I was relieved that he didn’t get pissed off by my little speech. I gave it to everyone. And this guy had that dark-eyed, brooding look working. Plenty of girls had probably flung themselves at him back in the day.

Hopefully my little sister wouldn’t cast aside her adoration for Zach and shift it to Jude. Zach I trusted. This guy I’d just met. “You know, I used to include both of my sisters in this little warning, but May got wind of it. She hates it when I treat her like a kid. And she has a good right hook, which she’s not afraid to use on me.”

“Good to know. But hitting on your sisters is not my style. Maybe you wouldn’t believe it from a guy who just got out of jail, but I’m a hard worker. Toward the end there I was mostly working hard to feed my habit. But I know how to put in a long day.”

“Good. We start at six and end at five, but we take two hours off during the day for meals and breaks.”

His nod was stoic. “Got it. Maybe I’ll sleep better after a long day, anyway.”

“You’d almost have to.” I stood up. “I’m heading in for lunch. It won’t start for another fifteen minutes, but be on time, okay? Lunch is at one o’clock every day and mom busts her ass to get it onto the table like clockwork, so she wants you to show up on time.”

“Yessir.”

I paused on my way out of the room. “And don’t call me sir. My siblings do it sometimes, but they’re just fucking with me.”

Jude laughed as I left the bunkhouse.

THIRTY-TWO

Nowhere to hide

Maybe Griff Shipley was a grumpy asshole. But his family was lovely. Their bustling kitchen was controlled chaos of the very best kind. Griff’s mom was busy slicing up a slab of braised brisket large enough to feed several developing nations, while everyone else pitched in to get food on the table.

Or didn’t, in the case of Griff’s younger brother, Dylan. Best as I could tell, he was minding a big sterilizer full of jam jars on the stove. He had the tongs in one hand, but mostly he busied himself singing Technotronic’s “Pump Up the Jam,” and dancing around.

“You are killing me with that song,” his twin sister Daphne complained. The two of them looked to be high school aged.

“This is what I sing when we make jam.”

She rolled her eyes, her arms braced around a tall stack of plates. She nudged her brother and indicated an open drawer full of linen napkins. “Can you put those on top here?”

He reached into the drawer and piled a handful of napkins on top of the plates.

“We’re ten people today,” she said. “Put some more on.”

“Stop calling me a moron.”

She groaned all the way out of the kitchen, and Dylan went back to singing “Pump Up the Jam,” changing the line about “booty” to “fruity.” And all the while his mother and sisters moved like ninjas around one another.