Angie's Destiny [Cattleman's Club 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Jenny Penn

  “You know, it is traditional to ask the woman first,” Slade pointed out with a hint of amused exasperation lightening his tone.

  “Do you really think she’ll say no?” Mike shot back, because he didn’t believe she would.

  Sure, Angie was a little upset with them, but they could get over that hump. Mike was even willing to vow never to fight again if it helped. Of course, he would need some other way to relieve the tension that seemed to build up in him, but he had an idea about that.

  “Actually…” Slade let that dangle out there.

  Though the ending was clear, it remained an unfinished thought as Heather returned with four coffees and a batch of napkin-wrapped silverware. She lingered only long enough to take the rest of their orders and then scurried off toward the kitchen as Chase went directly back to the topic at hand.

  “Angie’s not going to say yes.” That was Chase, blunt as always. “She can’t.”

  “What do you mean, she can’t?” Mike didn’t like the ominous sound of that. “Is she married already?”

  “No.” Slade hesitated, clearly not wanting to elaborate.

  “But,” Mike prodded him, feeling the tension gathering again in his muscles.

  “She’s agreed not to see you,” Chase spoke up, filling in all the details before either Mathews brother could ask for them. “If she does, then Dean is going to press charges.”

  “What?” Mike snorted in disbelief. “He can’t do that.”

  “He did it and more,” Slade shot back. “Angie’s agreed to give him one month to try to seduce her—”

  “What?” Mike gaped at Slade, completely unable to reason through that revelation. So he rejected it out of hand. “No!”

  “Yes,” Slade insisted. “And she’s not allowed to have any contact with you during that time.”

  “Or he’ll press charges,” Chase repeated with a pointed look.

  “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch,” Mike muttered, not certain if he meant it or not in that moment, but Chase clearly believed him.

  “Do that and you’ll not only end up in jail, but you’ll also lose Angie forever. Is that really what you want?”

  No. What he wanted was to find her and plead his case. He also wanted to know how he’d ended up in this mess. It was a disaster, one of his own making, and that just boggled his mind. Never before had he so thoroughly screwed up. Hell, he’d never even screwed up before.

  Mike always succeeded at everything he did. He succeeded because he’d always had a plan. His plans were always well thought out and executed. Not this time. This time he’d been driven by pure emotion, which was just as dangerous as he’d always suspected.

  “You need to get a grip,” Chase stated as if he were reading Mike’s mind. “Angie loves you, sure, but dealing with two total psychos would drive any woman away.”

  “We’re not psycho,” Brett grumped, clearly insulted but also sullen enough to prove that he knew they weren’t acting right.

  “You’ve started three fights in two days,” Slade retorted with obvious disgust. “You’re completely out of control, but then again, that’s why we’re here.”

  “Because we’ve been there,” Chase assured them before pausing to shrug. “But we didn’t take the bait. I’m afraid you did.”

  That sounded very ominous, and it put every single one of Mike’s nerves on edge. “What do you mean? The bait?”

  Chase and Slade shared a look, and Mike knew in that instant the story started with Patton. He was right.

  “Patton was a little upset about how you treated her friend,” Slade started, as if that excused whatever came next. “So, last night she decided to test you.”

  “The women.” It all clicked then. Last night Mike had figured the women broken down on the side of the road had been test. It wasn’t shocking that they had been Patton’s idea, but it did leave one question unanswered. “Did Angie know?”

  “No.” Chase shook his head. “Not as far as we can tell.”

  “And Dean?” Brett pressed. “Was he in on it?”

  “No.” Slade hesitated yet again before finishing off the tale. “That just seems to be an unfortunate twist, but she did delay you and is feeling guilty about the fact that left Angie without a ride.”

  Everything had just escalated from there. Mike wanted to blame Patton for this mess but knew he couldn’t. That was on Brett and him. They’d screwed up, and now they had to fix it. The question was, how?

  Chapter 20

  Monday, July 2nd

  Brett woke, banging his head into the ceiling once again. He’d made a small crack now in the drywall but didn’t care. Instead, he sat there hunched over and brooding as he considered that he could have spent the night in Angie’s room but hadn’t dared. There were too many memories, even if there were really one a couple night’s worth.

  Not that his bed had been any kind of sanctuary. He’d lain there last night much as he was sitting there today wondering what he’d do if Dean convinced her to date him instead. Even if they didn’t date, what if they slept together?

  That thought was like acid, burning through all his layers and eating away at his soul. It didn’t help that a small voice whispered to him that this was just what Angie had to live with for years. For years? He couldn’t survive that long. He really would kill somebody. That thought scared him most of all.

  Shoving off the bed, Brett jumped down to the floor and shuffled his way into the kitchen, looking for the pot of coffee that filled the air with its rich, heady scent. He plodded past his brother without a word. Mike was hunched over the kitchen table with some mess of papers spread out before him.

  Whatever his brother was up to, he was absorbed by it, but Brett wasn’t awake enough to care. All he cared in that moment was about pulling a mug down from the cupboard and filling it with the blackened brew that assured every morning was a good morning. Brett downed half the cup in one gulp and refilled it before feeling enough like a human to finally settle down at the table.

  The first thing that he noticed as he claimed a seat across from his brother was that Mike didn’t have papers strewn across the table. He had greeting cards. At least a hundred of them. As he reached out to sift through the pile, Brett got a good idea of what his brother was up to.

  “Love letters?” It took all his self-control to hold back the laughter that those two words evoked. “You’re going to write Angie love letters?”

  Mike didn’t respond at first but finished whatever sentence he was working on before glancing up to pin Brett with a look he knew well. “I’ve got a plan.”

  “Mmmm.” Brett glanced down at the table. “To overwhelm her with greeting cards? What’s next, balloons? Oversized stuffed teddy bears?”

  “Don’t be an ass,” Mike growled. “I actually have a good plan.”

  “Okay.” Brett downed another half a cup of coffee in a gulp, fortifying himself before glancing up and nodding at his brother. “Hit me with it.”

  Mike rolled his eyes at Brett’s theatrics but didn’t bother to nag him about them. Instead, he leaned forward with an eagerness that Brett couldn’t help but find a little amusing. “We’re going to write her letters, every day.”

  “And?” Brett prodded when Mike just stopped.

  “And nothing.”

  Brett hesitated, not certain if it were him or Mike who had lost it. After a moment’s consideration, he was pretty certain it was Mike.

  “And what is that going to get us?” Brett pressed. “We need to have something more than letters.”

  “No, the letters will work,” Mike insisted. “She’ll get to know us, and that will help her fall in love with us.”

  “She’s already in love with us!” Brett snapped, wondering how his brother couldn’t see the obvious. “That’s not the problem.”

  “No?”

  “No!”

  “Then what the hell do you think is the problem?”

  “Us,” Brett shot back. He couldn’t be any c
learer than that, but the scowl that darkened Mike’s brow warned him that he had better try. “Look at us. I work at a sex club. You’re unemployed. In the last two days, we’ve picked fights with just about everybody. The day before that you got shitfaced and trashed the house. Your plan to look like a complete ass that no woman wants to be married to? It was a success!”

  That seemed to cause Mike a moment of consideration before he finally snorted. “Huh. I guess you’re right.”

  “And that makes you smile?” Brett couldn’t fathom why his brother was suddenly grinning, but Mike was.

  “Well, yeah.” Mike nodded. “I mean, maybe it was a bad idea, and maybe now I do have to undo what I did, but as you just pointed out, I succeeded.”

  Brett’s head hit the table as the weight of his own exasperation felled him. He couldn’t believe Mike sometimes. Of course his brother did have some redeeming qualities.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Mike continued on. “If the problem is our listless and pointless trajectory, I’ve got a solution for that.”

  * * * *

  That Monday was the longest day of Angie’s life. It was a perfect storm of misery. Hear heart ached with a pain that didn’t relent for even a second. Her body ached, too. She’d spent the whole day on her feet, overseeing the setup for the Fourth of July frenzy that was now less than two days away. Of course, frenzies built kind of like the headache she’d grown throughout the day as the club began to swarm with ever-growing crowds.

  As Lana had explained, the membership list was near to six thousand, but most days, there were less than a thousand members actually at the club. A majority of those were locals who stopped by on a routine basis. Over the Fourth of July, though, the club could swell to over four thousand. It stopped there only because that was peak capacity.

  It didn’t help that the Fourth was in the middle of the week. It extended the celebration, as half of the crowd arrived before and left immediately after the holiday while the other half arrived immediately for the holiday and stayed through the end of the weekend. Then there were those who couldn’t make the holiday but came for the weekends, assuring that the club and all the problems of running it kept Angie moving all day long.

  While she’d always had a great deal of respect for the job Lana did, Angie was really impressed now by how easy the other woman made it all seem. It was going to be hard to find her replacement. One thing for sure, it wouldn’t be Angie.

  Even if the job had been fun, she couldn’t stay in Pittsview. It had been a battle all day not to give in to the longing and the urges and call Brett or Mike. She wanted to say she’d made a mistake, even though she knew she hadn’t. Angie also knew she couldn’t fight this battle every day. It was going to be hard enough to do it for a whole month.

  They didn’t help the matter.

  Just because Dean had demanded that she have no contact with them, he hadn’t apparently demanded that they have no contact with her. If he had, they weren’t complying. Angie wasn’t going to rat them out, though they weren’t doing much to keep their attempts secretive.

  That was the last thing anybody would use to describe the balloons that Mike had scent. A card attached had simply read, Balloon ride? Angie didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she suspected he was asking her out on a date.

  Apparently, it was more than a date. That had become clear with the next gift that had arrived. It was a teddy bear. An eight-foot-tall teddy bear with another note pinned to it. This one was more pointed. It read, Alaskan cruise? Whales and bears, oh my.

  Those words held more significance than simply the offer contained within them. Angie had been on an Alaskan cruise and written Mike all about it. It had been so romantic and beautiful that she’d felt so alone and had written him every day, describing the trip as if sharing it with him. She had seen whales and bears. He’d remembered.

  Angie had almost crumbled in that moment and gone running back to Mike, and she would have if Lana hadn’t been there to stop her. Lana had done the very job Angie had demanded of her the previous night. She kept Angie from giving in during those moments of weakness. They came at least once an hour, which was the same for the gifts that kept arriving.

  After the teddy bear had been sent back, the flowers had arrived with a note asking if she’d preferred to swim with the dolphin through tropical reefs. She’d sent those back as well, along with the Belgian chocolates that asked if she wanted to take a sweet tour through Europe.

  By the time the homemade pasta and meatballs had arrived, Angie was too hungry to send the delicious meal back. Instead, she devoured it and waited eagerly for the dessert to follow, but nothing came. She didn’t have time to worry over whatever they were up to now.

  The rest of the evening passed in a blur. It wasn’t until after three in the morning when Angie was finally given a chance to take a minute’s break that it dawned on her that she hadn’t heard back from either Brett or Mike. She didn’t know what to make of that and didn’t really have the energy to make anything of it. Angie barely had the endurance to make it all the way back to the room she’d been assigned.

  The club had a lot of staff. While a good portion of their workers came from in town, they still housed a good number of people at the club. Hidden in a thick grove of pines and oaks, the servants’ quarters were more like a well-equipped campus accessible from the main club areas by golf carts.

  Angie was too tired to drive her own. One of the butlers took her and assured her along the way that somebody would be by with breakfast by seven in the morning. The food sounded good. The timing not so much. She didn’t object, though.

  There wasn’t time to sleep in. Not this week. For the rest of the week, Angie knew sleep would be a hard-fought-for commodity and so didn’t even bother to turn on the lights as she stepped into the studio apartment she’d been assigned. Letting the door slam shut behind her, and knowing that it automatically locked, Angie kicked off her shoes, dropped her purse on the floor, and stumbled across the dark room to fall face first onto her bed.

  She lay there like that for several minutes before it dawned on her sleepy mind that her cheek was resting on something softer and warmer than her blanket, something that smelled like Mike, warm and enticing. Levering herself up onto her elbows, Angie blinked drowsily down at the bed and then decided that whatever it was she didn’t care. Angie certainly didn’t care enough to bother to turn on the lights.

  So she flopped back down and burrowed herself deeper into the comforting scent. Content for the moment, she passed right out, and it wasn’t until morning that she realized that she had Mike’s shirt wrapped around her like a blanket. There was a note crumpled beneath her.

  She pulled it out and unfolded it, settling back into her bed to read it with a smile pulling at her lips. Mike hoped that the scent on his shirt helped her dream of him because he would be dreaming of her. It had. She’d had the sweetest dreams of both him and his brother.

  That morning, Angie wondered if maybe things were salvageable after all. That hopeful seed took root and blossomed into a full sense of optimism over the next couple of weeks. Brett and Mike wrote to her every day, telling her all about their decision to start a gym in town and the renovations they were working on doing on Hailey’s house.

  They were getting it ready for Angie, getting themselves ready to be the kind of men she deserved. It was sweet and very touching. What it wasn’t was just for show. Apparently, they really meant what they said. Hailey assured Angie that her brothers had bought her house, though she retained the right to use the garage as her studio until Cole and Kyle finished building her a better one out at the house they were restoring for Hailey.

  Everybody was getting houses, Angie included, because Hailey also came around bearing blueprints and plans that Brett and Mike wanted her to approve. Of course she’d hesitated, trying to explain to Hailey why she’d walked out on her brothers. Hailey wasn’t hearing it, probably because Angie wasn’t really selling it all that well.
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br />   The truth was she had fun poring over the layouts, given that they were going to completely renovate the whole house. Truthfully, she couldn’t wait to pick out finishes and see how it all came together. Even as that thought occurred to her, Angie knew she was folding.

  Dean didn’t stand a chance because Brett and Mike were turning into the thoughtful, hard-working men she knew them to be. Not that Dean was putting in much of an effort to woo Angie. That was a little peculiar, though Angie didn’t notice it until she stumbled onto Dean and his buddy giving a brunette a workout.

  They were buried out in the garden maze and didn’t catch her spying. Angie did linger, her own memories and desires spurred on by the sight of the two men frantically fucking the woman caught between them. Actually, technically, only one man was doing all the work. Dean was lying there on the ground with his casted leg outstretched and his hands stacked behind his head. He was clearly simply enjoying the ride his buddy was putting the brunette through.

  It was clear that he wasn’t the only one enjoying the moment. Flushed with her passion, the woman was moaning and drooling, matching the pace the man behind her set with the flex of her own hips. It was clear she was lost in the moment. That was what it had been like the one time Brett and Mike had come together to love her.

  It had been a wild, insatiable ride. Even the memory had her toes curling and her cunt softening. Angie wanted to go find Brett and Mike right then and there. She would have, too, if it wouldn’t have cost her their freedom. So, instead, Angie retreated back to her apartment to do as she had done for most of her life, handling the matter herself.

  It wasn’t until an hour after that, as she was luxuriating in a bathtub full of bubbles, that it finally dawned on her that there was something odd going on with Dean. Even if he didn’t know that she’d find him out in the gardens, he had to have known that she would hear about him having a tryst with one of the girls.

  While she wasn’t jealous and hadn’t expected any sort of fidelity on his part, Angie had expected to receive some attention from the man. After all, he’d gotten beat up because of her. If nothing else, he should really want to stick it to Mike and Brett. Angie had certainly assumed Dean did, given the terms of their arrangement.