Wild Revenge: The Dangerous Jacob Wilde / The Ruthless Caleb Wilde / The Merciless Travis Wilde

“That’s brilliant.”

“It is, indeed.”

“Well, that’s fine. Because if you’ve dumped my brothers, there’s no need for me to hold back.”

Addison barked out a laugh.

Jake’s mouth thinned.

“That ranch you own? It’s worth exactly what you paid for it.” He smirked. “Unless, of course, you put a higher price on what you gave the poor sucker who left it to you than those services were truly worth—”

Addison slapped his face.

Hard.

The imprint of her hand stood out on his cheek in crimson relief.

“Oh, man,” Travis said, but the words were lost in the sound of a hundred shocked party guests dragging air into their lungs all at the same time.

“No wonder your brothers want to keep you where they can see you,” she said. “You can’t be trusted in polite society.”

His dumbfounded expression told her she’d just scored a perfect shot.

Why hang around and ruin it?

Addison turned her back and faced the crowd.

“Move,” she said, and a path opened like the parting of the Red Sea.

She stomped down that path … and stopped, halfway to the front door. What the hell, she thought, and she turned to face him one last time.

“You’re also a nasty, egotistical, despicable jerk.”

The crowd gasped again, then erupted in a frantic buzz of delighted whispers.

She’d given Wilde’s Crossing enough to talk about for the next decade.

So what?

She was out of here. Not just the Wilde house. She was out of the town, out of the state of Texas.

Back home, at least, she knew the enemy. She wouldn’t be taken in by a pair of brothers who looked like they’d stepped out of an old John Wayne movie, or by a man so tragically beautiful he’d made her heart ache.

Someone stepped out in front of her. A Wilde sister, Emma or Lissa or whatever in hell her name was.

“Miss McDowell. Please—”

“It’s Ms. McDowell. And you have my deepest sympathy.”

Addison stepped around the sister, yanked open the door and stepped into the night.

Travis and Caleb watched her go.

Then they looked at each other, grabbed Jake by the elbows and quick-marched him in the other direction, out the French doors that led to the patio.

“You,” Caleb said, “are an effing idiot.”

“You two are the idiots,” Jake snarled. “Thinking a woman like that could use her wiles to keep me in town—”

“Her wiles,” Travis said to Caleb. “He thinks we set it up so Addison would use her wiles.” His dark blue eyes narrowed. “Nobody’s used their ‘wiles’ since the nineteenth century, Jacob. And even if she had wiles, do you really think we’d ask her to use them?”

“Listen, I understand. You want me to hang around. And she’s a hot piece of—”

“She’s our friend,” Caleb said coldly. “At least, she was, until you got your nose out of joint because you realized she wasn’t coming on to you.”

Jake reddened.

“Why would I want her to come on to me?”

His brothers barked out matching laughs.

“Okay, she’s good-looking. But she was only coming on to me to get me to work for her.”

“Not even you can possibly believe that.”

Jake thought about it. And felt his belly start to knot.

“Okay. Maybe I, ah, maybe I overstated it, but—”

“Here’s how it went down, Jake. You wanted her to come on to you. And when you found out she wasn’t, you were too damned ticked off to admit that was what you wanted, so you decided to accuse her of coming on to you.”

“That,” Jake said coldly, “makes no sense at all.”

“It makes more sense than you do,” Travis said grimly.

“Hey. Just because your plan didn’t work—”

“Goddammit,” Caleb said, “she was right. You’re an egotistical jerk.”

Jake opened his mouth.

And shut it again.

His brothers had tempers. Hell, so did he. They’d chewed each other out before….

But never like this. Never with such intensity …

And maybe never with such honesty.