AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jericho frowned in confusion and Shyla was irked. Did he really not see the problem here?
“I refuse to be the other woman, the bit on the side, the mistress,” she elaborated bluntly, to ensure there was no misunderstanding.
Jericho’s mouth worked but no words were forthcoming. God he was delicious. Shyla didn’t want to acknowledge it, but she couldn’t help herself. He was clean shaven, and his hair was freshly cut and styled, short around the sides and a little longer on top. All cleaned up, and dressed in butt hugging jeans, a heavy sweater, and hiking boots he looked almost as delicious as he did naked. They both did.
The sight of them wasn’t doing her resolve any favors. Her chest squeezed and her stomach flipped. She stoically ignored the effect they had on her lady bits and the happy dance her ovaries were doing and instead concentrated on remembering the way those other women had been wound around them, the morning after they’d rocked her world.
It was Lazarus who stepped in with a response. He clearly knew exactly what she was talking about.
“I know what it looked like, Shyla, but you’ve got it wrong. Jeri and I are both single. The women who you saw us with at the rescue station were called because they’re our next of kin. Athena and Delilah are our sisters.”
Shyla narrowed her eyes. “They looked mighty intimate for sisters,” she accused in disbelief.
“We’re a close family,” Lazarus maintained. “And Athena is my twin. When our parents got the next of kin notification they were out of the country, so they contacted the girls, who insisted on coming to see if we were okay. I guess they all get a little nervous about our job.”
That nugget of information surprised her because they didn’t look anything alike. Or did they? The blond hair had thrown her, but she knew it came out of a bottle. Now she thought back, she had to admit the two girls did have the same sharp features, aquiline noses, and high cheekbones, as their brothers.
Still…two sisters. That still left the other woman, who clearly was not. Should she ask about Dante? He wasn’t here so maybe it didn’t matter.
Her mouth demanded the answer even if her mind was torn.
“So, just Dante then.” It was a statement, not a question.
She was surprised when Lazarus shook his head in denial. “You’ve got it all wrong, Shyla. None of us would do something like that.”
“Really?” she asked, her skepticism obvious. “Because the kind of lip lock he was immersed in certainly didn’t seem to be very platonic.”
She was annoyed with herself for the amount of bitterness and hurt she gave away, but there was nothing she could do about it now, so she didn’t bother trying to cover it.
The two of them stepped forward, surrounding her with their presence and she so wanted to lean into their support, sink into their care. But she couldn’t steal another illicit night just to be forced to walk away again.
“I can’t deny that,” Lazarus admitted. “But honestly, it was just the stress of the moment. Heather is friends with Delilah and Athena, and she tagged along. She and Dante, well, they’ve kind of been seeing each other…”
Shyla interrupted his denial with a rude harrumphing noise. He was contradicting himself, and she wasn’t impressed.
Lazarus held up his hands in supplication. “Honestly, Shyla…”
“What Lazarus is trying to say - badly,” Jericho cut in. “Is that they had the same kind of ‘almost’ relationship as you and Antony. Although Heather is a lot nicer than that jerk, and truly cares about Dante.”
Clever. He’d turned the tables on her in a way that was difficult to refute, by using her own connection with Antony as a comparison. She could hardly find fault in a situation that paralleled the one she’d been caught up in herself.
The claim served another purpose too. It made her realize the intricacies of their interaction. Antony would have grabbed her if she hadn’t blocked him with her crutches. Might even have tried to kiss her too. She couldn’t refute the truth of Jericho’s words. And why would he lie? It wasn’t like Dante was here, so obviously the pull she’d felt to return, and maybe Lazarus and Jericho, too, wasn’t as important to him, even if he wasn’t attached.
The knowledge made her sad.
Jericho grabbed one of her hands and held it in both of his. “Shyla, I’ve been wanting to reach out for so long. Hell, since you left without saying goodbye,” he admitted.
She felt petty now, but her anger and what she thought was their betrayal had been real at the time.
Then a thought occurred to her. Obviously, they now understood why she hadn’t been in touch. She’d thought they were off limits. But what was their reason if he felt that strongly?
Would they never have bothered if fate hadn’t thrown them together again?
“So why didn’t you?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
Jericho looked at Lazarus, then back to her, then shuffled his feet before he huffed out a heavy sigh. “Because we didn’t know how it was going to work, a relationship between us. Because of Heather, Dante was torn and struggling with his decisions…”
The admission hurt Shyla’s heart. Her feelings for these three men were intertwined. During the past weeks of soul searching, she had come to accept that the way she felt about one of them was no more or less than the others. In her perfect world she would have all three of them, no matter how unconventional.
