Unbreak My Heart (Rough Riders Legacy #1)

“Midnight to noon shifts suck, which is why I mainline caffeine.” I gestured to the groceries strewn across the counters. “What’re you up to?”


“Cooking. Living in this house with Sierra and this dream kitchen has spoiled me. So I’m making Raj dinner. Shish-kebobs, mushroom risotto, arugula salad and angel food cake.”

I whistled. “Lucky man. But I know it’s not his birthday.”

“I wanted to do something nice for him.”

“He’ll appreciate it. Neither one of us is a great cook.”

She started chopping something green.

“So I’ll let you get to it.”

“Stay, if I’m not keeping you from something. I promise I’ll clean up my mess when I’m done and Sierra won’t know I destroyed her kitchen.”

Weird thing to say. “Cool. I’m grabbing a bottle of water. You want one?”

“I’m good. I’ll have a glass of wine when I open the bottle to make the salad dressing.”

I took a seat at the breakfast bar.

Lu lowered her knife and studied me. “It’d probably be good for us to get to know each other better, since Raj is your BFF and Sierra is mine.”

“Agreed. So should I call you Lu or Lucinda Grace?”

“Lu.” She scraped the greens off the cutting board into a small bowl. “Sierra called you to rescue her from luncheon hell?”

“Her dad called me first. Apparently they’d been texting during the event and she told him how much she’d been drinking.”

“Gavin has your phone number?”

“He insisted on having it when I was in Wyoming.”

She smirked. “Of course he did. He usually calls me because he frets about Sierra being around her mom—with good reason.” She paused. “If you know Gavin, then do you know Ellen too?”

I shook my head. “Sierra didn’t talk about her that much when we were in high school. Today was the first time we crossed paths.”

“And your first impression?”

“Nasty bitch who doesn’t deserve to have a daughter as awesome as Sierra.”

“Amen.”

“Have you spent much time around Ellen?” I asked her.

“Enough to know you’re dead on the mark with your opinion of her. I’m sure Sierra told you about Ellen MILF-ing Sierra’s boyfriend. I was around for that fun situation. As well as Ellen groveling for a few weeks, followed by her extreme nastiness when Sierra wouldn’t have anything to do with her.” She shuddered. “The ugly things she said to her own daughter? Shocked the hell out of me.”

“You get along with your parents?”

“Of course. They are awesome. How about yours?”

I doubted Raj had shared my story. “My mother makes Ellen look like a dream. My dad was around as little as possible. Which is why it sucks that I agreed to meet him in Flagstaff the day Ellen gets married.” I fiddled with the cap on my water. “Did Sierra ask you to go to the wedding with her since I can’t?”

“Nope. Ellen is not my biggest fan. She disappeared for a while, maybe…nine months to a year. She didn’t come to Sierra’s college graduation. Then she popped back up with her new boyfriend, Barnacle Bill.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Barnacle Bill?”

Lu laughed. “Now Sierra has me calling him that. She is gonna totally fuck up and call him that to his face one of these days.”

“Where’d the name come from?”

“Sierra came up with it when she was drunk after Ellen bragged about Bill’s big…fishing boat business.”

“Sierra was funny as hell today after I picked her up. Is she always that way when she’s been drinking?”

“Just when she’s drunk. Not after like two drinks. There’s a difference. She doesn’t do it very often, but yeah. She’s funny when she’s around the right people. So you’ve never seen her slam-a-lammered before?”

I swigged my water. “Once, at a party in high school, and it was far from a funny situation.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I forget that you’ve known her that long.”

A timer dinged. Lu used oven mitts to pull a pan from the oven.

A curl of sweet scented steam teased me as she set the pan on a wire rack. “That smells great. It’s not surprising you’ve been roommates for so long since you both like to bake.”

Lu rolled her eyes. “I bake because I like it. Sierra bakes when she has something on her mind or if she’s upset.”

I went still. But my brain sifted back through the times I’d sampled her baked goods.

I’d noticed she had cookies on her desk the day I’d shown up at her office for my Phoenix tour. A result of seeing me the day before?

She’d brought the elaborate brownie coma dessert to McJock Central. Because she found out I’d lied about how long I planned to be in Phoenix?

The morning after our first night together she’d whipped up a loaf of banana bread. In response to everything I’d told her about how fucked up I was?

The night we were at the bar and I’d dealt with Oakley, she’d made cupcakes after we returned home. Due to her crappy day and work and dealing with her mother?

Christ. Why hadn’t I seen the pattern?