No Place Like Home (Siren Publishing Ménage and More)

No Place Like Home

At eighteen, Cassie Monroe knew she loved Jackson and Markus Lansing, the twenty-one-year-old twin brothers of her best friend Annie. And she knew that they liked to share woman. Because she loved them both, she worked up her nerve to offer herself to them both and was humiliated when they rejected her. Heartbroken, she went away to university and avoided coming home.

But, seven years later, when Annie makes her an offer that's "too good to refuse," the timing's perfect as she's just dumped her cheating fiancé and the twins are working in the big city. What she doesn't know is that Jackson and Markus have moved back as well. This time they don't intend to let her get away. Should she take a chance and give them her heart again, or maybe a fling with the handsome brothers would get them out of her system for good?

Note: There is no sexual relationship or touching for titillation between or among siblings.

Genre:
Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

Length:
24,266 words
 

Diane Leyne

MENAGE AND MORE

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

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IMPRINT: Ménage and More

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Copyright © 2013 by Diane Leyne

E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-597-6

First E-book Publication: March 2013

Cover design by Christine Kirchoff

All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED:
This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

PUBLISHER

Siren Publishing, Inc.

www.SirenPublishing.com

Letter to Readers

Dear Readers,

If you have purchased this copy of
 
No Place Like Home
 
by Diane Leyne from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

Regarding E-book Piracy

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The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

This is Diane Leyne’s livelihood.
 
It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Leyne’s right to earn a living from her work.

Amanda Hilton, Publisher

www.SirenPublishing.com

www.BookStrand.com

To everyone who has finished a book and thought “I can do that.” You never know until you try.

Thanks to the great team at Siren for giving me this opportunity.

DEL

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

DIANE LEYNE

Copyright © 2013

It felt like she’d been driving forever, but it had really only been less than two hours. Cassie’s ancient SUV ate up the miles, bringing her closer and closer to home. Cassie hadn’t been home in more than seven years. She’d left at eighteen to go to university and had never come back, not even to see her parents. Of course, they’d left the week after her. They’d seen her off to school and sold the house and left a week later for early retirement in Arizona.

Cassie loved her folks. And she couldn’t begrudge them their move. Her mom’s arthritis had gotten progressively worse in the damp northwest, making it harder and harder for her to paint. So her dad had retired from the high-power law firm he was partner in, and they’d gone south. All of her school holidays had been spent in Scottsdale with them. Of course, her dad hadn’t been able to relax and play golf for long. He now had a thriving part-time legal aid practice, and he loved it. And her mom’s arthritis was reduced to the occasional twinge, and she was painting better than ever.

And now Cassie was going home to Hope to help her best friend Annie Lansing run Abigail’s Flowers now that Miss Abigail had retired and the business was just too much work for Annie, now that she was expecting baby number three.

No, the move was the right thing for them, and the right thing for her. She felt her face redden when she thought of that last summer in Hope. She’d spent her days working in Abigail’s Flowers and Nursery, like she’d done every summer and after school since she could remember. She loved flowers and plants and making them grow and thrive. She’d been fascinated visiting the nursery for the first time to get a Christmas tree with her family when she was only four. She’d declared right on the spot that she was going to work there when she grew up. Miss Abigail laughed and said that she’d have a job waiting but she was welcome to visit any time. And visit she did. Every time she went to town with her mother, she always visited the flower shop, and it was there, when she was eleven, that she met Annie. Annie was Miss Abigail’s granddaughter. She had come to live with her grandmother after her widowed father was transferred to London. He’d be working twelve-hour days setting up the new office, so it was decided that Annie would stay with her grandmother until things settled down in London.

She had two older brothers, Jackson and Markus, twins, although they didn’t look like it, who had just started university, so Cassie barely saw them, and they chose to spend their summers in London, working in their father’s office and chasing English girls. Annie’s father came back to Hope for Christmas and a couple of times during the year. Annie visited him twice a year, and once, during March Break, Cassie went with her. London was amazing, but Cassie was happy to get back to Hope.

Together they went after school to the nursery to help Abigail. Cassie learned about watering and pruning and propagating and loved all things to do with plants. She had a natural green thumb. Annie, on the other hand, could kill a plant just by looking at it, it seemed, and while she helped with the watering, mostly she kept to the other chores like tidying up and dealing with the customers. Cassie loved it. She even spent her allowance buying up every book she could find on plants and haunted all of the local book stores including the secondhand bookstores, spending all of her allowance on books about plants.

It was a very happy few years. Annie’s dad came back as often as his firm would let him, and after three years overseas, transferred back to the Seattle office. But Annie loved Hope and stayed with her grandmother, seeing her father on weekends. She didn’t see much of her brothers. They were seven years older, and never had time for a little kid, so she didn’t really miss them. Cassie and Annie were like sisters. Life was good.

And then came the summer when she was fourteen, and Jackson and Markus had come home for the summer. They’d just finished their bachelor’s degrees and were spending a few weeks at home before starting Harvard Law School. Of course, they weren’t spending the whole summer, not in a dull little town like Hope, not when they could be in London or New York or some other big city when things were happening.

Cassie had met them before, but never spent much time with them. She was the same age as their baby sister and, thus, beneath their notice. Which was okay with her. She had no interest in boys other than the normal crush on a pop singer. That changed when she was fourteen. She and Annie were coming back from the greenhouse, dirty and dripping with sweat when Annie took off at a run to throw herself into the arms of the two tall young men walking with Abigail.

Cassie approached slowly and cautiously. She was conscious of her tank top, damp with sweat, clinging to the budding breasts she’d just developed in the last year and how her hair was dirty and pulled back from her face in a ponytail that had partially come down. And she’d never felt so self-conscious of the differences between her and them. Annie was tall like her brothers. It was already clear that she was going to be tall. She was five seven and not finished growing. At the same age, Cassie was barely over five feet tall, and her figure could best be described as “sturdy.” And her fiery red hair could never be tamed. The best she could do was grow it long enough to be tied back and out of the way. Annie loved feminine things and had recently begun experimenting with makeup and fashion, but she hadn’t “blossomed” yet and envied Cassie her breasts. Cassie could have done without them being so prominent. They brought her unwanted attention from boys and just got in the way when she was crawling in the dirt working with the plants.

By the time she got there, Annie was standing between her brothers, an arm around each. But they weren’t boys any more. They were men. Jaw-droppingly handsome men. They were both several inches over six feet. Jackson had dark hair and the same startling blue eyes as Annie and Abigail, but with the dark hair, they stood out even more. His shoulders were broad, and his arms corded with muscle. Annie had told her both boys were competitive rowers, and it was easy to see the effects on their bodies. Markus was a shade taller than his twin, and blond rather than brunette, but had the same easy grin and blue, blue eyes.

As Cassie slowly approached, all eight blue eyes turned to her. Two sets were happy and excited, and two were slightly amused as they took in her disheveled state. Never before had Cassie cared what she looked like or what a boy thought of her, but right at that moment, she wished the ground could have opened up and swallowed her rather than approach those mocking blue eyes looking like she’d been crawling around in the dirt, which she had been. Why couldn’t she look like Annie who looked like she’d been sitting around sipping tea in a drawing room rather than rooting round in the dirt? She realized she had dirt underneath her nails and her hands were dirty, so she thrust them into her pockets. She tried to escape, mumbling her excuses, but Annie wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted Cassie stay for lunch like she always did.