Heart So Sweet: Book 3 in the Great Plains Romance Series Read Online Free Page A

together while all the boys stayed in the farmhouse. After their parents had passed—first mom due to cancer, then dad due to heartbreak from living without his wife—Susannah and her brothers continued life on the farm as usual. Theirs was not a typical farm family arrangement, but it worked for them.
    She walked up the lane and went right by the farmhouse to the bungalow. She wanted a shower to wash the afternoon away before she faced her brothers. She could hear them shouting in the farmhouse, no doubt sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for her to make dinner for them. Did they even realize she’d been gone all day? Probably not. And they likely wouldn’t care, unless dinner was too late. She and Lucas were the only ones who could cook, and Susannah was the first to admit that Lucas’s culinary skills far outshone her own, but letting him work with razor sharp knives and scalding oil required constant supervision since he’d come home, which meant it was just easier for everyone if Susannah did all the cooking.
    She snorted as she mounted the steps to the bungalow. “Easier for everyone but me.”
    Another round of shouting erupted from the farmhouse, and Susannah paused to look back. Her brothers were unusually rowdy tonight. She hoped they weren’t being too crude, especially if Jenny was around. Her brothers all adored their niece, but they tended to forget that she was only nine years old. She was the only one Lucas spoke to anymore, so she often served as his interpreter.
    Deciding to sit and enjoy the early evening breezes, Susannah sat on the bungalow steps and considered Lucas for a moment. She adored her oldest brother, and she wasn’t the only one. He was a gentle soul who was always looking out for everyone else. He deserved all the happiness in the world, not the hand that had been dealt to him. The war and his wife’s death changed him, and he hadn’t spoken to anyone since returning home for the funeral. No one except Jenny, and half the time Susannah thought they communicated without any words at all.
    He was such a different man now than before he left. Gregarious and good-natured, he’d been quite popular in school. Girls had chased him, and boys wanted to be invited into his circle of friends. Lucas welcomed everybody, but he had only one real friend: Tate Trudell. The two had been inseparable for as long as Susannah could remember. She frowned. Inseparable until the terrorist attacks in New York, when suddenly they had disagreed so vehemently on how to deal with the threat of terrorism that Lucas had told Tate he was no longer welcome at their house. Susannah had been furious. She’d just hit puberty and was finally growing curves in all the right places. She knew she’d finally be able to attract the eye of her brother’s best friend. Instead, Tate had just disappeared. Not long after, Lucas joined the Army.
    “Hi, Aunt Suz. Bye, Aunt Suz.”
    Susannah looked up, startled by the gangly legs running past her down the stairs.
    “Hey, Jenny, wait a minute.”
    Jenny swung around with a deep sigh and an overly dramatic eye-rolling. Susannah hid her laugh.
    “I don’t have time, Aunt Suz.” Jenny Clark had the same coloring and build as her father and aunt, which they got from their mother: earthy red hair that preferred curls, emerald green eyes, a smattering of freckles, and a tallness that belied her age. She was only in fifth grade but already stood taller than most eighth graders. “Going to grandma and grandpa’s for the week.”
    Susannah was proud of her brother for making sure that Jenny spent time with her maternal grandparents, even if it meant making a six-hour round-trip drive every week. “Okay, I won’t keep you. Just let the boys know it’s sandwich night.”
    Sandwich night was their code for dinner on their own. They didn’t actually eat sandwiches because that would involve making food and Andrew, Daniel, and Jonathan simply wouldn’t do that. Instead they’d