Second Chance Summer

And then there was the coffee table, currently littered with trade magazines and more than a few empty glasses that no one would claim because if you got caught leaving anything out, you had to clean the entire place.

Penny’s rules. And every one of them was afraid of Penny, so those glasses would not be claimed by anyone with a brain.

The first thing Aidan heard was yelling. This came as no surprise. The Kincaids didn’t have much in the way of volume control. Yelling was what happened when they were on top of each other night and day. Hopefully at some point they wouldn’t both work together and live in the same building, but for now, for better or worse, no one had made the effort to move away. Maybe because they’d grown up without much family and were making up for lost time. Or maybe it was sheer laziness.

Home. Sweet. Home.

By the time he shed his gear and stood in the middle of the living room, where he could also see into the kitchen, the yelling had stopped. He found Gray face-first in his fridge and Kenna sprawled on the couch. Aidan tossed his keys into some fancy bowl Penny had put on the coffee table. “What the hell’s wrong with your own places on your own floors?” he asked.

“I don’t have a couch yet,” Kenna said.

Like Hud and Jacob, Kenna hadn’t grown up in Cedar Ridge. Her mom had brought her to Colorado for the skiing, and it hadn’t been long before she’d joined the professional snowboarding circuit and become a world phenom by age fifteen. After that, she hadn’t set down roots anywhere until she’d imploded her life last year. Publicly. Very publicly.

She still wasn’t on the people train. The only socializing she tolerated was her half brothers, and even then only barely.

“You can stay,” Aidan told her and looked at Gray. “But not you.”

Gray scowled. “Why not me?”

“You’re eating my food.”

Kenna snorted. “That’s because he texted Penny asking her what was for dinner and she texted back that his dinner was in the cookbook, any page, and that the ingredients were all at the store.”

“So I came here,” Gray said, mouth full as he foraged, holding up salami and cheddar cheese. “You and Hud stock the good stuff.”

“It’s called the deli aisle,” Aidan said. “Also at the store.”

“Penny won’t let me have salami or dairy,” he said. “Says it makes me gassy. You should see the stuff in our fridge, it’s all green and ‘healthy’ shit that”—he used air quotes—“cleans our colon.”

Aidan grimaced. “That’s—”

“Disgusting,” Kenna filled in. “And let me perform a public service announcement here and tell you that you seriously overshare.” She stood up.

Gray pointed at her. “Stay.”

“Um, yeah, hi. My name is Kenna and I’m the boss of me. Not you.”

“Goddammit,” Gray said. “You’re not going back to your cave and holing up for another night.”

“Again,” she said icily, heading toward the door. “I call my own plays.”

“Hold up,” Aidan said, and snagged her hand before she could escape, pulling her around to face him. “What’s going on?”

Kenna gave him a pointed look that said, Ask Gray.

Behind her, Gray circled his finger around his ear—the universal sign for crazy.

Jesus. “I’m not playing kindergarten teacher today,” Aidan told them both. “Someone’s going to have to use their words.”

Gray stuffed three pieces of salami into his mouth all at once, and then let out a groan. “Oh, my God—this is the real deal, fully loaded with all the fat and everything. Damn, I almost forgot what I’ve been missing …” More groans and moans.

Aidan shook his head. “You sound like you’re starring in a Red Tube video.”

“That’s because this salami’s almost as good as sex,” Gray said, and the moment the words escaped he whipped around, clearly making sure Penny hadn’t shown up and overheard him comparing their sex life to salami.

Kenna shook her head. “You’re so whipped.” She tugged free from Aidan. “Okay, I’m out.”

“What’s the rush?” Aidan asked. Gray wasn’t the only one worried about her.

She sighed. “I’m not in the mood for another fight.”

Aidan slid a look in Gray’s direction. His brother’s jaw was doing that tightening thing it did when he was pissed and trying to control himself. “Seriously,” he said to them both. “What’s going on?”

“I’m tired,” Kenna said. “I just want to go to bed, but Gray here thinks I’m acting like an old lady and should hit the town.”

After her self-destruction last year she’d turned herself into a hermit. They’d been trying to work on that with her, but the truth was, they just wanted to fix her and she didn’t appear to be in all that big of a hurry to be fixed. “I could give you a ride,” he said casually. “Want to go get a drink?”

“Hell no,” she said. “The last time we had a drink, you tried to give me the sex talk.”

“No, I tried to tell you not all men think with their—”

“Stop!” she said on a rare laugh, covering her ears. “The first time was bad enough.”

“How about if I take you up to Mt. Hennessy?” he suggested.