Maya Banks - Colters' Lady

Lily looked cautiously at the people standing next to Callie. Adam and Ryan both stared at her like they were trying to pry every single secret she’d ever held right out of her head. Holly, on the other hand, hurried over and immediately gathered Lily in her arms.

“Oh, you poor thing. Is your arm hurting?” She turned to the others. “Adam, come check her arm, and Ryan, you get her something for pain. She’s trembling.”

“She’s probably terrified of you,” Ryan drawled.

Holly frowned ferociously at him.

“I just took some ibuprofen,” Lily said softly. “Dillon gave me some at the pub.”

“Oh well, good, then. Are you still hurting?”

Holly sat down next to her and gestured for Adam to come over.

“I’m okay. Really. I don’t want to be a bother.”

Holly made a dismissive sound and hovered as Adam sank to one knee in front of Lily.

“What happened?” Adam asked softly.

“Wrong place at the wrong time,” Lily said.

“Looks like Michael patched you up good. Do you mind if I check it out?” Despite how fierce Adam looked, he was careful to treat her gently, almost as if he were afraid of scaring her to death. She relaxed and nodded and watched Ryan out of the corner of her eye.

He also watched her. She could feel the questions being hurled at a dizzying rate. They were curious about her but so far had bitten their tongues.

Adam unwrapped the sling and then the gauze around her arm. The bandage stuck with the dried blood, and he carefully pried it away. She winced when it came free and resisted the urge to rub the ache.

“Sorry,” Adam murmured.

“How does it look?” she asked anxiously. “Michael said if it got infected he’d make me go to the hospital.”

Adam chuckled. “Looks like she shares your view of hospitals, Ryan. And it looks good. A little red around the wound but otherwise it looks really clean. I’ll put some antibiotic ointment on it and bandage you back up.”

Her shoulders slumped in relief. “Thank you. You’re very kind.” Ethan ambled into the living room, hands shoved into his pockets. “Lunch is ready. Hope BLTs are okay.”

“Extra bacon?” Lily asked hopefully. Then she flushed because she sounded ungrateful.

Ethan grinned. “I did happen to make some extra. Won’t be any trouble at all to slap a few more pieces on your sandwich.”

Lily smiled then, and the others watched in fascination as the young woman in front of them transformed from merely pretty to absolutely stunning.

“So, what’s going on with you and Lily?” Dillon asked.

Seth leaned against the counter and eyeballed his younger brother. This was a hell of a note. “Michael will be here any minute now. Let’s just wait on him so there’s no rehash.”

“Tell me about her, then.”

Seth saw the tension in Dillon, how he curled his fingers and flexed them in and out at his sides.

Dillon…Dillon was usually laid back and had a complete I-don’t-give-a-fuck attitude about life in general.

Seth had never known him to get his underwear in a knot over a woman.

Until now.

“She’s in trouble,” Seth began.

“What kind of trouble?” Dillon demanded.

“I’m not entirely certain.”

“Someone after her?”

Dillon’s expression had grown stormy, and he looked for the world like he wanted to kick someone’s ass.

“No. I don’t think so, anyway. Hell, I don’t know.”

“What do you know, then?” Dillon asked impatiently.

“I served her in a soup kitchen two days ago. She’s homeless.” Dillon’s scowl grew darker. The muscles in his arms rippled and his jaw tightened. “She’s what?”

“She was living on the streets. I talked her into going home with me. Michael arrived the next morning. I don’t know if he spooked her or what, but she took off. Michael found her in an alleyway, and when he got her back to my house, he discovered she’d been shot during a turf war downtown. We brought her here. It was Michael’s idea. He said everyone was worried about Callie, and well, I wanted Lily somewhere I didn’t have to worry about her running off into the city.” The front door jangled and Michael stepped inside. He looked at his two brothers and his lips twisted as if he knew all too well what had happened. Hell, he’d probably been expecting it.

“I take it he met Lily,” Michael said.

“Yeah, I met her. I want her,” Dillon said bluntly. But then leave it to Dillon to be a caveman when it came to such matters. To him everything was black and white. No in-between. And when he wanted something, he never took no for an answer.

“Yeah, well, there’s a problem with that,” Michael said, surprising Seth.

“She said you both kissed her,” Dillon said casually.

Seth looked sharply at him. “Why were you discussing us kissing her?”

“Because I kissed her too. I think she was warning me off,” he said with a shrug that clearly said it didn’t matter to him whether she was warning him off or not.

“Don’t be an asshole, Dillon,” Michael admonished. “Even you can’t be this dense. Think about it.

All three of us meet her and have this baffling, insane reaction to her?” Dillon gripped the back of his neck and stared Michael down like he was a bug he was about to crush.

“You aren’t convincing me that the three of us are destined to have the same sort of relationship with Lily that our dads have with Mom. That’s crazy.”

Even though Seth found it pretty crazy himself, he felt compelled to speak up. “Why is it so crazy? I mean obviously it’s happened in the past.”

Dillon shook his head. “You’ve lost your fucking mind. Think about what you’re saying. Since when have we ever planned on something like this? I mean yeah, I thought about it like when I was twelve and wondered if we were headed down the same road as the dads, but then I grew up.”

“Look, I didn’t plan on this either,” Michael snarled. “But I’ll be damned if I stand by and allow you or Seth to walk away with Lily. If you want to walk, fine, say the word.”

“Christ,” Seth muttered. “We’re taking a lot for granted here. We’re sitting around deciding Lily’s fate and not one of us has asked her what she wants. We know nothing about her past.”

“I don’t recall the dads asking a lot of dumb, sensitive questions when Mom hit their radar,” Dillon growled.

“Thought you weren’t considering a relationship like they had,” Michael snapped.

“I’m saying their method worked just fine.”

Seth stared hard at Dillon. “Yeah, well, they’re lucky Mom didn’t kick them in the balls. The caveman act might work for you, but it’s not what I’m doing with Lily.”

“You two are actually considering sharing this woman?” Dillon asked incredulously.

Seth’s breath caught. It had been hinted at. He and Michael had danced around the subject, but here it was in black and white.

“Let me ask you this,” Michael said. “If we make her choose. If she even did choose one of us, are the other two ever going to be content to watch their brother have a life with her? This isn’t some passing attraction—at least not for me. What is it going to do to our family for her to be with one of us or none of us? Can either of you really walk away?”

Seth pressed his lips together and ran a hand through his hair. Then he looked up at Dillon.

“This is crazy,” Dillon muttered. “People don’t fall in love at first sight. And definitely not with the same woman.”

“Tell that to the dads,” Michael said. “Tell that to yourself.”

“You want me to decide. Right here and now. I’ve spent ten minutes with her, and you want me to commit to sharing her with my brothers?” Dillon asked incredulously.