“We’ll pick up groceries if you get the keys.”

“Deal.”

Paddy gave Tuesday a peck on the cheek. “Try to keep him in line, okay?” He waved in Ezra’s direction.

“Your brother keeps his own lines. He’s particular that way.”

Paddy grinned. Holy shit, was he gorgeous. “You know him pretty well. We’ll see you guys in a few hours.”

“Okay, Loopy, you need to go pee now so we don’t have to stop in twenty minutes.”

The dog looked up at her after Paddy and Nat drove off, her tongue hanging out to the side.

Ezra whistled in a certain way and Loop trotted around the side of the house where there was more grass and did her business.

“So do all women just obey you or what?”

He laughed. “If only. You ready?”

“Let me do my business and grab my purse. The cats are going to be all right?”

“They’re going to stay with my parents. My mother said she’d wait until we left and she’d come grab the cats. They’ll just follow her up to her place. Mary and Damien are making sure Hoss and Violet are fed so that’s okay, too. She brings all manner of treats down here for those pigs. She doesn’t think any of us know.”

“Well good. Be right back.” She jogged into the house to take care of her business. Of course his animals would be taken care of. It had been a silly question but she liked all his little creatures so she wanted to be sure.

She pulled her hair into two puffs that she rather liked. It was low maintenance and she could fluff it out the next day or the day after, but Ezra got a dreamy look on his face when she came back out.

He opened her door and she hopped up. On his side, he opened up, whistled, and Loopy came running around the house and bounded into the truck, settling across the bench seat behind where Ezra and Tuesday sat.

“Someone likes to go for a ride.”

Loopy licked her face and settled her chin on the top of Ezra’s armrest.

“The hair, I like it.”

“A gal needs to switch it up from time to time. Keep it fresh, folically speaking.”

He snorted as he drove away from the ranch.

“Well, whatever. It makes me want to bend you over something immediately.”

She laughed, delighted and a little tingly. “Your bar for that is already pretty low.”

“When it comes to you, beauty, my standards are high and exacting.”

She had no doubts about that at all.

He waved, pulling to a stop at his parents’ driveway, where his mother had been standing.

“Hello there, Tuesday! Don’t you look pretty today? If you and Natalie could make sure Ezra and Paddy don’t wander off a cliff or set anything on fire, I’d be grateful.” She winked and Tuesday snickered.

“Good afternoon, Sharon.” Tuesday waved. She liked Sharon Hurley. The woman was a boss. Smart and strong. She had the type of protective persona that Tuesday’s mother also had. It had drawn her to Sharon from the start.

“I’ll do my best, but your sons like to do their own thing.”

Sharon laughed. “True. Well, keep out of the way of fists if he and Paddy get into a tussle.” She gave her oldest a look. “You have a good time, Ezra. Your dad and I ran this place before you started on—everything’ll be just fine for the next four days. I have your number if something happens that we can’t handle. We won’t break the ranch and we’ll keep your creatures alive and happy. Now go.” She stepped back after patting his hand.

Loopy barked and Sharon guffawed. “You, dearest granddog, will be missed. Have fun chasing squirrels.”

Satisfied she’d got some attention from Sharon, Loopy barked one last time and put her chin back on the armrest.

“Love you, Mom.” He waved and her teasing grin softened into a mother’s smile.

“I love you, too, Ezra. Enjoy yourselves!”

“It seems like we end up on long car rides a lot.” He relaxed back into the seat once they’d got on their way.

She leaned back, liking the view from up that high. “I have what Natalie terms an unnatural love of road trips.”

“There’s a story here. Tell me.”

“Nah, nothing superexciting like meeting Laurence Fishburne at a rest stop or something equally fantastic. You come from a big family so I bet you guys took a lot of road trips for family vacations as you grew up. We have family in Kentucky and in San Diego so we would drive to both. Usually Kentucky in the summer and down the coast to San Diego at Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

In a funny coincidence the Hurleys and Tuesday’s family hailed from the same forty-mile radius in Kentucky.

Ezra broke in. “We did that trip to Kentucky every two years or so. That’s a long drive. At first we all jammed into an old cargo van but when I was eight or nine they bought this secondhand RV. Not a big one, but way better than that cargo van. Imagine being stuck in an enclosed space with a ten-year-old Damien.”

Tuesday shuddered at the thought of a ten-year-old superhyper, always-in-motion Damien trapped in a car for eight hours at a time. “Your mother is my hero. For. Real.”

Ezra laughed. “She’s a goddamn pain in my ass. But she’s pretty amazing.”

So odd to be discussing this sort of thing with a woman he wasn’t related to. He didn’t really chat about his private life with the woman he’d been seeing in Portland. He drove to her place, fucked her for a few hours and drove back.