Read Online Healing Pleasure by Tonya Ramagos - Free Book Online

toward two well-mannered, well-educated, very levelheaded men rather than thieves.
    May nodded. “May the good Lord strike me dead if I’m lying? They broke into the house. Not this house,” she add, casting a quick look around at the room behind them. “Horace, Hank, and I lived in the little place where the hired hands live now. We hadn’t built this house yet.”
    “Did they try to hurt either of you?”
    “Oh, no.” May shook her head vehemently. “They told us later they’d just planned to take whatever they could get their hands on that they thought they could sell.” She paused, her expression warming with a mother’s love. “They didn’t know any better.” This time the look Lena gave her had a half laugh bursting from her lips. “They knew it was wrong. What they didn’t know was any other way to live. Both of them came from thieving parents. That’s the way they’d been raised. They grew up with parents who were partners in crime together, as the saying goes, and that’s what they had become.”
    “Where are their parents now?”
    May shrugged and started stirring the mixture she’d created in the bowl. “Jail, I suspect. Neither pair of them put up a fight when Horace, Hank, and I petitioned for custody. We thought they might at first. You know, because of the lifestyle Horace, Hank, and I were leading. They didn’t, though.” She shrugged again. “The courts didn’t say much about it either seeing as how we wanted the boys and no one else did. I think they were happy to have them off the streets and out of trouble.”
    Lena put down the knife she’d been using to chop onions and leaned a hip against the counter. “You took in two boys who tried to rob you, sued for custody, won, and raised them as your own children.” She put a hand on May’s shoulder. “You know, even if Brit won’t talk to me and I end up not taking him on as a client, I’m really glad I got the opportunity to meet you.”
    She meant it. There were far too few women in the world like May Hoskins.
    “My Brit will talk to you, honey. The key to handling that man, any man, is patience.”
    Lena would get Brit to talk one way or another. It was the “another” that had her concerned. She’d already guessed exactly what it would take. He wanted to have sex with her. Trey wanted to have sex with her. Men like them would require her total submission, something she’d only done with one other man in her life.
    “What’s his story?” She turned back to the cutting board, vowing to keep herself in line despite the desires both men were awakening inside her. She picked up the knife and moved on to chopping the green onions May had set out for her. “How did he and Trey come to live here?”
    “That’s not my story to tell.” She bumped her shoulder lightly against Lena’s. “Use that question as an ice breaker to get them to talk. Trey’s got some emotions he needs to let out, too, you know? He’s not struggling as bad as Brit, but he could use a good pair of willing ears.”
    “Yeah, I suspected that when we met at the diner yesterday morning.” Had it really only been yesterday morning since she’d met him? Of course, it had. She’d barely been on the ranch eight hours. It was surreal how she felt as if she’d known Trey and been here for so much longer than that.
    “You brought clothes with you, right?”
    Lena blinked at the change of subject. “I have a small bag in the trunk of my car. I figured I would head back to town once we clean up after dinner. I saw a small motel I fi—”
    “You will do no such thing.”
    Though May’s voice remained sweetly conversation, the firmness that outlined the words had Lena snapping her mouth shut.
    “There’s plenty of empty rooms in this house, especially with six of our oldest boys gone. You’ll stay in Rowdy’s room on the third floor. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a bit knowing a pretty thing like you will be sleeping in his bed tonight.” She