The plans he’d seen for a mega resort the likes of which their small town had never seen, were underway. They’d received the necessary approvals, and now the only thing left to do was to secure the land. Travis had already bought out two of their adjacent neighbors, acquiring a good three hundred acres of decrepit old farmland, but he hadn’t been satisfied with that. Now he was looking for another hundred that backed up to what they’d already purchased. Only this land belonged to Carl Stranford, an ornery old farmer who had been giving them the runaround for the better part of the last six months.

“Call him,” Zane’s tone was laced with sarcasm. “Or better yet, go see him. Maybe some of your macho intimidation will make him come to a decision,”

Kaleb groaned.

Zane was the youngest of seven and considering the age difference between him and Travis, he didn’t remember much of the Travis they had all grown up with. The fun loving, hang on by the seat of your pants guy they’d all wanted to be like. But that man never returned from the four year stint in the Army. In his place was the grouchy, unsmiling man that sat before them now.

“I might just do that,” Travis snapped, before turning and walking out of the room.

When the screen door slammed behind their brother, Zane turned to Kaleb. “Why don’t you go talk to Carl? Or better yet, Zoey?”

“What does Zoey have to do with this?”

Zane liked to give Kaleb shit about Carl Stranford’s only daughter. Not only had she been Kaleb’s closest female friend for the better part of the last decade, she was also the woman Kaleb had always wanted, but never had. Despite the ever present physical attraction, he’d somehow managed to be friends with her without ever trying to push it any further, although he’d wanted to.

More than wanted to.

Since she’d never shown even an inkling of interest in him other than friendship, Kaleb had opted to take what he could get and they’d established a very solid friendship. Hell, the woman knew everything there was to know about him and most of his brothers, yet she still chose to associate with him, so he considered himself lucky.

They were infamous in their little town, but that was mostly due to their wild and crazy behavior since about the time each of them could walk. They were a rowdy bunch, and there was a long list of rumors associated with them – some true, some not entirely true. For whatever reason, Zoey chose to ignore them, and for that, he was grateful.

Not that Zoey Stranford wasn’t as wild as they came. That was partly what he found so damn attractive about the woman. She didn’t care what other people thought about her, and it seemed her one goal was to have fun and not hurt anyone in the process.

So, he’d mastered the art of pretending when it came to Zoey. First and foremost, he was her friend, but that wasn’t the problem. His issue was in learning to hide the unbridled lust burning deep and hot for as long as he’d known her.

And since his brothers had dubbed her the one woman who wouldn’t give him the time of day, they loved to give him a hard time about her.

It certainly wasn’t a hardship being friends with Zoey, but it had gotten increasingly more difficult in the last few years. Ever since she and that jackass Jason Tribbons divorced, Kaleb did everything he possibly could to make sure he kept his feelings for her hidden. But hell, he wasn’t a saint and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could pull off the charade.

“Zoey doesn’t have any say in what her father does with that land,” Kaleb added as he watched the wheels turn in Zane’s head. His little brother was going to piss him off, he could feel it.

“Yeah, but she likes you,” Zane goaded. “I’m sure if she goes running to daddy, telling him her boy toy wants to buy the land, he’d sell it in a heartbeat,”

Boy toy? “I know you’ve got something better than that,” Kaleb pushed.

Kaleb had grown quite fond of his own dick over the years, and he didn’t have any intentions of losing it, thank you very much. Carl Stranford would just as soon cut off Kaleb’s dick than let him date his daughter.

Carl was an overprotective son of a bitch when it came to his one and only daughter, and he and Zoey had had to clarify their friendship on more than one occasion over the years. Granted, Carl was close to eighty now, and Zoey was very much a grown woman who didn’t let her daddy tell her whom she could see, but still...

Hell, he’d expected Carl to answer the damn door with a shotgun in his hand the night he had taken Zoey to her senior prom. Thankfully Carl hadn’t, but that was probably due to Zoey’s mother who had liked Kaleb. Not that Kaleb could blame the man. If a nineteen year old man had the balls to show up on his doorstep asking to take his seventeen year old daughter to the prom, Kaleb knew damn well that young man would know how acquainted he was with his gun collection.

But true to his word, even back then when he was ruled by hormones alone, Kaleb never laid a finger on Zoey, no matter how badly he wanted to. And to this day, he’d never so much as kissed her, and his dick knew it all too well.

Shaking off the thought, Kaleb pushed himself out of his chair. “I’ll go talk to Carl. Until we get that land, Travis won’t let it go,”

“Nope, he won’t,” Zane agreed as he stood. “Tell Zoey hello for me,”

“Fuck off,” Kaleb grinned as he walked out the back door.

Not fifteen minutes later, Kaleb was pulling up to Carl Stranford’s house, wishing like hell he didn’t have to do this again today. Thankfully Zoey’s truck wasn’t in the driveway, which meant she was probably working – something Kaleb should’ve been doing. Instead, he’d get the pleasure of explaining to Carl yet again what he wanted and why he was there.

He pulled around to the back of the house, put the truck in Park and climbed out. Stealing himself for the conversation to come, Kaleb took a deep breath and looked around. With the sun shining bright and not a single cloud in the sky, Kaleb took in the vast landscape, looking off to the south as he tried to picture the entrance to the resort as Travis envisioned it.

He could see the massive wrought iron gates in his mind, the ones that would be manned twenty four hours a day by security, allowing only those invited to come inside. Kaleb had seen the artwork for the gates design, including the large “A” and “I” that would be welded into the intricate iron design. Alluring Indulgence, the name he and his brothers all agreed on.