Lick Is A Four-Letter Word (13 page)

“At my
mouth,”
Troy
added.

Felicity
scooped up some ice cream and licked it off the spoon so she wouldn’t have to
answer. When she looked up, both of them were staring at
her
mouth.

“Uh,
guys?” she said, licking her lips. “Is there something you want?” She scooped
up some more of the frozen dessert, licking is slowly. It was delicious, but
she liked the look on Josh and
Troy
’s
faces even more than the ice cream. She licked her spoon until it was shiny and
her lips were buzzing.

“Holy
hell, Felicity,”
Troy
muttered.

“What
he said,” Josh added.

Felicity
grinned impishly. This was totally awesome. She had two hot men at her mercy.
Her
.
The girl who’d married her best friend from high
school and never dated anyone else.
The girl with the bum
ankle.
Her heart tripped a little at the thought. Was this real? Maybe
she was dreaming? She licked at the spoon again, not caring there was no ice
cream left on it.
Troy
groaned under his breath and wrenched his gaze away. Josh held her eyes, the
look on his face telling her exactly what he wanted to do. Felicity dropped the
spoon into the bowl with a clatter.

“Josh—”
she began to say, when an older woman’s voice penetrated the haze of lust
controlling her brain.

“Josh
Kim! Why you never call me back?” A short, white-haired old woman stomped up to
the table.

Felicity
watched, fascinated, as Josh’s face blanched as white as his bronze skin could
manage. He closed his eyes briefly,
then
turned his
head to the woman standing over them.

Well,
sort of standing over us
, Felicity thought. The
Asian woman was tiny, but the look of determination on her face more than made
up for her diminutive size. Felicity blinked. How someone so small could also
be so intimidating was a mystery. She looked from the woman to Josh and back
again. There was definitely a family resemblance there.

“Aunt
Min! What are you doing here?” Josh stood up, almost knocking Felicity’s ice
cream off the table. “Here, let me get you a chair.”

“My
only
nephew,
and he never calls back. I leave four
messages for him. Four,” the woman said to Felicity. “But no.
Boys these days—no respect.”
She clucked her tongue against
her teeth.

Felicity
nodded. It seemed the thing to do. “I’m sure he had a good reason?” She ignored
Troy
’s quick
slash of a finger across her throat. She didn’t have it in her to be rude to an
old lady, particularly not Josh’s aunt.

“Well,
if you’re why he been so busy, I suppose I let him off the hook.
Maybe just this one time.”
She lifted a thin finger.

Josh
returned with an extra chair. The old woman narrowed her eyes at him as he
helped her sit down, though she didn’t look like she actually needed the
assistance. The woman was clearly in her late seventies or eighties, but she
seemed quite spry.

“I
really was busy, Aunt Min. I’m sorry,” Josh said, sitting back down.

“
Hmph
.”
His
aunt pursed her lips,
then
turned to
Troy
. “You should call back, too.”

Troy—big,
strong, muscular
Troy
—shrank
into his chair. “I lost my phone this week, Aunt Min.”

The old
woman frowned at him. “Still losing things, hmm? You nearly lose your head when
you’re a boy. I remember.”

“That
was an accident,”
Troy
muttered. “Josh was the one who’d pulled the sword off the wall.”

Sword?
Felicity nearly choked. They
had a sword on the wall?

“Old family heirloom.
My
grandfather’s sword,” Josh explained, seeing her expression.

“Yeah.
You say that back then, too.
Your
mother don’t
believe you. Neither do
I
.” The old woman
said,
a note of
steel in her voice.

Troy
slumped down further in his chair.

Felicity
couldn’t help it. She laughed out loud.

The old
woman turned to her. Felicity offered her hand. “Hi. I’m Felicity Rose.”

The
woman took her hand and smiled. It transformed her entire face. “Julia Min,
Josh’s favorite aunt.” Her brown eyes sparkled.

“You’re
my only aunt,” Josh muttered. Both women ignored him.

“So, you and Josh?
About time he
get
a girlfriend. I started to think he’s gay.”

Felicity
choked. How did she answer that? Was she his girlfriend?
Or
Troy
’s?
She had no
idea. The woman’s grasp was like iron. Crap. She glanced at
Troy
, but he had his hands over his face, the
coward. No help there.

Luckily,
Josh leaped into the conversation. “Yes. Felicity is my girlfriend, Aunt Min.”

Oh really?
she
thought, both flattered and annoyed. She’d love to be
his girlfriend, but he hadn’t even asked. She glanced at
Troy
. He was glaring at Josh.
Well, this is interesting.
She looked
back at Josh. He gave her pleading eyes while she fought to control her
expression. She frowned at him, not wanting to do anything obvious to indicate
her surprise.

Did
three incendiary encounters mean she was dating him?
And what
about
Troy
?
She chewed on the inside of her cheek, fingers beginning to ache from the grip
his aunt had on them. Thankfully, the old woman finally took pity on her and
released her hand.

“Well!
Good. In that case, you call me Aunt Min, too.” She beamed at Felicity.

Felicity
nodded, deciding to just go with it. What else could she do?
“Nice
to meet you, Aunt Min.”
Under the table, she kicked Josh. He jerked in
his seat.
Good
, she thought, meanly.
She hoped she’d given him a bruise.

Across
from her,
Troy
’s
mouth was twisted into an unhappy curl. He kept shooting irritated glances at
Josh. Felicity was
not
going to be the one to straighten that out.

“Nice
to meet you too,” Aunt Min said, setting her little green purse on the table.

Felicity
noted that it perfectly matched her little flat shoes. The linen sundress she
wore complemented her brown eyes.
This old lady definitely knows how to make
an appearance
, Felicity thought.

“So,
what do you do, Felicity?” She waved down the server and ordered herself a cup
of jasmine tea.

“I’m a
copywriter. I also do some IT for my company,” Felicity replied. Josh had his
hand on her shoulder now and she debated whether she wanted to lean into it and
the comfort it offered, or smack it down for telling his aunt that she was his
girlfriend. Somehow, she was going to make him pay for this. She had a feeling
Troy
would help.

“Huh.
You’re normal. Good!” Aunt Min grinned at her, eyes twinkling. “He and
Troy
are good together,
but I want more nieces and nephews.”

Felicity
froze.
Kids?
What? And also, what did she mean about
Josh and
Troy
?

“Aunt
Min! We just met. We are
not
talking about kids.” He covered his face
with a hand. “Oh my God,” he mumbled.

Felicity
kicked him again. The least he could do was not cower.

“We
haven’t talked about that,” she said, hoping Aunt Min would drop the subject.

“Why not?
You not getting any
younger,” the old lady said, eyeing her up and down.

Felicity
could swear the woman was laughing at the three of them.

“Uh,
well, we haven’t been dating that long yet.” She shrugged apologetically. “It’s
taken me a while to get over my husband’s death.” She glanced at
Troy
to see how he would
take that statement. His eyebrows lifted in surprise, but then compassion
filled his face.

“You
were married? Oh, that’s terrible. How long ago did it happen?” Aunt Min patted
her kindly.

Felicity
smiled shakily. Aunt Min was sweet, but mentioning it had brought the whole
awful thing to mind. She decided she needed comfort and leaned into Josh’s arm.
He’d better not chicken out now
, she thought. “Peter died about three
years ago in a car crash. We were in the parking lot where he
worked,
just sitting and talking, and someone lost control
of their car.” Felicity shrugged. “It was a freak accident.”

“God,
that’s terrible, Felicity,” Josh said, hugging her.

Unexpectedly,
Felicity’s eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back. She wasn’t prepared
for this,
dammit
. Across from her,
Troy
nodded.

“That
must have been awful. It’s
always
awful,”
Troy
said quietly, leaning over and putting a hand on hers.

Felicity
stared down. His dark fingers slid in between her light ones. When Josh put a
hand over theirs, the three different colored skin tones had Felicity shaking
her head bemusedly. She hadn’t expected this level of understanding from them,
though she should have. They’d been nothing but perceptive since the moment
she’d met them. They’d always focused on her comfort.
And pleasure
, she
thought.

“It’s
okay. I’m okay,” she said, realizing that it was true.
Maybe
for the first time.

“Josh
and
Troy
lost
their dads when they were ten,” Aunt Min said, sipping her tea.
“Terrible, terrible car crash.
But their moms are best
friends. They got through it okay.”

Felicity
sat back, shocked. “I’m so sorry,” she said to the men. She’d had no idea. Was
this why they were so nice? Because they understood what it was like?
God.

“It was
a long time ago,”
Troy
said, shrugging.

Josh
nodded. “We had each other and it sucked, but… Well, like
Troy
said, it was a long time ago. You’ve got
to keep living, if only to honor their memory properly.”

Troy
smiled at Josh affectionately.

Felicity
watched a complicated look fraught with more than just friendship pass between
them. Her heart felt like it was going to burst from her chest. Josh and
Troy
were
the first people she’d met who really understood what it was like to lose
someone like that.
The senselessness of it.
The need to move on.
She’d felt so guilty that she’d
survived and Peter hadn’t.

“You
get it. You really understand,” she murmured.

Troy
smiled at her.
“Yeah.
We do.”

Aunt
Min leaned over and patted her again. “Hang onto to these two. They’re good
men. They take good care of you.”

Josh
and
Troy
stared
at the old lady in shock while she serenely sipped her tea. Felicity stared at
her thinking:
holy shit,
she knows about the three of us.

Chapter
Nine

Felicity
unlocked her front door, yawning. They’d just left the café. She couldn’t
believe how long Josh’s Aunt Min had wanted to stay and talk. The men had
ordered food for themselves and then the old lady has proceeded to tell
Felicity a dozen hair-raising and hilarious stories about Josh and
Troy
’s childhood. From
the time they’d locked themselves inside a museum submarine after hours, to the
episode where
Troy
’s
roommates had kicked him out of their dorm, naked, and shown up at Aunt Min’s
door, the stories had grown more and more entertaining. Felicity didn’t think
she’d laughed so hard, for so long, in years.

Felicity
told a few stories of her own, but none of them were as insane as Josh and
Troy
’s. She’d been a very
calm child and her teenage years reflected that. She described becoming friends
with Peter and how they’d later married. It had all been very sedate. Josh and
Troy
’s teen years were
wild in comparison to hers. A dozen times over the course of the evening
Felicity had thought,
what the hell am I doing?
Two guys?
Two younger guys, who are clearly way cooler than I could ever hope to be?
On the other hand, they seemed to like her
and she wasn’t going to throw this opportunity away, just because it seemed
impossible on the surface. The three of them just… clicked, for some reason.
Felicity was sure of it.