Free Paying Their Piper with Passion and Love [Loving in Silver 6] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Lynn Stark

forget about them kissing. And now that he’d put other thoughts into her head? Nope, she wasn’t about to forget anything like that.
    Since Piper didn’t want to discuss the topic any further where they could be overheard, she waited until they were back out on the sidewalk. “Do you think they spent the night together?” Why was she even speculating? It wasn’t any of her business who either man slept with.
    “I do. I know people. Merck wouldn’t kiss anyone, man or woman, if he wasn’t intensely attracted to that person. Come on, my pet, let’s go. I have another surprise for you. Unfortunately you may or may not find this one as pleasant.”
    Piper got in the car and waited for him to close the door and walk around. Once he was inside she looked at him with more than a little puzzlement. “What are you up to, Colt? Who is this someone?”
    Colt sighed and she really began to worry. “It’s someone you should have met a long time ago. Unfortunately it wasn’t my decision to make. I had to wait until this person decided they wanted to meet you.”
    “And this person is?”
    Had her father arrived in Silver and Colt was preparing to act as a mediator between them? There was just no way she wanted to see Douglas Barrows. Not just yet.
    “Your half-brother.” Piper gasped and leaned back against the car’s door, staring at him in disbelief. “He hasn’t wanted to meet you. Not because of anything you did, but because of the whole situation with your father. It’s been very hard on him.”
    With her world spinning, Piper tried to process what her friend was telling her, confessing to her. She had a brother? Well, a half-brother anyway. With her brain going a mile a minute she realized this very well could be the reason why her father had decided not to return to Silver, why he and Colt had gotten into such an argument that neither man had spoken to the other since they had left.
    Piper could understand why Colt had not broken this confidence. This man who was her brother had trusted Colt not to do so, giving him the control as to whether they would ever meet. But why had her father not told her? And did her mother know that Douglas Barrows had fathered a child with another woman?
    “Is he older or younger than I am?”
    She was almost afraid to hear the answer, but she found a desperate need to know every little detail she could. She didn’t have any siblings and getting one was very exciting. And he wasn’t little, either, which was a big plus.
    “Older. He’s a little over two years older than you are.”
    He was twenty-eight or twenty-nine, then. Or close to it. Piper took a shuddering breath. “Then my father knew his mother before he married my mother.” She frowned, not liking what she was hearing. Even if her father hadn’t been a married man, he had a responsibility to the woman and the child he’d fathered. “Did he know about the baby?”
    “Not back then. Rose never told him she was pregnant. It’s my understanding that they didn’t part on good terms and she wanted nothing to do with him. Mink was about six before he learned the man he thought was his father wasn’t. Old enough to understand the harsh words, but not old enough to understand why his biological father hadn’t wanted anything to do with him.”
    “His name’s Mink?”
    “Actually, it’s Melvin. But he prefers Mink.”
    Guessing there was a lot behind that, Piper decided not to take on too much right then. So she focused back on what she thought she could handle. She didn’t know whether she should be angry or not. Not for herself, but for the child who had had to live without the benefit of a father who loved him. Though she hadn’t ever been close to either of her parents, they had never been cruel to her in a verbal or physical sense. They were simply emotionally withdrawn, as if neither of them could quite figure out how to deal with a child. It was something they had never figured out. After encountering