by Jayne Rylon
Shit, there he went getting ahead of himself again.
Ford smacked the steering wheel when he encountered yet another red light. “Fuck. Come on. Can’t we catch a break?”
Josh spoke calmly from the backseat. “Look, I’m as worried as you two, but we can’t go rushing up to her door like this. You have to keep it together and show her that we’re not psychotic, obsessed, and irrational like Marty. We’re logical and patient.”
“Speak for your damn self,” Ford growled. Right then he had more in common with a cornered feral animal than the kind of man Josh was trying to make him out to be. Fear and doubt nagged him. He didn’t like Kari being on her own. Not now. Not when Marty was out there and growing more dangerous by the day.
“I’m being serious,” Josh insisted, using the steely tone he usually reserved for the courtroom. When he got down to business, all hints of his affable self disappeared. The playful kid-at-heart was nowhere to be seen. “You two aren’t in this on your own. What you do, and how you react, also impacts my chance at happiness. Don’t fuck this up for me. For us all.”
Brady groaned. “I said I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Let’s just make this right, okay?” Josh bumped his fist into Brady’s shoulder with a confidence Ford didn’t share. What if they couldn’t?
The light turned green. He mashed the pedal to the floor.
And that’s when his phone started ringing.
He ignored it.
Until it rang again.
Ford took it out of his pocket and tossed it to Josh, who answered for him.
“Hello?” Josh waited, then said, “Hey, Reed. Ford’s driving, what do you need?”
Another few seconds passed.
“Yes, we’re almost at her place now.”
That put Ford on high alert. Everything about Kari did. He tried to calm himself and concentrate on the road, but it was hard not to flashback to the moment they’d found out Kari had been attacked the other day. Was he being overprotective or was there a reason for the foreboding that shot icy tendrils down his spine?
“No, she didn’t call us. No, neither did the cops. What the fuck is going on, Reed?” Josh raised his voice.
Ford didn’t give a fuck how many tickets he racked up. He accelerated, practically taking out a light post when he hugged the corner.
“Son of a bitch!” Josh shouted. “I’m going to kill him, I swear.”
“Josh, what the fuck?” Ford glared in the rearview at his friend.
“Marty. He was in her apartment.”
Brady shuddered. He went white as the crisp shirts he wore to court. “He got her. Because of me. Because I let her go…”
“Is she okay?” Ford roared.
“We’re about to find out.” Josh hung up on Reed, then flew out of the car the moment Ford screeched to a stop at the curb in front of her building.
It was a race to see who got to her first, all three of them pounding up the stairs, not even bothering to wait for the elevator. Who could be still for the eternity that would take?
They slammed through the fireproof door onto her floor, only to come face to face with a dude none of them had seen before. Ford snarled, “Get out of my way.”
“I don’t think so, asshole.” The guy crossed his arms and spread his legs.
Punches might have been thrown if Kari hadn’t peeked over his shoulder and said, “Ford? Is that you?”
“Yes, I’m here. We’re here.” He rushed the guy, who stepped aside as Kari tried to sprint past him at the same time.
“Oh, thank God.” Kari threw herself into their arms. Josh ended up with the most direct grasp on her, his arms winding around her and clutching her to his chest. Ford stood nearby, running his hands through her hair and down her arm to reassure himself that she was alive and relatively unharmed.
When she began to sob, it wrecked him.
Through not nearly as much as it did Brady, if the look on his friend’s face was any indication. Ford demanded, “Get over here, Brady.”
The guy shook his head, hovering but not joining their embrace.
Kari sniffled, then looked up at him, her lower lip wobbling. “Please. I need you. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? For what?” He hurried to her then, smothering her between himself, Josh, and Ford.
“I don’t know. I can’t think right now. I just...don’t want to fight.” She leaned her head back against his chest and closed her eyes, relaxing in front of their eyes.
“What the fuck happened?” Ford asked. “Where’s Marty?”
Kari trembled. “He ran. Max chased him out.”
Ford had forgotten all about the man observing them with a keen gaze. Let him stare—who cared?
Unless that was jealousy in the guy’s expression.
Untangling himself, Ford stuck out his hand and introduced himself. If he squeezed Max’s hand tighter than he would have otherwise, he figured that was understandable guy code.
“I’m Max. Her neighbor.” The guy grinned.
Under other circumstances, Ford thought he might like Max. At the very least, he appreciated him coming to Kari’s aid. “Thank you.”
“It was no big deal.” Max shrugged. “It all happened so fast, I reacted on instinct. When she ran back in there with him…”
“You what?” Ford rounded on Kari. “Are you insane?”
She laughed at that, which oddly made him feel better. “Maybe a little. But no, I was protecting the evidence.”
“What do you mean?” Brady stepped up then, lawyer mode fully engaged.
“I don’t want to go in there, okay?” She hugged Josh tighter. “You can, though. In my bedroom. On the floor…”
Ford dashed inside, his phone in his hand. When he saw her underwear on the ground, clearly soiled, he wanted to smash his fist into the mirror. Break things, since Marty wasn’t there to hit instead.
Brady said calmly from behind him, “Don’t. Don’t touch anything. Preserve the scene.”
Sirens blared while red and blue lights washed over the windows. They would soon have company. Lots and lots of it.
Ford nodded. He unlocked his phone and snapped as many photographs as he could in the minute or two it took for cops to swarm Kari’s apartment. He hated to admit it, but everything that had happened might have been for the best if it meant they could prove definitively that Marty had been the intruder in her apartment.
Their case against him just got a hell of a lot stronger.
He paced the hallway while detectives interviewed Kari. Josh took over as her watchdog and official representation while he and Brady came to an unspoken understanding. Until they could send Marty away, they weren’t letting Kari out of their sight again for a single moment, whether she liked it or not.
It was a good sign that she was still clutching Josh’s hand when they left the apartment. Kari seemed smaller than usual, defeated. Lost.
Brady groaned. “Kari…”
She shook her head. “I can’t right now. I don’t have anything left in me.”
“Come home with us,” Ford said as gently as he could manage. “You know there’s plenty of space. You’re welcome to as much of it as you need. No one will bother you or pressure you to talk until you’re ready. Just come. And stay. Where you’ll be safe.”
Josh squeezed her fingers. “If it’s too much, we’ll call Andi, Reed, Simon, and Cooper to come get you, okay? It’s not smart for you to be alone until this is…resolved.”
If Ford hadn’t been staring at her, he might not have noticed her muted grimace. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she didn’t like the idea of spending the time elsewhere any more than they did. Thank God.
Still, she didn’t agree until Brady stepped forward, took her hand from Josh, kissed her knuckles, and murmured, “Please.”
Then she nodded and followed them to their car without another word.
She tucked against Josh’s side and rested her head on his chest for the entire ride
home. Whether she was asleep or simply mentally burnt out, Ford didn’t know. He drove a lot more carefully on the return journey to their penthouse, unwilling to risk anything happening to her.
He wouldn’t be able to handle it if it did again.
12
If Kari had to take another bite of the delicious meal the guys had summoned from a fancy-ass restaurant that didn’t offer takeout for mere commoners and pretend like everything was fine, she was going to scream.
She had no idea where to go from here. They were stuck.
At first, she’d been glad they hadn’t pressured her to talk about what had happened back at her apartment or—almost worse—the argument with Brady that had spurred her to flee the sanctuary of their home in the first place.
The rest of the day had passed as she curled up on the couch, resting and recovering while reading a book. The guys had pretty much done the same, collecting themselves. At least one of them had hung out with her at all times, though they never intruded on her quiet contemplation.
Their issues had fed off the awkward silence and were hanging there in the air between them, preventing them from moving forward. Easier than hashing things out? Sure. But it wasn’t like them to avoid difficult topics. Leaving their problems unresolved only increased her anxiety until she couldn’t handle it any longer.
“Guys?” Kari balled her linen napkin in her hands, then looked from man to man to man. “What the hell is going on here?”
“What? We’re sharing a peaceful dinner.” Josh raised his glass. “Ignoring anything that could get us into too much trouble. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Not exactly.” Kari sighed, setting her fork and napkin on her plate, then pushing it away from her. She’d rather be wrapped so tightly in them that she couldn’t spare a single brain cell to think about what had happened—and worse things that could have happened—that morning.
Jumping into bed before discussing their issues would only lead to more drama in the morning. So she put on her big girl panties and prepared to make herself uncomfortable. Vulnerable in a way that was far more dangerous than the physical danger she’d survived back at her apartment.
“After you quit your job at the firm and then the things you said to me earlier…” Brady swallowed hard, although he hadn’t eaten much either. “I get it. We get it. We’ve been taking things too fast. Giving you the wrong impression.”
“I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I guess I got nervous and then we accidentally mashed each other’s buttons. That was unfair of me,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I want and that’s making me crazy.”
“I think you do.” Ford stared at her. “And I think that’s why you keep running. You’re afraid you’re going to be disappointed if we’re not after the same things.”
More like crushed, she thought.
“We are, though.” Josh leaned forward. “I swear we are.”
“How do you know that?” She winced. “You don’t know what’s in my mind…or my heart. We never stopped to talk about it.”
“Well, we are now.” Ford kept eating like nothing was wrong. Maybe he was right and everything was fine. As much as she hated it, she needed that reassurance. “As long as you’re ready to hear what we have to say.”
She nodded. “I am. I think. No, really. I am.”
Kari took a deep if shaky breath. They already had the power to rip her to pieces. Admitting it wouldn’t change that, so why not?
“It’s important to us that you know we want more than a physical relationship,” Brady said. Ford and Josh nodded. “It wasn’t our intention to make you think all we had in mind was sex. It’s not easy to resist touching you when we’re sharing such close quarters. Still, that’s no excuse. We’ll do better at communicating our feelings, which run deep.”
“We kept quiet so we wouldn’t scare you away. But it seems like we did anyway,” Josh added. “We can wait to fool around more if that’s what it takes to show you we intend to make this work for the long haul. You’re different from any other woman we’ve been with and we’ll do whatever you need to ensure you’re happy in a long-term, exclusive relationship with us. Especially after this morning…”
Ford finally dropped his fork as if he couldn’t stomach another morsel after the reminder of what had happened and how much worse it could have been. Funny, discussing dozens of similar cases in the office had never had that effect on him. Could it be true? Were they equally as invested as she was?
A spark of hope flared inside her.
Kari couldn’t blame the guys for reacting like they had. Neither did she want this distance to fester between them and screw things up even more. She wouldn’t give Marty that much influence over their relationship. He’d ruined enough of her life already.
Before she could second-guess her decision, Kari nudged her chair backward. Instead of rising from the table and walking away to sulk in her room alone, as the guys seemed to expect of her, she stood and began to get undressed.
“Uh, Kari?” Brady asked. “What’re you doing?”
Maybe they thought she’d gone nuts after her most recent trauma. Hell, maybe she had.
Because she grabbed the bottom hem of her T-shirt then whipped it off, tossing it over Ford’s head to the floor behind him. Next, she unbuttoned her jeans and began to walk them down her hips, revealing the soft pink panties she’d chosen from the stash the guys had arranged to appear in her suite that morning.
They might have been simple, but they were soft and made a statement in their own way.
Very girl-next-door-gone-rogue, which was exactly how she felt right then.
“Kari?” Ford asked more sternly when she didn’t respond to Brady. Rather than trying to dissuade her, he took his arm and swiped the dishes from in front of him with one lightning fast motion. The resulting clatter should have made her cringe. Instead, it triggered her grin.
“That’s right. You should have me for dessert.”
She shrieked with glee when he lunged over the table, wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her right across the slick surface onto his lap.
Kari paused only long enough to make eye contact with each of her men. “It’s the same for me. I don’t want to go slower with you. I want to be all in. Let’s be honest, I’ve already been for a while now or I wouldn’t have been willing to push so many boundaries, give up my career, or trust you in the darkest times of my life.”
“In that case, let’s get rid of these.” Ford helped her as she squirmed and kicked her jeans off her legs. They flopped over Josh’s head and shoulders.
“Wait. Not that I don’t love spontaneity, but…we have a perfectly comfortable bed upstairs. Why don’t we use it?” Brady wondered. Something in his tone forced Kari to pause. He was speaking in code to his best friends, she was sure of it.
“The one in the special room?” Ford asked, confirming her suspicions.
Josh shook her pants off his head like a dog emerging from a lake, and grinned. “It’s time we used it, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.” Ford scooped Kari up and headed for the stairs. He took them two at a time before turning toward the hallway that led to her suite. Then he marched to one of the many doorways she hadn’t yet explored.
Brady and Josh trailed right behind them.
At the door, Ford paused long enough for Brady to key in a code. He hesitated on the threshold, staring down at her. “I just want you to know that we’ve never brought a woman here before. When we designed this place, we knew what we wanted. We just never found it…until you.”
Kari’s chest nearly exploded with the force of the emotions swamping her. She was sure now. She was more to them than another temporary lover. No, this was something big. They were investing as much as she was and she refused to reject them again, because if they ever did it to her, it would destroy her. If it was the same for them, she couldn’t be responsible for inflicting that kind of pain on people she…loved.
She mu
rmured, “Show me.”
Ford kicked the door open and Brady slapped out a hand, so that the heavy paneled wood didn’t rebound into them as Ford carried her past it. They kept true to their word, revealing not only the gorgeous space, but the intention behind it. Ford’s hold on her knee and shoulder increased despite his trembling fingers.
Could he really be nervous that she wouldn’t approve? That their thoughtfulness and long-held intentions wouldn’t sway her?
“Each of our rooms connects to this one,” Ford told her. “So does your suite. There’s a door hidden behind a panel in the bathroom.”
“Our idea was that we could have a place to share, and space to ourselves when we need it,” Brady filled in for him. “We don’t expect you to be with all of us at once all the time. And…well, we sort of each want our own private time, too.”
“By that, he means alone time with you. We can still be selfish sometimes, sorry,” Ford said with a wink.
What they were suggesting, the kind of life they were proposing, resonated with her. Their vision matched the dreams she’d had for the future. Could it really be like that between them?
God, she hoped so…someday.
For now, there was something else she needed. Something more immediate and primal.
“That’s…a lot to think about.” She stroked Ford’s cheek. Hopefully the gentle touch would communicate how deeply they’d spoken to her. It was exactly what she’d needed to hear.
“Don’t worry about all that tonight, okay?” Brady asked as he looked at her over Ford’s shoulder. “We can hammer out the details later. We just need you to understand how serious we are.”
Kari remembered the night before, when Josh and Ford had tried to say so. She hadn’t understood the depths of their desires and that they reached far beyond a few incredible orgasms. Now she did.
She nodded. “The fact that you’ve put this much thought into it already makes me feel better. I’m sorry I bolted this morning. I should have stayed and listened.”
