Garrett jerked awake.

Golden sunlight illuminated the room. He wiped a line of drool from his bearded chin and blinked, not recognizing his surroundings with the bright red sofa and ottoman, nor the toy section in the far corner. Shit. He must have dozed off. This was Cora’s place. He wondered how pissed off she would be that he had inadvertently spent the night. As his vision adjusted to the way too fucking bright light streaming in through the windows, he sensed a body next to him on the couch. Glancing to his left, he discovered Milo sitting on the couch beside him in a navy pajama onesie with feet, munching on some type of dry breakfast cereal from a bowl.

“Hey there, squirt.”

“You were asleep, like this,” Milo said and imitated him tossing his head back and opening his mouth wide.

“Yeah, that I was. What do you have there?” Garrett indicated the bowl in the boy’s hand.

“Crunch berries. Do you have a horse? Mama says that cowboys ride horses and have a dog.”

Garrett grinned, charmed by the kid in spite of himself and the fact that he needed a cup of coffee like he needed air to breathe. “You like horses?”

“Yep. I can’t ride them yet. And I like dogs. Mama says I can have a dog.”

“Is that right? Well, I’ll tell you a secret. Some of my good friends own lots of horses. Maybe I could take you both to meet them one day. Would you like that?”

Milo nodded with a huge grin on his cherubic face. Garrett could see parts of Cora in her son. The shape of his pale blue eyes, the line of his nose, even his golden skin tone, but the rest must belong to her deceased husband.

After seeing Cora in action last night, he could only imagine the weight she carried, being a single parent without a choice. From what he’d seen, she was doing a bang-up job. Even under the weather, Milo was intelligent and sweet.

And then he heard it, a series of loud, clapping farts, and he glanced at the little boy.

“Was that you?” Garrett asked with a raised brow.

Milo nodded and giggled. “Mama doesn’t like it when I fart.”

“Yes, well, she’s a girl and they don’t get these things. It’s something that us guys like to do.” Garrett wiggled his brows at him. Milo threw his head back and laughed. The kid laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. His joy was contagious and before Garrett realized it, he was laughing with the boy.

“Baby, what are you getting into?” Cora said, entering the room. Garrett glanced her way and almost sawed off his tongue. For a woman who’d gotten hardly any sleep, she looked fresh and rested. Gone was her waitress uniform, in its place were a pair of dark blue skinny jeans and an ultra-feminine gauzy cream top. Her hair was pulled back in a braid. Simple. Elegant. And he wanted her again.

When she spied him, her eyes narrowed, and a hard glint entered them. “What are you still doing here?”

“We needed to talk.” He could be just as stubborn as she, and he wanted to figure out what had happened. Why she’d suddenly freaked out and shoved him away after their world-altering sex. Because he didn’t think it had anything to do with her son being awake and crying for her or a need to protect Milo. There was more to her backpedaling and the way she’d shut him out than that.

“So you stayed all night?” she asked sweetly. He didn’t miss the undertone of fury coating her words. If they were alone, she wouldn’t be holding back and hiding her rage. She was clenching and unclenching her hands into fists, almost like she wanted to wring his neck.

“Not intentionally. I sat down to wait for you to return so we could talk and I nodded off,” he said with a shrug, mindful of the young ears in the room paying attention to their entire interaction.

“Wish I would have known that sooner. Then I could have had you drive me to my car instead of calling someone to come get me. Milo has a doctor’s appointment this morning.”

“Who’s taking you?” he asked. She was new in town, so she couldn’t have made that many friends yet. Whom had she called? And why was he upset that she hadn’t thought to contact him? Never mind the fact that she didn’t have his number. It was asinine of him, he knew.

“My cousin.” She tilted her head as if she was listening to something only she could hear.

And then he heard the rumble of a truck pulling into the drive. At the noise, Milo climbed off the couch and ran to the window on his short legs. He peered through the curtains, then started jumping up and down, yelling, “Uncle, uncle!”

Cora strode to the front door with a tight smile on her face. Maybe Garrett should have gone home last night—er, this morning. Who was her cousin? He had to admit he was decidedly curious.

Cora opened her oak front door. “Hey, thank you so much for coming.”

“Not a problem. Whose truck is in the driveway?” a voice Garrett was all too familiar with asked. Dread settled in the pit of his stomach. Cora took a step back to give the man room to enter. Spencer Collins ambled into her place pretty much like he did everything else, with utter surety. He and Garrett had been friends since they had met in the army more than a decade past.

More often than not, Spencer could be found looking every inch the business man. But not this morning. Today he was dressed in a long sleeved black tee with the Harley Davidson logo, blue jeans, black cowboy boots, and a dark baseball cap worn backwards and covering most of his midnight hair.

Spencer’s gaze lasered in on Garrett on Cora’s couch and his black eyes narrowed for a moment, sprinting past shock at finding him there to barely leashed fury. Garrett had witnessed that look on Spencer’s face before—right before he had all but obliterated an opponent in the boxing ring.

Garrett had never had Spencer’s love of boxing. Not that he couldn’t hold his own in a fight, because he could; the army had taught him that. But at the moment, he was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Cora was Spencer’s cousin.

Garrett had screwed up. Massively.

One of the cardinal rules of their club: you don’t fuck your friend’s family members. At least, not without prior consent and approval. Garrett realized he’d not only stepped into a pile of horse manure but had already waded neck deep into the shit.

“Uncle!” Milo raced over to Spencer. Spencer bent down and scooped Milo up as if he’d done it a hundred times. The fury he’d glared Garrett’s way vanished as he turned his attention toward the boy.

“How’s my dude? I hear you’re not feeling well, little man,” Spencer said, assessing the child for adverse symptoms. Spencer even felt the kid’s forehead for a fever. When the hell had Spencer become Mister Mom? Garrett wasn’t sure what he was more surprised by—that Cora was Spencer’s cousin or that Spencer seemed right at home with a toddler.

“I have a fever. Mama said I go to the doctor and get a lollipop to make me better,” Milo said, smiling up at Spencer.

“Oh yeah? Well, you get to ride in my truck today too,” Spencer said with a wink and grin.

Milo screamed, a rather ear-piercing, loud, excited scream. Garrett was certain if there was an award for screams that could wake the dead, Milo would win.

“Milo, cut that out and come here so we can get you dressed. The sooner we get your clothes on the sooner you get to ride in Uncle Spencer’s truck,” Cora said, reaching for her son. She picked him up out of Spencer’s arms.

“We’ll be right back, and then we can leave. Garrett, you know the way out.” She nodded toward the door, dismissing him entirely.

“We still need to talk later, Cora,” Garrett murmured but finally stood. His body creaked with movement, stiff from sleeping upright. A glance at the clock in the kitchen told him he’d gotten roughly four hours of sleep. Fan-fucking-tastic.

After Cora and Milo had vacated the room, taking the stairs to the second floor, Spencer turned his black gaze on Garrett. That saying, if looks could kill a body they would be dead? Yeah, that was precisely the way Spencer was regarding him, with his eyes narrowed into angry slits, as if he was imagining the myriad number of ways he planned to kill Garrett. And Garrett knew from first-hand experience that Spencer was as lethal as they came.

“I’m going to ask you one time, no bullshitting me, what the fuck are you doing at my cousin’s house?” Spencer snarled, his voice deceptively low and laced with an undercurrent of menace.

Garrett held his hands up, palms out in a defensive manner, attempting to diffuse the situation even as he stood his ground. “Spencer, stay out of it. I didn’t know she was your cousin.”

“Like hell I will.” Spencer strode toward him, his fists clenched and murder in his eyes.

Garrett wouldn’t back down from his stance, regardless that he considered Spencer his brother from another mother and respected the hell out of him. He’d not known that Cora was Spencer’s cousin and, truthfully, not even that would have deterred him from being with her. Cora did something to him on a fundamental level. He was drawn to her, craved her like a dieter craved sweets.

“Look, I didn’t intend to break our club rules. If I’d known—”

“Uncle, Uncle. Truck.” Milo came rushing back into the living room, clapping his little hands, interrupting their conversation. It was just as well. The wrath emanating from Spencer would be far too destructive. If Spencer wanted to get in a few jabs, he could. But not here in Cora’s home. He wouldn’t bring violence here, not when she already had too much to deal with on a daily basis.

Spencer shot Garrett an insidious glare and then, in a Jekyll and Hyde move, turned a smiling face down to the boy.

“Good luck at the doctor, Milo,” Garrett said, then headed to the front door. It wasn’t the best exit he’d ever made, but he needed to get out of there and clear his head a bit. Things had gone from this should be exciting, potentially claiming a new submissive, to an intense, disastrous clusterfuck.

“This isn’t over,” Spencer said before Garrett was able to escape.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Cora walk back into the living room. It would have made him feel better if the woman looked at all flustered by the situation. But she didn’t. Cool as a cucumber, that one. And damn it all if he didn’t want to ruffle her feathers a bit, break through her stalwart composure to the soft, sweetly submissive woman underneath. “I didn’t figure it was. Cora, I’ll talk to you later.”

Then Garrett escaped while he could. Climbing into his truck, watching the three of them emerge from her condo, he grimaced. That had not gone well. As much as he wanted to blame it on his lack of sleep and need for caffeine, it was much more than that. Cora was Spencer’s cousin. How had he not known that tiny but rather important fact? Seeing them side by side, he realized there was a hint of family resemblance. Not necessarily in their features, but in their bearing and the way they carried themselves.

And Garrett realized, cousin or not, he would still want her. Would still break club rules to have her. Would still be planning to claim her. As he backed out of her driveway and put his truck in drive, he felt his entire world shift.

He rubbed his chest as he drove away, uncertain how to deal with his newfound feelings.