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Ash sliced a hand through the air. “Where we live is inconsequential. We only want to be together.”
She didn’t respond. The longer the silence stretched on, the more nervous Ash grew. Piers caught his eye, and Ash saw the same worry in those blue depths that he knew so damn well.
“Sylvee?” Ash gently pinched her chin.
She avoided their stares. “I need a while to think.”
Spreading her hands, she looked between them. “There’s so much going on. My mind’s so cluttered. Is it possible to get a horse saddled so I can go for a ride and clear my head?”
Neither he nor Piers moved at first. After a heavy heartbeat, Piers nodded. “I’ll see to it. Ash?”
“I’ll bring her to the paddock.”
Sylvee moved off to change her clothes for riding, leaving them staring at each other.
Ash started to speak, but Piers gave a gruff shake of his head. “We can’t force her to go along with our dream of having her.”
His throat worked against the lump lodged there. “No.”
Piers sent him a long look loaded with pain before he strode to the door and disappeared.
Alone, Ash bowed his head. They stood to lose it all. But at this minute, the only thing worth fighting for was Sylvee.
And she might walk away.
* * * * *
Sylvee’s muscles told her just how out of shape her desk job had made her. Stalking around a courtroom exercising her mouth didn’t make for a lot of stamina either. Just being on horseback and in the fresh Alaskan air exhausted her.
After riding for what felt like hours, she dismounted to walk the horse the rest of the way to the paddock. No one was around, but she heard shouts and cheers coming from a small field near the barn and could only guess at the group activity taking place there.
Naked flag football or cornhole? A spanking contest?
Her insides clutched at the thought of all three things she imagined, but only if her lovers and best friends were involved.
She issued a low sigh and stroked her fingers over the mare’s dappled coat. “You’ve got it easy, girl.”
They wanted her. Both of her men.
But how would such an arrangement ever work? She couldn’t just have two lovers living with her permanently. She was in the public eye, and people could be cruel about anything beyond the norm. Same-sex marriages were still sometimes ridiculed, especially in smaller towns where they saw less of it.
Even if she became licensed to practice law in Alaska, she may never have a client again.
That wasn’t completely true—she had Avril. The woman was counting on her to speak to her bosses. Sylvee had made a promise and she would see it through.
The case was the easy part. The difficult one was split into two big, manly, muscular parts: Ash and Piers.
If she rejected them, they’d carry that pain forever.
Fact was, she loved them both, and not in a platonic manner. Hell, maybe she’d always stuffed down this passion for them. Maybe she really wanted them, and she’d turned to Charlie simply because he was the easier choice.
There was also the quite real possibility that she was carrying their child. While she’d thought it through carefully, she never banked on them giving up their lives to take care of her or their commitment to being by her side for the rest of their days.
She inflated her lungs. The air was scented with pine and fresh grass. She swore she even smelled the mountains.
God, she loved it here. She stopped walking the horse to gape at her surroundings. The wild landscape coupled with the country life gave her a pang of longing so strong, so undeniable.
What about her practice? She couldn’t just up and leave. Some of her cases were complicated, and those clients deserved for her to see their cases through. Giving anything up to Charlie rubbed her wrong once, chafed her until it felt like an itch that could never be scratched.
