The Strength of Love: Happily Ever Menage (The Luck of Love Book 3)

by Serena Akeroyd

  “There’s work to be done, Luke,” Gia mocked. “Work we’re never allowed to know about. But that’s okay. Because Josh is the big, bad brigadier general.”

  “Don’t start, Gia.” Josh hissed, striding to the closet and pulling on some clean BDUs.

  “I’m not starting anything, simply saying it how it is.”

  “Leave it, Gia. Let him cool off.”

  She started to sneer, then, realizing her fight wasn’t with Luke, turned her head away and stared out the window. When Josh stalked out of the room, without a farewell to either of his partners, she turned back to look at the remaining lover, who was staring straight at her.

  His face was blank, but his eyes were stormy.

  “I won’t say sorry.”

  “You should. That was totally unnecessary,” he remarked quietly.

  “You might think so, but I don’t. I’m tired of being questioned, of having my actions judged. I’m an adult, a grown woman. I can do what I want to do.”

  “Who the hell has been questioning you, judging you?” he demanded.

  She pursed her lips. “My mother.”

  “Your mother?” He blinked. “Wha…? When?”

  “This past week.”

  He studied her for a second. “She was why you went to Lafayette?”

  A single nod was her answer.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Because it wasn’t on a need-to-know basis.” When his lips tightened, she got to her feet and strode over to the bathroom. “I’m having a bath.”

  “You can’t leave it like that, Gia.”

  “Oh, yes, I can,” she hollered, and she damn well intended to have the last word too.

  Chapter Ten

  Josh smashed his fists into the punching bag.

  One-two, one-two.

  Sweat flecked the leathery surface and dotted the floor around him. He was improperly suited up for this impromptu workout, and his fingers, without strapping, would pay for it in the morning, but he didn’t care.

  His aggression was over the top, and he needed to burn it off because if he didn’t, he’d stay in this bad mood for hours. Days, even.

  She’d been lying to them.

  For years.

  And Lafayette, something was going on there. His instincts were twitching like a bloodhound sporting the scent of rabbit.

  He was here, in his office, burning off his rage because he was left with two choices.

  One, to trust her. To trust in his lover, and to have faith that she had secrets she kept for her own reasons.

  Good reasons.

  Strong ones.

  Two, not to trust her. To call Dana in and have her wreak havoc on every government database in an effort to discover his wife’s secrets.

  Each one-two punch was a silent reminder. To have faith or not to have faith.

  She’d never given them reason for concern before. That he had to concede. But then, he’d never known about the writing, and for her to hide such a simple part of her life from them, to keep it tucked away behind closed doors, it spoke of a side of her he’d never come across before.

  And he didn’t like it.

  In a world where nothing was as it seemed, it had always been reassuring to know the people he loved from back to front. This curve ball changed all that, and it put him on edge.

  With a final punch to the bag, he grabbed the swaying weight and embraced it. Moving with the swing, he rested his head against the sticky leather and sighed, finally feeling exhaustion hit him.

  The past few months had been tiring. The past week had been agonizing. And tonight, with relief pulling the rug from under him, he was more exhausted than ever.

  He’d intended to fuck his wife and his husband, roll over, and fall asleep. No dreams, no nightmares. Nothing. Just the blessed, blissful blankness of a peaceful rest. But that wasn’t to be.

  Josh closed his eyes, letting the sway of the bag calm him further.

  He was in the office, on the base. He could go and camp out on the sofa, which he probably would do, but for that moment, sleeping standing up had a lot of advantages—the main one being he didn’t have to move.

  Feeling himself slip away, he shook himself awake. The small closet was supposed to be for storage, but it housed a punching bag. The tiny room was large enough for him to move around the bag 360 and for the bag’s pivot to move without hindrance. It wasn’t ideal, but it was private, and at moments like these, privacy was required.

  In a job like his, Josh knew his limits, and Gia had inadvertently stumbled across one of them tonight.

  His anger, his bluster, all of it hid the one thing he’d never imagined she’d uncover—hurt.

  It hurt him that she’d kept this from him. She spoke of royalties, and in such a way that made them sound substantial enough to cover Luke while he went through this wild-child phase of being a tea rose progenitor. That meant success. Commercial success. And she’d hid that from him.

  Why would anyone do that? Why keep something so precious, so rare from someone they loved?

  It was like a knife to the side, and he knew how badly that hurt—his first deployment, he’d been stabbed there. Had been inches away from evisceration had a buddy not blown off the bastard’s head before he could do much more than stick the fucking knife in.

  In fact, Josh realized this pain, the emotional sort, was more intense than that had been.

  Trust was a precious jewel. It worked that way for everyone on earth, but for him, in his profession, in the hazy in-between world where gray ruled and black and white didn’t exist, it was imperative.

  With a sigh, he trudged from the closet to his office. As he passed Dana’s desk, he was tempted, oh, so tempted, to grab the phone and call her. Instead, he resisted and, the minute he entered his own quarters, dived for the sofa and turned onto his side. It took less than a handful of seconds to get comfortable, and maybe a minute later, he tumbled into sleep.

  It was what he needed. The rest. But his lovers weren’t sharing the same mattress or the same breathing room. They weren’t close to hand. His little girl wasn’t on the other side of the house, sleeping the slumber of the innocent.

  So, while he did get the perfunctory zzz’s, it wasn’t the quality of which he needed, and when he awoke the next morning, he felt as tired as he had when he’d dropped off.

  Peeling open his eyes, he immediately slammed them shut when the glare from the open blinds hit him. The light skinned his corneas with the precision of a hunting knife, and he clamped his forearm over his face to hide from it.

  “There a reason you’re sleeping in your office?”

  “Go away, Dana.”

  “I’m at work. Nowhere for me to go.”

  He grunted. “I’m too tired for technicalities.”

  “Wow, considering they’re your strong point, that sucks.” He heard her footsteps, her shoes clipping against the floor. “What’s going on, sir? You had five days of leave, and I’d have thought you and Luke had a lot to celebrate.”

  “There was an argument.”

  It was a testament to how much he trusted Dana that she got that out of him. Had anyone else asked, he’d have lied through his teeth. It was no one else’s business.

  And while that went for Dana as well, the favors she’d done him, the generosity she’d handed his way, all of it would have made him seem churlish had he not answered with some semblance of the truth.

  “Must have been a bad one. I’ve sat on that sofa. I know how hard it is on your ass, never mind your back.”

  He blew out a breath when her words seemed to make the ache come to life. Curling up, he twisted an arm back and began to rub at the muscles that ran parallel to his spine. “Thanks for the reminder.”

  “You’re welcome,” came the cheerful reply.

  “Why are you so chipper this morning?” he groused, spotting her bright smile. “You’re normally like death warmed up this early in the day.”

  She shrugged. “We
just broke a conspiracy, uncovered a cover-up, and righted so many wrongs justice was finally served. I think that’s excuse enough for a wide smile.”

  He grunted. “I guess.”

  “Hell, you are in a bad mood, sir.”

  Josh peered up at her and immediately felt guilty. She was right; what they’d done was incredible, and though he’d been the one to guide her, to prod and direct her down certain paths, exploring avenues she wouldn’t have thought to touch, she’d been the one to uncover it all.

  “I’m sorry, Dana. I don’t mean to burst your bubble.”

  She jerked a shoulder. “It would take a lot more than you to do that, sir.”

  “Oh, it would, would it?” Amusement laced his tone at her laissez-faire retort. That was one of the reasons why he liked her. She called a spade a spade and didn’t deal in bullshit.

  It was surprisingly rare to come across such qualities in life, never mind on the base.

  “Yes, sir. I mean my happiness is centered within and doesn’t hang on anyone else’s presence, approval, or understanding.”

  He groaned out, “You’re into that self-visualization shit, aren’t you? How the hell have I just figured that out?”

  She snorted. “You’re slow on the uptake when national safety isn’t concerned.”

  “Now that’s the bolster my ego needed,” he teased in return, then huffed out a breath. “What’s on today’s rota?”

  Dana fielded the change in topic easily. “Not a whole lot. I’ve been keeping things tight this week because we weren’t certain how long the appeal would last. Plus, you’re on leave, so there’s nothing in the pipeline anyway.”

  He wasn’t sure whether he ought to be thankful or annoyed—a distraction would have been handy right about now. “I guess that means I should go home?”

  She smirked. “Yep.”

  “Remind me to recommend you for a pay upgrade. You deserve it.”

  “Don’t worry, sir. I’ve already updated my file to include that recommendation.”

  He cocked a brow at her, knowing that to be the truth. “Minx,” he retorted. “You can’t do stuff like that, not without warning me first.”

  She flushed. “I only wanted to read your annual report on me, and when I saw how glowing it was—”

  “You got big-headed and egotistical.” He pursed his lips. “Don’t worry. Keep it as it is, only don’t do it again.”

  “Okay, sir. Is there anything you want me to work on?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her to look into Gia’s past. Hell, it was more than on the tip. His mouth was forming the words, getting ready to shoot them out into the world. Only, as Dana sat there looking at him expectantly, he couldn’t do it.

  Not without giving Gia another opportunity to explain herself.

  “No,” he mumbled eventually. “It’s okay. Carry on with your regular duties. Sign off at lunch.”

  Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she grinned. “Thanks, sir. I’ll crack on.”

  Still squinting at her, he shooed her out of the office and called out, “Shut the door behind you.”

  She did as bade, and he rolled off the sofa because it was easier to land on all fours than it was to get into a standing position.

  He slowly curled up, stretching his spine and wiggling his shoulders, trying to bring life back to nerves dulled by the sofa’s too-small length.

  Finally on his feet, he limped over to the desk, where he’d dumped his stuff last night. Spotting his cell, he grabbed it and took note of the missed calls with an absentmindedness that was unusual for Josh.

  Gia hadn’t called. Not once. But then, he hadn’t expected her to. Not really.

  She was slow to fire, but when she did, it was a long inferno. Woe any man who got in her way—as he’d done last night.

  Shaking his head at himself, and at his audacity in trying to break down the bathroom door, something else that added to the morning’s aches, he connected a call to Luke.

  “Why the hell haven’t you been answering your phone?” was his greeting.

  “I was asleep.”

  “Bullshit. You’re as bad as I am where sleep’s concerned. The pair of us could wake up if a feather landed on us.”

  “I turned the ringer off.”

  Silence was his answer, then came, “You turned the ringer off. When do you ever do that?”

  “When I’m as mad as I was last night.”

  “You over it now?”

  “No.”

  “Shit. Not that I thought you would be.”

  “Gia isn’t either, is she?”

  “No. She’s cheerful, though.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Never bodes well, does it?”

  “Nope.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair, thinking back to the last time they’d argued and immediately after, she’d been cheerful. She’d accidentally on purpose put salt instead of sugar in his morning pancakes. “At least Lexi’s in the dark.”

  “That’s probably the only reason she’s doing it anyway. Lexi has no idea, which is a miracle considering the racket you two made last night.”

  “She sleeps the sleep of an innocent,” Josh replied. “No reason for her to wake up.”

  “Hearing her father trying to break down a goddamn door is a pretty good reason. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking. That’s the problem. I saw red, and that was it.”

  “Yeah, well, you need to apologize.”

  “Fuck that. She’s the one who’s been lying all this time.”

  “I know, but you were out of order.”

  He grimaced because Luke was right. “I can’t apologize. Not yet. She has to know that what she’s done is out of order too.”

  “I think she does, but she feels justified.” Luke sighed. “Why does this have to be a problem?”

  “It’s not a problem for you because you fucking knew, Luke,” he snarled down the line.

  Feeling his blood pressure start to rise, alongside the vein at his temple that always popped up when he was pissed, he tried to calm down but couldn’t.

  He was too worked up, too angry at being lied to, deceived.

  The worst thing was it came from a source he’d never imagined would do this to him, and being blindsided was something he couldn’t handle.

  “I learned just before I was deployed. She lied to me too.”

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

  “It wasn’t my secret to tell. Plus, we’re all entitled to our little trinkets of knowledge that belong to us alone.”

  Josh gritted his teeth. ‘Little trinkets of knowledge’ his ass.

  “I can’t believe you’re backing her up on this.”

  “If you weren’t a fool, you’d back her up too. Who was the one who slept in a comfortable bed last night? Who was the one who got to hold a lovely Italian bundle of curves? And who had a nice breakfast this morning?” Luke sniffed. “Me. Pick your battles, Josh. This isn’t one worth fighting. Gia is—”

  “A pain in the ass.” It stung that he was right. And she’d probably made Luke his favorites too—eggs Benedict. They weren’t his breakfast of choice, but they sure would taste better than the crap the cafeteria had to serve.

  “Yeah, she’s that. And more. But, and we’ve always known this, she’s an anomaly too.”

  “What? What does that mean?”

  “You can’t tell me you’ve never noticed.”

  “Never noticed what?”

  “The way she is. The way she does things. She’s cagey. Always has been.”

  Josh reared back. “In what way?”

  Luke huffed. “Man, you’re blind.”

  “Stop fucking around, Luke,” he yelled. “Explain.”

  “What do you know about her childhood? About her parents?” Luke let that settle before he continued, “And when you ask about either, haven’t you ever noticed how she’ll ask about ours? Or say something to change the sub
ject? She’s pretty damn expert at it, too. But then, she’d have to be to fool you.”

  Startled, Josh staggered into his seat. “You mean you’ve known all this time she’s been holding something back?”

  “Well, yeah. I figured you knew too but didn’t think it was worth rocking the boat. She’s the way she is, and I love her for that. I don’t want her to change.”

  Josh dismissed that. He and Luke had very different opinions on this. “What do you think she’s hiding?”

  “I don’t know, but I didn’t tell you to add to your paranoia. I’m saying, something happened to her, something that has made her that way. Maybe, in the future, if she feels safe, she’ll share. If not, then obviously it’s something we don’t need to know.”

  “I can’t live like that.”

  “Bull, you’ve been living like that for the past half decade, only you haven’t realized it.”

  Luke’s scorn made Josh’s cheeks flush with color.

  “Don’t make more out of this than you already are, Josh. You love that woman, and she loves you. Just because she’s not the open book you thought she was doesn’t make her a bad person.”

  “I hate liars, Luke. You know that.”

  “If you’re telling me you could hate Gia, then that’s bullshit. Anyway, she doesn’t lie.”

  “By omission, she lies. It’s all the same to me.”

  “Actually, she says nothing at all. She leaves things open to your interpretation. Technically, no lies are told.”

  “Stop sticking up for her. This is terrible. Who the hell is she, Luke? If she’s willing to bury her past, then who exactly is Gia Jefferson?”

  “I don’t know, Josh, and to be honest, I don’t care. You’re a fool if you focus on that side of her rather than the parts of her that are forever open to us.

  “She loves us, without condition. It’s not often you can find a woman like that. Who loves with all her heart. Who can accept this odd triangle of ours, who will sacrifice her own pride and respect to protect ours…”

  Josh turned to peer out of the slatted blinds. The window overlooked a parking lot. Cars came and went, vans and trucks too. A group of soldiers were on parade. Others were running and in the middle of a training exercise.

  His own training and experience allowed him to scan it all, take note of what was happening in the yard, but all without being aware of it. His thoughts were centered elsewhere, on the woman he thought he’d known as well as he knew himself.