell, she detected the tangy flavor of her men on her tongue. The old phrase “you kiss your mama with that mouth” had never felt so close.

She jammed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and stared right into her father’s eyes.

He’d aged since the last time she’d seen him. His hat sat a little lower, shading more creases around his eyes. And his shoulders looked softer. When she was little, she’d thought his shoulders the best and broadest in the universe—able to shelter her so perfectly.

Behind her, Christian and Tucker emerged and stood at her back, their shoulders creating an impenetrable wall.

Judging by her dad’s dark expression, they would need their strength.

“Which one of you thought it was a good idea to tag-team my little girl?” he asked.

“Hell,” she said under her breath. Then gaining a bit of footing, she straightened her spine. “Daddy—”

“Step aside, Claire doll,” he drawled. He jabbed a finger in the direction of the men behind her. “You and you. Outside now.”

“Jake,” Letty gave her warning tone from the doorway.

“Daddy, no—”

Tucker placed a warm, strong hand on her forearm and guided her out of the way. “Let me take care of this.” He stared right at her father.

“I’m willing to take it outside,” Christian said.

What the hell? “No!” She threw herself between the two men she loved and another she’d loved a lot longer.

In a rustle of denim and a thud of boots, all three men spilled out the door into the yard. She tripped behind with Letty wrapped around her like a ninety-pound suit.

“Don’t get in the middle of this, Claire. It’s what men do,” Letty pleaded.

“I’m an adult, dammit! He has no right barging in here and challenging my lovers as if they sawed off my chastity belt.”

“Lovers,” her father roared. He spun around, swinging a thick arm in a wide arc.

Christian ducked, and Tucker rushed her father. Using his shoulder, he caught him in the midsection—the softest part of him. Her dad grunted but reached down and gripped Tucker by the collar. He shook him, but Tucker remained on his feet.

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