And after all the time he’d spent with Tuesday recently it had left him a little unsettled. Expectant. She’d become important to him and he wasn’t sure he was capable of not fucking up in some way with her. He didn’t know what to do with the intensity of feeling she brought his life, either. He knew enough to understand he liked it. A lot. But he wasn’t sure if he should.

“Should we tell Nat then? There’s still time to get the food for Tuesday’s party elsewhere. I don’t want Mary running herself down and I know Tuesday wouldn’t want it, either.”

“Do you now? Know what Tuesday would think? Pay the hell up, Ez. You have this shit going on in your life and Paddy gets to see it and I don’t and I feel left out and it’s making me grumpy. You’re way better at grumpy than I am so cut me a break and share.”

Ezra cleared his throat. “We don’t share a mind meld, Damien. I know enough to understand she’s a good person who cares about her friends so of course she wouldn’t want Mary to do too much. Mary doesn’t need to be our caterer.”

“Ezra, Mary is a caterer. It’s not just what she did for years, it’s also in her nature. She uses food to care about people. Uses food to be sure they keep strong and healthy. She uses food to make people smile and feel loved. My woman lives for stuff like cooking for surprise congratulations parties. Even at eight months pregnant. But I’m going to tell her about this anyway because she’ll like knowing you two were concerned over her. She says you and Tuesday are serious about one another. She right?”

“Paddy, stop feeding the cats.”

“They’re hungry! Look at these faces.” Both cats stood on the back of the couch, leaning down on Paddy’s shoulders, rubbing their cheeks against his head.

“They’re whores is what they are. And you only make it worse when you reward it.”

“Sure. Because you never give them treats or spoil them at all.” Paddy sent him a raised brow.

Ezra turned to Damien. “To answer your question, I like Tuesday and she likes me. We’re seeing each other.” He shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I don’t know why this has to even be a thing.”

Paddy interrupted. “Because you’ve been alone. As long as she’s been alone from what I understand. Years and years you isolate yourself and throw all your energy into this ranch.”

“How the fuck you think it stays running?”

Paddy flipped him off without even pausing in his shove-food-in-his-piehole process. “Don’t get defensive, asshole. I’m just saying you have an actual personal life instead of whatever it was you did before.”

“What does that mean?”

Damien ate, his attention on Ezra and Paddy as they volleyed.

“So we really going there?” Paddy looked to Ezra and then to Damien.

“Why is this sounding like an intervention all the sudden? I’ve done that. Don’t have any desire to repeat it.”

“Eat it, Ezra. You can’t divert my attention from the real subject here. Why is it so hard for you to share with us? Huh? How many times have you listened to us? Or is it okay for you to fix us but not the other way around? You don’t think we have anything to offer you?”

He’d only recently learned that Paddy measured himself against his big brother. It had made Ezra proud to have earned that back after he’d done so much to destroy it before. Ezra figured that might be the source of at least part of why his brother was so agitated.

Still, it frustrated him to be accused of trying to hide whatever it was he had with Tuesday.

“Tuesday’s more to you than some chick you drive to bang when you get the itch. That’s what I meant. I didn’t say you had to marry her.”

“Take it easy, Paddy.” Damien rarely interrupted, but in this case, Paddy snorted.

“He’s right. Yes, Patrick, Tuesday is more to me than a woman I only occasionally see for sex when I feel like it and when she feels like accepting my offer. Is that what you wanted to know?”

“No. I want you to be honest. I want you to think we’re worth that.”

“Okay then. Once every few weeks I used to head to Portland because there’s a woman there who I liked fucking. She liked being fucked. She liked it a little rough and that’s what I had for her. I never met her friends. I never mentioned her name to you or anyone I know. Everyone got off and no one cared much beyond those hours we spent together. That was all I needed.”

“Maybe it was all you allowed yourself to need.”

Ezra turned to Damien. “I don’t know. Maybe. But whatever it was, why ever I did it, it’s not happening anymore. I haven’t seen her since late last year. I don’t crave her. I don’t miss her or think about her. Makes me sort of a cock for fucking a woman I didn’t really care to know, but I’m guessing she felt the same.”

“I think it’s interesting you use the word crave.”

Loopy jumped up with a happy bark as Vaughan came in with his dog Minnie. Minnie was a corgi so Loop was about three times her size, but it didn’t seem to get her down.

“The prodigal Hurley returns. Pull up a plate and something to drink. We’re poking Ezra about his love life,” Paddy said as he got up to refill his plate.

“It’s times like these I miss getting drunk, fighting a bunch of assholes in an alley behind a crappy little dive and crashing with a black eye and blood on my shirt in bed as the sun came up. Life was simpler back then.”