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Aware of this, Rebecca wrapped her arms around Trey’s chest from behind.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Missy only wins if I let this upset me.”
That he had let it upset him was apparent to everyone.
“Someone needs to school that bitch,” Charlie said.
“You leave it alone,” Zane advised, though he shared the sentiment. He leveled a stare at Pete too. “Both of you. This is for me and Trey to handle.”
“Sure,” Charlie said.
“Sure,” Pete agreed.
“Oh God,” Rebecca moaned, no doubt on account of knowing her siblings well.
Zane wanted to smile but worried it might encourage them.
~
Trey didn’t know how long he’d have stood there, stupid and dumbstruck, if Rebecca and Zane hadn’t led him to the empty guest room across the hall. The windows there overlooked the front lawn and the long tree-lined drive. Everything outside was peaceful: just another gracious country estate in rural New England.
Ignoring the allure of the air conditioning, he yanked up the window sash. Real air swept in at him, warm and grass-scented. Rebecca and Zane rubbed his back from either side.
“I don’t care if people know who I sleep with,” he said as steadily as he could. “I just don’t want the world to view me as a victim. I want to choose who I share my past with.”
He turned to rest his hips on the windowsill. Rebecca and Zane looked worried but not overcome with pity. Maybe they were downplaying their concern, or maybe they gave him credit for not being made of glass. A smile pulled at his lips without warning, prodded by a sense of humor he wouldn’t have thought he’d recover this quickly.
“The swimsuit hanger might have done us a favor,” he observed.
“Might she?” Zane responded, his mouth curving.
“Piling on the revelations as thick as she did means people won’t know what to poke at first—or who to feel sorry for.” Trey took Zane’s hand and then Rebecca’s, enjoying the easy way their holds twined with his. He made a decision within himself. “I’m not going to worry about us. We’re going to be fine.”
Rebecca looked down at his hand. Hers was small but strong, her cook’s fingers battered but wonderful. When she lifted her gaze, she was smiling.
“I love you,” she said. “Can I be you when I grow up?”
He laughed, his chest suddenly warmer. She’d said the words almost as a joke. Her hint of shyness let him know they were anything but.
“I love you too,” he said. “I love you both.”
Rebecca’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “The swimsuit hanger would totally hate you saying that.”
“Yes, she would,” Trey agreed. “Guess I know how I’m getting my revenge.”
~
Realizing Trey was okay worked on the others like a sleeping pill. The trio trooped upstairs to bed together. Rebecca dimly heard Zane making one final call—to his PI friend, she thought—and then she passed out.
She woke, hours later, with a tall slumbering man on either side of her. The sun outside the windows seemed late afternoon-ish. Her cell phone was ringing.
Zane was nearest to the sound. He cursed, fumbled around the table where she’d left it, and handed it to her.
“Yes?” she said, her voice mostly sandpaper.
“Well, hey there, chef,” said Raoul. “I guess this means you aren’t coming to work today.”
Heedless of the body parts the men had slung over her, Rebecca bolted up in shock. “Oh my God.”
Evidently not angry, Raoul laughed at her.
“Oh my God,” she repeated. “I forgot to go to work. And I forgot to call you. Raoul, I am so sorry!”
“It’s okay, chica. I’ve got the restaurant under control.”
“But I forgot!” Rebecca never forgot work. Never, ever. Even on the rare occasions when she was sick, she called in periodically.
“I saw the news,” Raoul said in a gentler tone. “I know you must have been distracted.”
“Shit,” Rebecca said for a whole host of reasons. Did Raoul hate her? She’d told him she’d slept with Trey, but that hardly covered the situation. “Is the staff okay?”
“The staff is fine. Some are surprised, but quite a few are impressed. Line cooks are notorious belt notchers, after all. You should prepare yourself for some teasing—you know, when you stop lazing around all day.”
“Oh God.”
Zane and Trey were looking at her now, but she couldn’t look at them.
“I ever tell you about my threesome?” Raoul went on. “I was a hot young fry cook. Abs of steel and a knife so fast I could chop ten onions at the same time. This cute pastry chef took a liking to me. Her special friend was a very bendy yoga instructor—”
“I’m stopping you right there,” Rebecca warned, recognizing a tall tale when she heard one. “You tell me anymore, I’ll repeat it to your wife.”
“I tell her this story all the time. You have no idea how sick of it she is.”
“Damn it,” she said, in spite of her amusement. “I wanted to be there for our first normal night.”
“Well, it’s not going to be normal here for a bit, not until the wagging tongues settle down. Let me handle things for now. You know you can trust me to do right by your food.”
She did know that. “You’re the awesomest head chef ever,” she admitted.
“Don’t you forget it. Fortunately, none of this is bad for business. We were booked solid for two weeks after our VIP shindig. Now I hear it’s two months. Someone told me Wilde’s is so empty crickets are chirping there.”
“Maybe I should get into trouble more often.”
“Maybe you should.”
Rebecca was smiling when she ended the call.
“You forgot work,” Trey said, one slashing brow lifted. “Being here really has changed you.”
Rebecca snuggled back between the men. “You want credit for that, eh?”
“He can have half,” Zane said. “The other fifty percent is mine.”
~
Rebecca drifted off between them, burrowed cutely into Zane’s chest. Higher up on the pillow, Trey looked across her mussed blonde head at Zane. The sun shone in Zane’s face and he squinted, but—like Trey—he wasn’t ready to go back to sleep. His right hand rested on Rebecca’s hip, his upper leg slung across both of hers so that his bare foot touched Trey’s. A pleasant low-grade arousal collected in Trey’s groin—another reaction he hadn’t expected to feel so soon. He was glad for it, glad for everything in a way. He put his hand above Zane’s on Rebecca’s waist.
“You okay?” he asked his lover.
“Yes,” Zane said. “You?”
“Yes.” He stroked his pinkie finger along Zane’s index, delighted by the darkening of Zane’s baby blues. “You want to tell me what that call to your PI friend was about?”
Zane turned sheepish. “I had Elaine route your cousins’ calls to me. I met them at the Imperial the other morning.”
Trey’s exasperation was softened by fondness. “I figured you’d do something along those lines. And?”
“And as far as I could tell, all they wanted was to get control of their mother. I gather she’s been a lifelong embarrassment. Now that we know Missy had her, Mike should be able to locate her and put the family in touch again.”
“Leaving her with Missy might be a good revenge. Considering their respective personalities, they can’t have enjoyed each other’s company.”
“I thought of that. The problem is, Missy is sure to hand your aunt off to some flunky.”
Trey bent his arm and resettled his cheek on it. “Weathering this salvo has one drawback. Missy may up the ante if we don’t give her the reaction she’s hoping for.”
Zane sighed. “I thought about that too. We’ll figure some way to shut her down.”
He stretched his left arm across the pillow to play with Trey’s loose hair. The simple sweetness of the gesture melted his heart.
“I love you,” Trey murmured, the words coming out with almost no fear at all.
“Me too,” Zane returned. “I’m glad we’re all in this together.”
Trey’s grin was as much for the effortlessness of Zane’s answer as for him avoiding—yet again—his three most dreaded words in the world.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Operation Blue Velvet
ZANE led Rebecca, whose heart was beating like a cornered rabbit, to the back of their huge closet.
“We need to be seen,” he said, “as a threesome, as openly and boldly as possible.”
He opened a double-door wardrobe with swirling exotic wood. Rebecca expected—or maybe hoped—to see suits for the men inside. Instead, a rainbow of expensive women’s dresses hung on the rack.
