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Chapter 14
ERIN
Dinner was gourmet because, of course it was. Five-star gourmet. Mediterranean food and Good company. There wasn’t a lot more a girl could ask for.
Henryk and Viktor were across from me and this time, Silas sat beside me. They were all in button-downs and jeans. Man-cologne wafted the air, and I liked it. What I didn’t especially enjoy was the oddity of the dinner.
It wasn’t odd because I was sitting with three very gorgeous men. It was odd because every time one of them looked at me, another one shot the looker a glare.
The tension was thick, and the silence was loud. “Dinner’s delicious.”Holy crap.It was a feeble attempt. And no one spoke, which made my need to fill the silence all the stronger. Our little pre-dinner talk had obviously done nothing to fix the awkwardness between the guys.
“Yummmm.”
No one answered or did more than scrape their silverware along the plate to create that horrible screeching sound. I set my fork down, adjusted it so it was parallel to my knife on the other side of my plate, then I arranged my wine glass so that the stem was a perfect three-inch distance from the rim of my plate. And then when everything was perfectly perfect, I looked up.
They were all engrossed with their food and their plates and their scraping forks. I slapped my hand on the table. Hard. When they looked up, I smiled and considered each one of them slowly. Viktor with his sparkling smile. Henryk with the big, blue eyes. Silas with the shoulders I wanted to cling to. But their attitudes were dragging me down.
I looked down at my plate. It was a shame to waste such an artful looking meal, but my stomach clenched. I couldn’t take this stress. I pushed it away too hard and Silas saved my wine before it toppled over too. I smiled and took the glass from his hand.
“Guys, we have to talk.”
No way was I going to suffer through a week of tension filled silence. This was supposed to be a vacation, filled with hours of sun soaking and fun. I waited until all the forks were down and I had their undivided attention.
“Look, I don’t pretend to understand the ways of men.” I pointed a look at each of them. “But I can’t do this for an entire week.” I already had a headache and the week had barely started. “The tension in here is like a whole other person and while I’m all about a poly relationship with you guys, I don’t need all this.” I waved a hand and narrowed my eyes. “It’s too much.”
They nodded. Every single one of them, but no one spoke. No one offered a resolution to the problem. In fact, there was so much blank staring I was tempted to snap my fingers in front of their faces just to make sure they were still in there.
“We have a problem, and I don’t think we can leave it to resolve itself. There’s just too much...” I didn’t know how to describe it. “Weight in the air.”
I didn’t have anyone’s attention. They were too busy hating each other and not listening to me.
I was busy glaring and grunting. Not really grunting, but groaning was close.
Silas laid his hand over mine on the right side of my plate, so of course, Henryk reached across the table so he could hold my left hand and then Viktor huffed and puffed hard enough to blow my house down.
I pulled my hands into my lap and nodded. This was exactly what I was talking about. And now I was the one huffing and puffing like the big, bad wolf. It wasn’t conscious, and as soon as I caught myself making those sorts of sounds, I quit doing it. Fast. Mostly because it sounded borderline pornographic, and that wasn’t the kind of mood I wanted to convey just at that moment.
The guys weren’t capitulating. Instead, the scowls were deeper, the glares more narrowed and darker.
I picked up my fork and shoved another bite of food between my lips, fuming and cursing in my head. There was no call for this behavior. I wasn’t a toy for them to fight over.
I looked at Silas. He glanced back and smiled, but as soon as he turned to Henryk, he sneered. It was the same with Viktor and when Henryk looked at either of them, animosity flashed across his features. There was no one I’d ever seen who could do animosity quite like Henryk. Must’ve been the royal blood.
But this was a lot for one person to have to wade through. “Listen, guys, this is three times the testosterone I’m used to. Three times the machismo. Three times the masculinity. And I don’t want to call it toxic, but I’m about ten seconds away from calling for a Hazmat suit.” So, now I knew that the conversational threshold for their attention was the almost off-handed mention of Hazmat. And it didn’t amuse me.
“Toxic?” Silas looked at me.
Henryk looked at him. “It means that she thinks we’re—”
“I know what it means.”
Silas’s snap was a precise example of exactly what I was talking about and I shot him a look—the look, the one that said that I wasn’t amused. It involved a cocked eyebrow and lips pinched into a cupid’s bow of annoyance. Thepiece de resistance,the thing that held the look together, was the nostril flare, and I turned my head at each of them so they could see it.
“My point is...” I spoke slowly, with a deliberate pause for another flared nostril glance at each of them. “That you guys are missing the mood of this vacation and quite frankly, you’re making it uncomfortable for me.” Not fair, I wanted to add, but didn’t. “We could all split up and go our separate ways, but that would ruin everything this vacation was meant to be about, so I’m out of suggestions.”
No one spoke. No one even looked up and suddenly, I was being outshined by silverware. Figuratively and literally.
I rolled my eyes. They were either not listening or they didn’t care. Either way, I was too insulted to do more than shove my chair back and stand up. And they all stood because even though their walks of life were different, they were all gentlemen.
