by Julia Kent
“Told you,” Mike said in a mockingly arched tone.
“I am freezing. Can we get through the appreciating-nature crap so we can move on to the drinking-beer-in-a-warm-cabin part of the night?” Jeremy whined.
“Your attitude makes everything so much better,” Mike snapped.
“Hey, I’m not the one with a head injury. You’d have to have something wrong with your brain to go night-kayaking in late October in Maine,” Jeremy shot back.
“No one said you had to come along.”
“We’re a threesome!” Jeremy argued. “You have to invite me. That’s kind of the point of being a triad. We do things in threes.”
“Like bad luck. It comes in threes,” Mike called out. He and Lydia were in a double kayak, Jeremy on his own.
A gust of wind made them list just enough to tip a quart of water down Lydia’s legs.
“Let’s go back!” she squealed.
“Finally! The voice of reason!” Jeremy was a good ten yards ahead of them before Mike and Lydia had even turned their kayak around.
“It’s not a race!” Lydia shouted.
“That’s what losers always say!” Jeremy shouted over his shoulder.
“Oh, he’s a dead man,” Mike said through gritted teeth.
Lydia just sighed.
These men.
“Last time I went night-kayaking, I found Mike Pine,” Mike said, paddling leisurely. The fact that he wasn’t trying to catch up to Jeremy surprised her, but his words caught her completely by surprise, more than his slowness.
“Really? You haven’t gone out in that long?”
“What?” Mike asked that question all the time. Hearing loss from cracking his head on those rocks was the one injury that he would probably retain for life.
“I said, I didn’t want to go alone.” She enunciated carefully, elevating her voice’s volume.
And it took six weeks before you fully recovered, she thought, but wisely did not say.
Mike had let his silver hair grow into thick, shaggy waves before the accident, and the head wound had required shaving to the scalp. The team at the hospital hadn’t shaved all his hair, though. When the bandages had been unwrapped, Jeremy had barked like a giggling seal at the sight.
Mike had looked like something from an ’80s British band.
As soon as he’d gotten home and been able to administer basic self-care, he had shaved and used the razor to buzz his head completely. Removing all his hair revealed the nasty scab by his right ear where his head had split open, but now, two months later, the hair had grown in, leaving a tiny, jagged line where his scar had formed.
Hair grew. Skin healed. Adrenaline receded. His inner ear was scrambled, but...
People recovered.
Love endured.
“You didn’t want to kayak at night alone because you were afraid of being injured?” she asked gently, the waves bobbing them as Mike used steady, strong strokes to propel them back to the campground’s beach.
“No,” he said, musing over her question. “More like not wanting to be alone. I want to spend time with you and Jeremy. Be with you. I used to charge my batteries by going off and being by myself.”
He was right. He did.
“And now?” she asked.
“That’s all changed.” The familiar shore light patterns caught her eye. They were close.
“Why?”
He sighed, the sound one of pressure being released. Mike wasn’t musing any longer. He was unveiling himself, thought by thought, unformed and growing, a new part of their relationship being revealed.
“When I woke up in that hospital bed, I couldn’t quite process everything you and Jeremy said to me—other than the asshole comment,” he said with a grunt. “But I could see the terror on your faces.”
She made a soft, tender sound. He probably didn’t hear it, but she could tell he felt it.
“I don’t ever want to see that again in either of you. I want to be with you. Just being in each other’s presence is all I need. It took this mess for me to understand that—to have it soak into my bones.”
If they were on shore, she would be hugging him by now.
“FIRST!” Jeremy shouted, waving at them, then trudging up shore.
“Bet we get back to the house and he has a bucket of beer by a roaring fire.”
“I’m not taking that bet.” Lydia jolted as the front of the kayak hit shore. She peeled herself out of her seat and braced herself for the dip of her feet into the water, helping Mike to drag the kayak to the racks.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re right.”
Suddenly, she was in his cold, slimy arms, his wetsuit soaking her. She wore a simple windbreaker over a thick wool sweater and silk long johns.
“Hey!”
He kissed her, stroking her hair away from her face, those commanding blue eyes like planets she orbited.
“I love you,” he said, so serious, so true.
“I love you, too.”
They walked the short distance to the house to find Jeremy in front of a roaring fire, dressed in flannel pajama pants, eating pork rinds and drinking a blueberry ale.
“Told you!” she announced, popping open a wine cooler.
“You didn’t need a crystal ball to predict that,” Mike protested.
“Predict what?” Jeremy asked.
“That.” Mike pointed to Jeremy’s obvious hard on.
“I,” Lydia said in an arched tone, “did not predict that.”
“Would you stop calling my cock ‘that’? You’ll hurts its feeling.”
“He only has one?”
“Yes. Penises have one feeling.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Feel Me feeling. Duh.”
“One track mind?”
“It’s not a complex organ.”
“You ever think about having kids?” Mike asked them both.
“Okay, boner gone. Poof.” Jeremy made a hand motion like a magician on stage, releasing a scarf that turns into a dove in flight. “Vanished like a million bitcoins. Jesus, Mike, what the fuck?” Jeremy asked.
Lydia just gaped.
Mike’s face hardened. Oh, Lydia knew that look. He didn’t spend years on the ladder to global domination without that look.
“It’s a question, Jeremy.”
“It’s relationship napalm.”
“You’re not answering it.” Mike’s sapphire eyes took her in, unbelievably beautiful and intimidating, able to make her melt and shiver at the same time. “And neither is Lydia.”
“Someday.”
“We’re still young!” Jeremy barked. “Why ruin everything with kids!”
Lydia held Mike’s gaze. “Why bring this up? Because of Laura, Mike and Dylan?”
“Of course.”
“But did you have to bring up rug rats right before sex?” Jeremy groused.
“You thought we were about to have sex?” Mike said with a laugh.
“That’s what it takes to make a baby.”
“So you do want kids,” Mike said in a triumphant voice.
“I never said I wanted kids!”
“You don’t want children?” Lydia asked Jeremy softly.
He looked like a cornered animal, the whites of his eyes standing out. “How did the conversation turn from my boner to whether I want kids?”
Silence.
Lydia felt a great vibration from within, a sense that she’d experienced time and again over the years.
“Someday.”
“You can’t just steal Lydia’s answer,” Mike declared, folding his arms.
“What if it’s my answer, too?” Jeremy was veering into hysteria territory.
Mike looked to Lydia as if asking her permission.
“What? This is your interrogation, buster.”
“Are we in agreement? That’s a yes?”
“A yes to someday,” Jeremy shot back. Was he sweating? Lydia started to worry about him. The man wa
s pale and flushed at the same time.
“Someday,” Lydia whispered, her hand reflexively going to her belly.
Mike smiled. Appreciation flooded her, the feeling of thankfulness greater than any passion she had ever experienced. Her life could be so different now. Eyes invariably attracted to Mike’s scar, she looked at it, peering intently.
“I thought we’d always have somedays. But we don’t.”
Both guys tensed.
“What does that mean?” Mike asked quietly.
“I’m not ready for kids. I’m too greedy.”
“Greedy?” Jeremy sputtered.
“Greedy. I want more of both of you.”
Jeremy’s eyebrow went up. “More of us?”
“She’s not talking about sex,” Mike insisted.
“What if she is?” Jeremy bantered back. The two began to argue.
Ah, life, she thought, smiling to herself.
Welcome back to normal.
The End
Thank you so much for reading It’s Always Complicated. Please consider leaving a review so that other readers can find this series.
You’re invited to join my Facebook reader group, Laugh Your Way to Love with Julia Kent. Read excerpts from works in progress, post jokes, chat with other readers about my books, look at chicken videos, and get opportunities to receive advance review copies and access to special contests.
If you like reading about hot billionaires and the women who love them, try out my Shopping for a Billionaire series.
If you haven’t read Declan and Shannon’s story in the Shopping for a Billionaire Boxed Set, go read it right now! This series began in May 2014 as a serial, is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, and the boxed set has 670+ pages of their hilarious, hot, and crazy story.
Read more now!
Shopping for a Billionaire Boxed Set
Other Books by Julia Kent
Suggested Reading Order
Shopping for a Billionaire: The Collection (Parts 1-5 in one bundle, 670 pages!)
Shopping for a Billionaire 1
Shopping for a Billionaire 2
Shopping for a Billionaire 3
Shopping for a Billionaire 4
Christmas Shopping for a Billionaire
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Fiancée
Shopping for a CEO
Shopping for a Billionaire’s Wife
Shopping for a CEO’s Fiancée
Before Her Billionaires
Her Billionaires: Boxed Set
Her First Billionaire
Her Second Billionaire
Her Two Billionaires
Her Two Billionaires and a Baby
It’s Complicated
Completely Complicated
Complete Abandon
Complete Harmony
Complete Bliss
Complete We
It’s Always Complicated
Random Acts of Crazy
Random Acts of Trust
Random Acts of Fantasy
Random Acts of Hope
Randomly Ever After: Sam and Amy
Random Acts of Love
Random on Tour: Los Angeles
Merry Random Christmas
Maliciously Obedient
Suspiciously Obedient
Deliciously Obedient
About the Author
Text JKentBooks to 77948 and get a text message on release dates!
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Julia Kent turned to writing contemporary romance after deciding that life is too short not to have fun. She writes romantic comedy with an edge, and new adult books that push contemporary boundaries. From billionaires to BBWs to rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every book she writes, but unlike Trevor from Random Acts of Crazy, she has never kissed a chicken.
She loves to hear from her readers by email at [email protected], on Twitter @jkentauthor, and on Facebook at facebook.com/jkentauthor
Visit her website at http://jkentauthor.com
Join her Facebook reader group, Laugh Your Way to Love with Julia Kent.
