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Rafe grinned. “The awake crowd.”
“It is so cool riding on that bike,” Gemma gushed. “Totally awesome. Max let me ride shotgun.”
Max winced. “Pillion, Gemma, not shotgun.”
She shrugged, clearly not letting it dampen her enthusiasm.
Simone nodded, tickled by her passion. “I agree.”
“I already ate my pancakes, and Max broke the eggs and made the yolk hard, so eww… So I’m going to school. My friends have to hear about my morning ride.”
Rafe put the pancakes on a plate before giving it to Max, who added a perfect fried egg and handed it to Simone. She looked at the yolk, which was going to run everywhere, and her mouth watered. “Breakfast,” said Max, “With good eggs this time. I offered to cook more for Gemma, but she didn’t want to wait.”
Simone nodded, breaking the yolk and watching it spill down over the pancakes. “Yum.”
Rafe looked at Gemma. “I’ll make a deal with you. If Simone approves, that is.”
“What kind of deal?”
“If you promise to talk to your friends, teach them what we went over about protecting their personal information online, and not putting too much crap up there for people to find, I’ll give you a ride to school this morning.”
“I can do that.”
“We don’t want your friends dealing with the kind of stuff Simone did, do we?”
“No.” Simone could see her sister’s delight. “Wow, that’s awesome, Rafe. You’ll take me right to the front door where everyone will see that I showed up on the back of your bike?”
“I’ll even blip the throttle to make the engine roar and look menacing.”
“Yeah!”
Simone watched and laughed as she sat at the table. “Okay. I’ll be here eating my pancakes with Max..”
Gemma was already grabbing up her computer and books. Rafe gave Simone a wink. “I’ll be back soon.”
When they were gone, and while Max washed dishes seemingly in happy silence, she considered Rafe and Max’s ideas of empowerment and the kinds of things they were showing Gemma. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t giving up anything by letting them into their lives. They might be offering encouragement and ideas that moved them in the right direction.
Certainly, they were helping Gemma come out of her shell. The only question was if they were giving her too much encouragement. It was hard to tell where to draw lines in such things. She liked the idea that she was overcoming her shyness, but she wasn’t keen on the idea of her suddenly becoming a biker girl, either.
Of course, thinking there was comfort in the middle ground was Simone’s own idea. Gemma was getting old enough to assert her own thinking, whether Simone approved or not, and it was hard to fault any attempt to give the girl tools for dealing with the world outside.
Turning her attention to her pancakes, she found a bottle of maple syrup on the table and poured it over them after pushing her egg to the side of her plate. A welcome carafe of coffee and empty mug complemented them. It was all delicious, but this was not at all the sort of domestic activity she expected from her sexy, pseudo-geek bikers.
Okay, Simone, time to find out if they have a dark side. Maybe love is blind, but you should look for the negatives a little bit.
That would be the sensible thing to do, but all she could think about was finishing her breakfast and dragging Max back to bed. Rafe could join them when he came back from dropping off Gemma. She couldn’t think of a better way to spend her day off.
When Rafe came back,he joined her and Max as she’d intended. He didn’t seem bothered that they’d started without him, and she managed to put her concerns on hold and let the men distract her. And distract her they did, making love to her with enough passion that it seemed like it was their first time.
And they talked and rested and made love again.
Mid-afternoon, Rafe stretched and yawned before looking at Max. “We need to do some actual earning-a-living stuff.”
Simone nodded. “And I need a long and luxurious bath, and then it will be time to pick up Gemma at school.”
“Can I go with you?” asked Max.
The question surprised her, since she’d anticipated their work would occupy them. “Sure, if you want to.”
