Chapter one
Angus
Lunch atOn the Flyhad put me in a mood. Usually, I had a good time joking with my buddies, but this time all they could talk about was the physical change in me and what it was like to live with two omegas. Driving home, I kept going over everything they’d said.
“It’s obvious living around that unmated omega is doing you good. You don’t even walk with a cane anymore.”
“Why don’t you mate the boy? If you don’t, the government will come and pick him up.”
How did they even find out he was at my house? We’d done our best to keep it a secret, but Jessup was a small town and the people in it were nosey as hell.
When I forcefully pushed those thoughts away, there was Colt, standing in my mind’s eye looking as sexy as ever and looking at me with those vulnerable gray eyes. For a while, he’d avoided me like the plague, but I wasn’t having it. I forced him to start coming around again. Now, he was having dinner with us again on the days he helped out, but he was sure keeping himself at arms’ length.
I missed the days he used to help me with physical therapy in my bedroom, and we’d get up to some shenanigans afterward. But I didn’t need physical therapy anymore, and Colt didn’t seem inclined to continue the rest of it.
I’d been happily married for forty years before my Lucy passed away from a sudden heart attack a few years ago, not long before I fucked up my legs in an accident with a hay baler. The last thing I expected was to fall for a man, much less another alpha. What can two alphas do? Well, they could give each other hand jobs, that much I knew. But I certainly would like a piece of Colt’s round ass. Sighing, I took a right onto the road leading to my ranch.Thatwas never going to happen. No self-respecting alpha would allow a cock up his ass.
Maybe he wised up and realized he was messing around with a man twenty-five years his senior. Maybe he got a beta boyfriend he’s screwing.
Maybe he has no idea how you feel because he’s not a mind reader, Angus Alfred Angel.
That was decidedly Lucy’s voice. I’d gone four years without a word, and suddenly she was talking to me in my head.
Maybe it was old age.
Angus!
“All right, honey,” I said aloud. Sheesh. I was being nagged from the grave.
Chapter two
Colt
I’d told myself more than once over the last few years that I shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Angus Angel. A long-time neighbor, he and his late wife, Lucy, had been friends of my parents. Growing up, I saw him occasionally when I helped out on his ranch. At that time, he’d been a robust man who’d always had a smile on his face and a jest on his lips. He loved his wife and bore the death of his son and daughter-in-law with quiet grief. He loved his grandson, Maddox, although it was obvious he wasn’t sure what to do with him.
When Lucy died six years ago, the light left Angus’ eyes. I felt his loss every time I looked at him. Then, as though the Universe had one more terrible test for him, an accident on the ranch left his legs mangled. Crippled and still grieving, Angus stopped trying. It took weeks for Maddox and me to get him to use a wheelchair.
I knew Maddox was restless under the vast skies of North Platte country, and although I didn’t feel that way, I could understand it. Angus and I shared a love of fishing, so I started asking him to go with me. The day he finally agreed and I tookhim to the river had been a triumph. Next, I started needling him to let me help him with his physical therapy, since he’d run off the lady who came to the house to do it. While I put him through his exercises, we talked about books, work on the ranch, and life in general. I’m not sure when it happened, but I fell for him. It was crazy—there was a large age difference between us, and we were both alphas. Unsurprisingly, Angus and I butted heads all the time, but instead of making me dislike him, it…well. It turned me on. And one day during one of our physical therapy sessions, I went too far.
I still don’t know why Angus didn’t punch me in the face that day, but he didn’t. And, somehow, after that mutual hand job, our friendship turned into a friends-with-benefits arrangement. We never kissed, or did anything other than jack each other off, but it was sex, and it meant something to me, if not to Angus.
I had a feeling I was just a way to let off stress.
Maddox started taking side jobs for a private investigator, and was gone from the ranch for days at a time. Then he was gone for weeks, and his cousin Doug took over watching Angus . I almost didn’t make it through that. Doug was the most complaining person I’d ever met. Then Maddox came home with an omega mate. Angus and I were shocked. But nobody who met David—the omega—could possibly dislike him. He had a sweet nature and was eager to help anybody do anything in order to earn his keep. I quickly saw that his presence was good for Angus. Things got a little better, and Angus and I kept up our friends-with-benefits activities.
David was very worried about a friend of his, another omega, who was on the run. One day, he showed up on the ranch, cute as a button with his dark hair and sienna-colored eyes and deep dimples. That very night Angus bonded with him. Not on purpose—Angus heard Ben having a nightmare and went to see about him. He didn’t even realize that, by comforting Ben, he’dstarted a bond. I couldn’t say for sure that he even realized it now, although my guess was that he was beginning to.
So, I backed off from Angus. I stopped coming around as much, and when I did, I didn’t stay to eat dinner. I still helped Angus with physical therapy, but I left his bedroom door open and got out of there quickly.
And Angus was thriving. I don’t know if he got a second lease on life or what, but he both looked and acted younger. He got out of the wheelchair and started using a cane and doubled his efforts exercising his legs.
And all for Ben.
I knew when I was the loser in a situation.
I was sitting on the fence of the horse pasture thinking all this over while watching David, Ben, and Trey—Bert Jenkins’ omega—work in the garden. It was a warm spring day, and we were all glad the long, snowy winter was over, although it was mud season. David and Trey’s babies, Ollie and Bertie, were asleep side-by-side in a portable crib under the elm tree a few feet away. Angus had gone to town to have lunch with his buddies, and Maddox and Bertram were out checking fences on the property. I’d just spent an hour cleaning out the hogs’ area before washing up in the outdoor shower and changing my clothes. I enjoyed watching the three omegas work diligently to get the vegetables planted, laughing as they talked.
Blond, brunette, and auburn heads leaned close together over the soil as they planted rows of carrots, lettuce, and radishes. The animated looks on all three of their young faces made me smile. Although it was warm, Ben had on short sleeves, and he had a tendency to either burn or freckle. From where I sat, I could see the tip of his nose was getting pink already.