Awakening Her Racy Passion [Racy Nights 9] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (23 page)

Maybe that’s what she should be talking about? Asking their advice? How do you work up the courage to tell two men you’re crazy about them, and want to spend your life with them? Surely asking that wouldn’t be gossiping, would it?

Trent picked up food at Nan’s Place then took it back to the condo he shared with his twin. As they ate, Wyatt asked Trent if Paul would give him shit about checking his text messages all evening.

“Fuck him if he does. I want to watch this play out on my phone. How many minutes do you figure she’ll tell us she gossiped before this is over tonight?”

Wyatt swallowed the food in his mouth. “I’m guessing at least an hour.”

“That’s three hundred swats. She’s taken one hundred from us during a play session, but would you really expect us to give her three times that?”

“Well, the idea really isn’t to paddle her until she cries, is it? It’s to make her aware of what comes out of her mouth under extreme social circumstances.”

Trent chuckled. “Yeah. Good label. ‘Extreme social circumstances’. Can’t get more extreme for a girl like Ria than a night out with her friends. You know what I loved? When she let us know they’d asked her to come out with them. I could feel her joy in the text, you know? It made her so happy.”

Wyatt watched him carefully for a few seconds, until Trent began to feel like a bug under a microscope.

“What? What did I say?”

“It’s not what you said. It’s the look in your eyes right now.”

“What’s your point?”

Wyatt picked up his cheeseburger and took a huge bite.

“Answer me. What’s your point? What look do I have in my eyes?”

“Nothing.”

“Bullshit. I know that expression. What’s on your mind?”

“Is this difficult for you? I mean, does sharing her like this dredge up bad memories of Deanna?”

Trent hadn’t been expecting that. They hadn’t discussed Deanna in weeks. And, he didn’t believe that was what had really been on Wyatt’s mind. “No, not at all. This is consensual. That wasn’t. Why? Does it bother you to share her?”

“No, it doesn’t. And yes, that surprises me about myself. But what you said is true. This is consensual, and that’s the difference. However, I’d be lying if I said I don’t sometimes wonder what will happen long term. We should discuss that.”

“You, discussing a long-term relationship?”

“Yep. I think we need to. Don’t you?”

Trent stared at his twin, and wondered why he hadn’t seen it before. Or, maybe he had, but he’d been so busy marveling at his own feelings, he’d completely missed the fact that Wyatt felt the same way about Ria. She touched a part of him that he thought had died in that house in Indy almost eight months ago. He was wrong. It was alive and well, and Ria had not only touched it, she’d claimed it for life.

Wyatt was watching him carefully again, and they didn’t need to communicate with words to each realize the same thing, at the exact same time. Wyatt started to laugh first, and Trent soon followed. They slapped their knees, wiped at tears, and finally pushed away their uneaten food.

“Holy fuck,” said Wyatt. “You know, I can say this now. Each time two of them—Noah and Adison, Luke and Chase, Maddox and Sean, Chad and Dustin, Rafe and Ellis, Thayer and Evan, Zach and Harrison, and Storm and Cameron—came to the rest of us and said ‘I’m in love,’ I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for the poor bastards or shake their hands.”

Trent nodded. He’d missed all that, but Wyatt had kept him informed on the phone.

“And I used to think, ‘better you than me.’ I’m too busy with my job, blah, blah, blah. But that’s not true, is it? I’m so in love with Ria it’s not even funny. And you are, too. Am I right?”

Trent nodded again. “Head over heels crazy in love. But what the fuck do we do about this? I mean seriously? Can we do this?”

Wyatt shrugged. “Why not? The others do. Hell, a few of them didn’t even like each other at first. Noah and Adison practically hated each other. And Maddox and Sean hadn’t spoken more than a few words to each other in years. Rafe thought Ellis was one of the snottiest people he’d ever met.”

“It’s too easy. There has to be a catch.”

Wyatt clapped him on the back. “No. There’s no catch. We’re simply the two luckiest bastards around, that’s all. Should we tell her?”

“Hell no. I mean, what if she doesn’t feel the same way?”

“What if she does?”

Something about the tone of Wyatt’s voice sent shivers up and down his spine, but not in a good way. The last woman he’d said “I love you” to had been Deanna. But this wasn’t the same thing. Ria was not Deanna, and she never would be. But to say it was to have it out there for all eternity. You couldn’t take it back. You could only say you’d changed your mind, or that you didn’t feel that way anymore.

And while Trent believed it was true that people could fall right back out of love, he also knew that what he felt for Ria went far above and beyond anything he’d felt for Deanna. This wasn’t a fluke or a fling. This was the real deal. And there was no going back. If he told her, and she didn’t feel the same way, or outright rejected the entire idea, he’d be crushed. Forever.

“Hey, it’s cool. We don’t have to say anything yet. Let her get over this hurdle tonight and then we can talk about it another time, okay?”

“You want to tell her, don’t you?” Wyatt would want to do that. He wasn’t one to let things fester underneath the surface. He’d want to just say it, have it out in the open, and let the chips fall where they may. But Trent, for all his outward appearance of being so impetuous and spontaneous, was a big chicken when it came to putting his feelings out there.

“Yes, but I won’t say it without you saying it at the same time. That wouldn’t be fair to any of us.”

“I can’t right now. I’m just not ready to put it out there.”

“I know. It’s cool. Really.”

Was it? This would bug the shit out of Wyatt. He knew his twin. He’d never just let this go and wait until Trent felt ready. But right now, he had to get ready for work, so any further discussion would have to wait.

As he waved good night to his twin, he swore the aura surrounding Wyatt was darker than it had been before, and Trent knew he’d be stewing about that all night long.

* * * *

Ria bit into her stuffed mushroom sandwich and made a sound that was too similar to the ones she made when she’d just had an orgasm. They all laughed. “I can’t help it. This is divine. Why can’t I cook like this? You should taste my mother’s food. It’s heaven. Peppi can cook, Teresa can cook, Maggie can cook, and even Rosa puts down her beads once in a while and makes great-tasting food. My brothers are both better cooks than I am.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Marisol, raising her glass.

“Amen,” said Alexa. “Luke’s cooking blows me away.”

“So what happened to you?” asked Gina. “Recessive gene or something?”

Ria snorted. “I wish I knew.”

The talk turned to the bar itself, and Ria remembered Alexa, Marisol, Gina, and Kari saying that Cherilyn hadn’t been there since the night of her kidnapping. She hoped it wasn’t gossip to ask Cherilyn the next question “How are you doing tonight? Are you all right being here?”

Cherilyn smiled at her. “That is so sweet of you to ask. Yes, I’m all right now. I was a bit freaked out at first, but this helps.” Cherilyn raised her glass, and as if on cue, Mark returned and asked if they all needed a second round. Each one ordered a second drink, and Ria wasn’t going to, but changed her mind. She was still okay. She knew her own limits, and as long as she stayed in control, she’d be all right.

“You know what does freak me out, though?” asked Cherilyn. The others stopped talking to listen to her. “Has anyone noticed that maroon Jeep SUV or the old white Chevy lately? Thayer and Evan don’t recognize the cars. No one I’ve asked does. And all three of us swore we’ve seen the same two strangers in town lately, but no one knows who they are. They’re both men, but we can’t place either one inside those vehicles. Still, don’t you think it makes sense the SUV and the car belong to them?”

“Zach asked me the other day about those two,” said Gina. “Tall guy with a scruffy beard who wears what I told him looks like a fisherman’s cap from an old movie, and the other one is shorter and stockier, with blue eyes. I only know the color because I almost bumped smack into his chest the other day coming out of Nan’s Place. I practically ran to the warehouse with Zach’s lunch, and then asked him if he’d ever seen the man before. His eyes were cold, you know? Like he was memorizing my face. It was very creepy.”

Ria shivered. “I haven’t seen them or the cars.” Then again, unless they came into Luke’s Bar, she wouldn’t have seen them. She’d been too busy in bed with Trent and Wyatt.

“Well, I have,” said Olivia. “And Harrison mentioned that tall dude as well.” She cut her gaze toward Kari. “He said you and Alexa said something to Chase about that guy coming into the shop last week, right?”

“Yes, we did,” said Alexa. “I assumed he was on the construction crew for one of the new shops because he had sawdust all over him. I thought maybe he’d wandered in to tell us they had to cut the power to the street or something, and I was about to walk over and ask him what he wanted, but then he left. Chase came home to eat lunch that day, and we both mentioned it to him. He didn’t know who the man was either.”

“This is creepy,” said Olivia. “We don’t need this again.” She cut her gaze toward Gina quickly. “When Steve Remming was hanging around town in that beat-up brown sedan, I knew something was wrong.” Steve Remming was the man arrested last summer for setting fire to the garage next to Olivia’s parents’ home. She, Gina, and Annalise were inside, finalizing plans for their company. They all got out in time, but just barely.

“Harrison told me that he, Sean, and Chad are on this,” said Gina. “We all just need to be aware of our surroundings. It will be okay.”

“Do you think these are the guys who Ned Meyers was involved with?” asked Annalise. “Dustin said he heard some gossip in the clinic that Ned is trying to get his sentenced reduced because he had information on the men who are trying to blackmail Pearl.”

Ria had to bite her lip to keep from smirking. For information that Sean had said he couldn’t discuss, the women sitting at this table seemed to know a lot about it already. As the talk turned to speculation about how involved Pearl and Ned each were, and whether or not Gerry had been working for them, Ria finished her second drink. When one of them said something about Pearl probably setting up the whole thing so she could get a new shop, she felt she had to speak up.

“I know for a fact that isn’t true. Wyatt told me that Pearl regrets ever hiring that firm from Philly, and wants out of the deal.”

“Her shop is going up right next to ours,” said Alexa. “Even with the fire damage, it’s more than halfway done. She had to have taken out a construction loan, at the very least. How is she going to get out of it?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think she’s involved in this. It sounds more like she’s scared to death of these people. Did you know that the same man that Sean won’t name tried to get Pearl to sign a second contract? One that would essentially make him her business partner?”

“What do you mean the man that Sean won’t name?” asked Cherilyn. “I thought they knew who was behind all this?”

“They do,” said Julie, giving Ria a pointed stare, “but for obvious reasons they aren’t revealing everything to the public yet. And the fact that we’re all seeing strangers and cars we don’t recognize in town is further proof that we need to be careful what we say, and to whom.”

Kari glanced around. “No one is listening to us. And we’re not in Racy right now. And besides, I want to hear more about this thing with Pearl. I don’t like the idea of a shop going up right next door that these crooks are involved with. This is the kind of shit I had hoped to leave behind in Manhattan.”

“I can only tell you what Wyatt told me,” said Ria. “He said that Pearl wants out, and now that she knows these people intended to use her shop as a front for hiding stolen goods, she wants no part of it.”

“Ria, do you think we should be repeating that?” asked Julie, giving her yet another hard glare.

“Well, I’m obviously not the only one who knows about that.” She was saved from further questions when Mark came over and talked the group into ordering a third round of drinks. Most of them were finished with their food, and they all decided to split several desserts. Julie was the only one who also ordered coffee. Once he’d left, Ria continued. “Wyatt said that the FBI is involved, and whoever these people are, they’re the same crowd that Ned and Gerry were involved with.”

“Great,” said Kari. “Right next door.” She glanced at Alexa. “As if we didn’t have enough shit happen last year. I wish you didn’t live there. It’s still too damn isolated.”

“I’ll be fine. Adison has a kick-ass security system on the house, and either Chase or Luke are always with me in the evenings.”

“None of us are really alone,” said Gina. “Any one of us are only a phone call away. But Zach doesn’t want the city panicked. He said if we just do what do, and keep watching out for each other, it will be okay. If these two strangers we’ve all seen are involved with this gang from Philly, or Louisville, or wherever they’re from, they’ll soon figure out that the people of Racy don’t take shit from outsiders, and that we watch each other’s backs.”

The group drank another toast to Gina’s words, and as the talk continued, speculation turned once again to Pearl and the strangers in town. The more the group talked, the wilder the stories became. Ria contributed as much as the others, and twice she thought she felt something brush her leg, but each time she glanced down, nothing was there. She was so happy to be part of them. This was what she’d missed for so many months. Hanging out with friends, talking about anything and everything.

She glanced at her cell phone when Olivia’s rang, thinking it was her phone ringing, and was stunned to see that they’d all been there for almost two hours. After Olivia reassured Storm and Cameron that she was feeling all right, the talk turned toward spring weather and the celebration that was planned to mark the one-year anniversary of the tornado.