Second Chance Summer Read online

  with new growth. Once things dried up, it was going to be a hell of a fire season.

  Not that there was any other job he’d prefer. Maybe it was the adrenaline junkie in him, maybe it was just his need for fast-paced action and nonstop adventure, but he thrilled to the insanity that was wildland firefighting.

  He drove through the resort’s lower parking lot past the employee housing and offices, which made him think of Lenny. He’d tried calling him again to check on him, make sure he was okay.

  Lenny had ignored the call.

  Aidan continued on past the base building that held the mountain café, their equipment rental and sales shop, a general store, and the beauty salon. He turned onto the private service road that circled the resort. His truck bumped along on the dirt road, up past the lodge that housed ski and avalanche patrol, first aid, and the ski school to the very last building.

  Originally the three-story log cabin had been the ski lodge. Built in 1920, it held plenty of personality and old rustic charm—emphasis on old. In other words, it was a true POS. There’d been a reason his family had abandoned it for a new ski lodge, but because it was a historic building they hadn’t been allowed to tear it down.

  So Aidan and his siblings had made it their home—or as close to a home as any of them had ever had.

  Not that it was ever as cozy as the word home implied. They were the Kincaids, after all, and there wasn’t much coziness about Aidan or his pack of wild siblings. Although they were a lot less feral than they used to be.

  Cedar Ridge Resort had gone into a tailspin after their dad had started traveling a lot back when Aidan was two years old. Then around the time Aidan became a surly teenager, the truth had come out. Richard Kincaid hadn’t been traveling for business, he’d married another woman and started a second family.

  And then a third.

  To say that discovery of this had been hard on their mom was an understatement. When the dust had cleared, Richard was gone. He’d walked away from all of them.

  Char had done her best to keep the resort going, but her injuries had never completely healed quite right, which made managing on the mountain tough. Plus, she’d had her hands full trying to get the wild, rebellious boys under her roof through school without killing any of them or letting them kill each other. The twins had shown up when they were twelve, and Kenna, from a third family of Richard’s, came a few years later, just before her twelfth birthday, for the ski circuit. The kids, all of them, had been her priority, and she’d done the best she could.

  Gray had taken over for her as soon as he could, gathering in all the wayward half siblings.

  They’d all stuck together—except for Jacob, who’d taken off at age eighteen and joined the army. He hadn’t been seen or heard from since, a fact that drove Hudson nuts.

  In the meantime, Gray, along with his Midas touch and business degree, had worked his ass off. Not to mention pushed, prodded, and bullied the rest of them into doing the same. It’d taken a lot of blood and sweat and maybe a few tears—not that any of them would admit to such a weakness—but they were operating in the black.

  Barely.

  It was a start. And Gray was still cracking the whip hard, coming down on everyone around him. Always had, probably always would. He was the toughest son of a bitch Aidan knew, and he had only one weakness.

  A five-foot-two domino named Penny.

  Okay, so they all had a weakness for Penny, as she’d long ago worked her nosy self into each of their hearts.

  The entire lot of them were like a pack of kittens, they couldn’t stand to be together but they couldn’t stand to be apart either. In the end, secretly starving for togetherness while fighting daily, they’d divided the building up for all of them into four living quarters. Aidan and Hudson were on the bottom floor. Kenna had taken half the second floor, the other half being full of all the crap they’d accumulated over the years. The third story was for the marrieds, Gray and Penny.

  Char lived in a small condo in the town proper and rarely ventured up here to the resort because it brought back bad memories for her. Aidan had the same bad memories, but he was good at locking his shit down tight.

  He parked his truck and jogged up the front steps. He keyed his way in and walked through the foyer, shedding his sweatshirt and shoes as he went.

  They used what was formerly the lodge’s lobby as a living room/secondary office/great room, and the large room was most definitely lived in. The huge, overstuffed and battered leather couches in a wide V in front of a wood-burning stove held a variety of different remotes and several throw blankets, not one of them folded. There was also a flat-screen TV, a sound system, and two dead potted plants gifted to Aidan by an ex who’d been attempting to domesticate him.

  And then there was the coffee table, currently littered with trade magazines and more than a few empty glasses that no one would claim because if you got caught leaving anything out, you had to clean the entire place.

  Penny’s rules. And every one of them was afraid of Penny, so those glasses would not be claimed by anyone with a brain.

  The first thing Aidan heard was yelling. This came as no surprise. The Kincaids didn’t have much in the way of volume control. Yelling was what happened when they were on top of each other night and day. Hopefully at some point they wouldn’t both work together and live in the same building, but for now, for better or worse, no one had made the effort to move away. Maybe because they’d grown up without much family and were making up for lost time. Or maybe it was sheer laziness.

  Home. Sweet. Home.

  By the time he shed his gear and stood in the middle of the living room, where he could also see into the kitchen, the yelling had stopped. He found Gray face-first in his fridge and Kenna sprawled on the couch. Aidan tossed his keys into some fancy bowl Penny had put on the coffee table. “What the hell’s wrong with your own places on your own floors?” he asked.

  “I don’t have a couch yet,” Kenna said.

  Like Hud and Jacob, Kenna hadn’t grown up in Cedar Ridge. Her mom had brought her to Colorado for the skiing, and it hadn’t been long before she’d joined the professional snowboarding circuit and become a world phenom by age fifteen. After that, she hadn’t set down roots anywhere until she’d imploded her life last year. Publicly. Very publicly.

  She still wasn’t on the people train. The only socializing she tolerated was her half brothers, and even then only barely.

  “You can stay,” Aidan told her and looked at Gray. “But not you.”

  Gray scowled. “Why not me?”

  “You’re eating my food.”

  Kenna snorted. “That’s because he texted Penny asking her what was for dinner and she texted back that his dinner was in the cookbook, any page, and that the ingredients were all at the store.”

  “So I came here,” Gray said, mouth full as he foraged, holding up salami and cheddar cheese. “You and Hud stock the good stuff.”

  “It’s called the deli aisle,” Aidan said. “Also at the store.”

  “Penny won’t let me have salami or dairy,” he said. “Says it makes me gassy. You should see the stuff in our fridge, it’s all green and ‘healthy’ shit that”—he used air quotes—“cleans our colon.”

  Aidan grimaced. “That’s—”

  “Disgusting,” Kenna filled in. “And let me perform a public service announcement here and tell you that you seriously overshare.” She stood up.

  Gray pointed at her. “Stay.”

  “Um, yeah, hi. My name is Kenna and I’m the boss of me. Not you.”

  “Goddammit,” Gray said. “You’re not going back to your cave and holing up for another night.”

  “Again,” she said icily, heading toward the door. “I call my own plays.”

  “Hold up,” Aidan said, and snagged her hand before she could escape, pulling her around to face him. “What’s going on?”

  Kenna gave him a pointed look that said, Ask Gray.

  Behind her, Gray circ