“What’s Daddy doing on the floor?”
“He’s asking Papa to be his husband.”
Lexi tilted her head to the side at that. “Shouldn’t you be their wife?”
Out of the mouths of babes. “Where did you learn that word?”
She shrugged. “Kindergarten, silly. We did a picture of our mommies and daddies, and we learned what our families were called. But I saw it in a Roald Dahl book first. I didn’t tell Miss Green that I already knew the word, though.”
Gia hid a smile at her daughter’s shy ways, then addressed the serious question, knowing she had to answer it carefully. “In a perfect world, honey, I’d be their wife and they’d be my husbands, but it isn’t a perfect world. That’s why Billy is mean to you about your mommy and daddies. Because this isn’t what everybody does, sugar. But no one could love you more than I do. And your papa and daddy? They think the sun goes up and comes down just for you.” When Lexi giggled, her own lips quirked.
“Don’t be silly, Mommy.”
“I’m not being silly. I’m speaking the truth. The thing is, baby, love is very precious. You don’t realize how much. Not all little girls are as lucky as you. We love you, honey, and you glow with it. And that’s all that counts. Do you hear me? Not what Billy or his parents have to say. What happens in this house has nothing to do with anyone else, but because of it, you’re here, and you’re our sun, moon, and stars.”
Lexi fidgeted in her arms, wriggling until she’d turned around and could tuck herself into her mother’s embrace. “Thank you, Mommy.”
“Thank you for being my little angel,” she replied, heart melting at the thank-you. “We’re all lucky to have each other, but not everyone realizes that, baby.”
“Will Billy be horrible to me because of Daddy marrying Papa?”
“I’d like to say he won’t, but I don’t know.” She tightened her arms about Lexi. “I’ll always tell you the truth, Lexi. Your daddy wants you to go to another kindergarten. Would you like that?”
Lexi was silent for a moment. Then she nodded.
“You sure? I want you to tell me the truth.”
“I don’t like it there.”
“Okay, we’ll find you somewhere you do like.”
Lexi peered up at her. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Can I wear a dress when Daddy marries Papa?” The question popped up out of nowhere and allowed Gia to sigh with relief. Apparently, her daddies marrying made perfect sense to her curious daughter, and leaping onto the topic of a dress confirmed it.
“Of course. What color?”
“Pink.”
Gia winced. “Sure. We’ll go looking for it as soon as the arrangements are set.”
Lexi sighed. “Can I have a puppy?”
Laughter escaped her. “You’re gunning for it today, aren’t you, sugar?”
Her baby girl smiled up at her. “Well, I had to ask.”
“Sure, you did.” She chuckled. “You know it’s your daddy you have to convince. Not me. Dogs make him sneeze.”
“Some dogs don’t.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked Miss Green.”
Damn, waylaid by the kindergarten teacher. “Okay, I’ll talk to Daddy.”
“Thank you, Mommy.”
“You’re welcome. You hungry?”
“Nope, thank you. Papa let me have a burger.”
Of course he did. Dads, useless when it came to kids and McDonald’s. “You want to do some reading?”
“Please.”
“Come on, then.” Gia carried her into the family room, with its huge sofa and extra-large armchairs for Luke and Josh, then put Lexi down on the couch. Lexi immediately snuggled into the corner and reached for the book she’d set on the side table last night. This was her space, and the cushions were imprinted with her small form. Gia pressed a kiss to Lexi's forehead. “Are you going to be okay in here while I talk to your daddies?”
Lexi frowned, her fingers already seeking the page she’d read up to last night. “’Course.”
Hiding a smile, Gia retreated to the kitchen to peer out of the window once more. Josh had been on his knee for a hell of a long time. She’d hoped to return to the sight of the two kissing and embracing. Hell, that was the only reason she’d carried Lexi to the family room. Instead, Josh looked as serious as ever, and from the tension in Luke’s shoulders and the back of his neck, she felt sure a war was going on out there.
Sighing, she called out, “Baby, I’ll be out in the yard if you need me.”
“Sure, Mommy,” came the return holler. Lexi was a bookworm. Nothing save an earthquake, or maybe a need to pee, would budge her off the sofa when Lexi was halfway through the second book in a series.
Enid Blyton’s The Secret Seven was her current crack of choice.
Bypassing the utility door, Gia headed to the patio and walked out onto the grass.
The house belonged to Luke and Josh, but when Lexi was born and they admitted to one another how important they all were to the household—strange how formal that sounded now, but those were the words they’d used once upon a time—the guys had signed over a portion of the property to her.
She knew that she and Lexi were well provided for in case anything ever happened overseas, and while she was wealthier than she’d imagined as a child, living in a house that would always have been outside her price bracket, she found it didn’t matter.
The guys made this place a home.
Otherwise, it was only bricks and mortar.
She’d spent a lot of time in the roughest part of Austin as a kid. An area so perilous, even the pimps didn’t like to set their girls on those particular streets.
From a housing-project apartment to a ranch house on a large plot of land, space as far as the eye could see, beautiful furniture, a lovely kitchen… Gia knew she’d won the lottery in many ways.
As a kid, she’d have drooled over it all. Would have coveted every luxury.
But now, her luxury was having not one but two guys in her bed. More importantly, in her heart.
Her luxury was making a family with them both.
Strange how priorities changed when something unorthodox happened, wasn’t it?
Heading straight for them, Gia would have loved to have walked through the grass barefoot, but last year, she’d been bitten by a spider and had learned a sorry lesson. Instead, she sniffed up the scent of freshly mowed lawn—she’d just finished it this afternoon when Josh had come home early and surprised her—and walked toward her men.
“What’s this about?”
Josh’s words made it over to her, traveling on the wind to reach her ears.
Luke hunched over, resting his elbows on his knees. She increased her pace, wanting to know what was going on with him and hurting because he couldn’t share it with her. Luke wasn’t usually closemouthed, and of late he’d been incredibly secretive.
“My dad.”
Josh frowned. “Your dad?”
Luke nodded. “When I got my orders, I spoke to him about them. I-I asked him to put Lexi in his will. She’s as much my daughter as yours, but he won’t. Says she’s nothing to do with him and that he’d prefer any inheritance that would have gone to me go to his real grandchildren.”
Josh’s jaw clamped down hard enough to turn the flesh a chalky white. Add to it the vein that bulged at his forehead and the way his throat thickened and reddened… Gia had to admit she didn’t think she’d seen him so mad in all their time together.
“She is your daughter,” he stated. “She’s our child. And Gia is ours too. If he can’t accept that, then he can’t accept it.”
“He’s my father. Dammit, Josh. He’s a man I respect and love. A man who has always, until now, respected and loved me. He’s supported me through it all, for God’s sake. When it leaked that we were an item, and when it looked like they were going to turn me down for lieutenant colonel because of it, he was still there for me. I don’t get why that’s changed now
.”
“It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
“Of course it does. You said it yourself: she’s my daughter,” he barked. “Only, my father doesn’t agree, and the rest of the world doesn’t either.”
“Does the rest of the world matter? Are you going to let this hurt you badly enough that you leave us behind?”
Feeling her skin blanch at Josh’s words, regardless of the steady warmth of the sun blanketing her, she came to a halt behind the bench. “Are you, Luke? Do you want to leave us?”
He sat up, twisted around to look at her, and the pain on his face killed her. It grabbed a hold of her nerve endings and tugged, making every part of her ache for him.
“Well? Do you? Is Lexi not yours anymore because of something your daddy says? That little girl loves you with all her heart, and you’re just going to walk away from that because your sperm didn’t get there first?”
His jaw worked, and he clenched his eyes tightly shut. “Of course not.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It hurts, dammit!” he shouted. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how it feels to be the odd one out here? You’re Mommy, Josh’s Daddy, and I’m…I’m the goddamn extra. I’m a spare part.”
“If you feel that way, then why haven’t you left before? You’re not a spare part to me, and if anyone should feel like that, it is me.
“For God’s sake, I manipulated you both into being here. I knew you wanted a baby, and I wanted you so badly that I suggested taking the natural way to be in your arms once. If anyone is here on sufferance, it’s me.”
Josh sucked in a breath. “Is that how you feel?”
Gia realized she’d sucker punched him without meaning to. Quickly shaking her head, she lifted a hand to her brow and rubbed her temple, where an ache had started to gather. “No, I don’t feel like that. But I could. If I didn’t know I was an equal partner here, then that’s how I’d feel. And Lucas, you’re as much that little girl’s daddy as Josh is. She doesn’t care that what we have is unusual. It only upsets her when people make fun of what to her is normal.”
“She’s not ashamed of me?” he asked, sounding like a lost little boy, and she couldn’t help it…
She raised a leg, then lifted it over the back of the bench, uncaring that she probably flashed Josh her pussy—it wasn’t like it was the first time he’d seen it—and she climbed over. She flung herself into Luke's arms, tightening her own around him, needing him to know just how much he meant to her.
“Oh God, of course, she isn’t,” Gia whispered. “How could you think that? She hurts because she loves us. We’re all she knows. She doesn’t care—she doesn’t know what prejudice is, and I could kill that little bastard, Billy, for breaking her little fairy-tale life. I don’t care if we have to do something radical to protect her from the world, I’ll do it. I won’t have those brats at school undermining what we have. And I sure as hell won’t have your father doing the same thing to you.”
“You can’t protect her from the world, Gia.”
“No? Isn’t that what parents are for?”
“Yeah, but we have to be realistic.”
“No, we don’t. Not where our baby girl is concerned.”
She thought back to the last time they’d visited Lucas’s family house. He had a big family. Four brothers, all in the Forces at one time or another, and Robert, his father, was a retired naval captain. Each brother had at least two kids; one of them had six.
Robert had appeared to be kind to Lexi, but now, when she looked back at each visit, she tried to analyze them to see if the signs had already been there and she’d missed them.
That Lexi might have been repeatedly scorned by a man who was supposed to protect her enraged her. In fact, it pissed her off more than the shitty parenting behind some of the schoolyard brats who upset her little girl.
This was close to home.
Too close.
Robert and Louise weren’t exactly millionaires, for Christ’s sake. Any legacy they had to pass on would help with college, but it wouldn’t buy a new goddamn house. That they wanted to exclude Lexi hurt.
“Stop it, Gia. Don’t you think I know what you’re thinking? I thought the exact same thing. I’ve been looking for clues that he’s been mean to her without our knowing.
“When I came out, he said he understood, and he’s always been decent to me. Never treated me differently from my brothers. But maybe that was a lie too. Maybe my entire relationship with my father is a lie? I don’t know if it is or isn’t.”
“How long have you been thinking about this?”
At Josh’s words, Luke rested his chin on Gia’s shoulder and peered over at his lover. “Since I got the orders three months ago.”
She stiffened on his lap. “You’ve known for three months that you’re leaving?”
He blew out a breath, then burrowed his head against her throat. While she was furious, she could feel tension strumming through him like live wire. She ran her fingers over the back of his skull, scraping her nails as she went, making him shudder at her touch. “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Because he thinks he’s going to die over there,” Josh retorted, blunt as ever. “That’s why he spoke to his father. He wants to get all his affairs in order.” He shook his head, his silvery glare like red-hot glass that pierced her to the quick.
And she wasn’t even the intended recipient.
“You’re not going anywhere, baby,” she murmured, pressing her lips against Luke’s temple. “You’ve got too much to live for.”
“It’s a different world over there, Gia.” He pulled in a breath. “Before, it was dangerous. Yeah, I’m not going to lie. But this time? With ISIS? It’s a freakin’ war zone again. I don’t know what we’re going into, what we’re doing there—I mean, I have an idea but nothing concrete. It’s a secret, and I’m not supposed to share it with you or Josh. You can’t tell anyone.”
Josh snorted. “Yeah, like we’re going to share the nation’s secrets.”
“It’s more than that. You know we’re not supposed to be there.”
“The security forces still need our help,” Josh retorted. “It wouldn’t come as a shock. We’ve stuck our noses in this far; what’s a little more?”
“It doesn’t matter. My commanding officer told me to keep quiet. They’re not even sending a full battalion over. Just a squadron.” As he swallowed, he pulled away from the tight clutch of her arms and sat back on the bench. She didn’t think he realized he rubbed a hand over his heart when he said, “I have a bad feeling about this. I can’t help it. I’m not wishing it on myself. Do you think I want this to be over? Of course I goddamn don’t. But this time, I’ve got a lot more to lose.
“And with my father's so-called support? It’s just got on top of me.”
“Why the hell didn’t you let us know how this was hurting you?”
Josh huffed. “Same could be said for you, Gia. You two need to learn to share more.”
That had both of them stiffening, then turning to gawk at him. After two seconds passed, she hooted, “So says you, Mr. Zip-Mouth. Hell, the day you learn to share is the day the earth stands still.”
“I’m not that bad,” he mumbled, sniffing indignantly.
“No, you’re worse.” She glanced at Luke as he uttered the condemnation, and they both burst into muffled laughter.
“He’s right, Josh. He’s right,” she gasped out.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s change the subject, why don’t we?”
“It’s your fault,” she told him, pressing a hand to her mouth to withhold her amusement. Managing to hide her smile, she murmured, “You mentioned the sharing word.”
He rolled his eyes. “Go on, Luke. This is important.”
His lover shrugged. “There isn’t much to say, Josh. I’ve said it all.”
“No. You haven’t. None of that states why you won’t marry me.”
“Because it’s not the
right time.”
“Do you know of a better moment? You think you’re going to die over there, and you don’t want the world to recognize how much we love one another?”
Luke bit his bottom lip. “It’s stupid. You two should get married.”
Gia huffed. “Why would I want to marry him? Can you imagine how much bossier he’d be? If I was getting married to anyone, it would be you, Luke. I don’t know why you think Josh and I are perfect for each other. I love him—God knows, that’s why I put up with his OCD shit—but you’re the glue. You smooth over the rough edges. When I want to wring his neck, then fuck him raw, you temper it and remind me why I love him like I do. When he misses Lexi’s recitals and I want to scream at him, you make it better; you make his position in the ranks bearable. Without you, we’re nothing.”
Luke’s baby blues turned surprisingly glassy. “You mean that?”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. Josh and I, we’re similar, honey. We rub against each other, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad. You’re stuck in the middle. You love us enough to be the peacekeeper, to maintain the household. What would we do without you?”
He raised a hand, unashamedly wiping his eyes. “You love me so much?”
“Oh, baby,” she said breathily, then leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. “You’ve no idea how much.” As their mouths met and entwined, she felt Josh at her back. He rested his hands on her shoulders, and she felt his silent support, even after she’d insulted him to his face.
Well, she had her back to him, but she’d told the truth.
Gia kept a tidy house, but Josh had to have it cleaner. There were days when the steamer couldn’t get the floor sparkling enough. She could concede defeat and hire someone to do it for her, but it was her home. Her place. She took as much pride in it as Josh. Only at times, she wanted to shove the steam-cleaning rod up his ass and tell him to do it himself.
Luke balanced all Josh’s flaws, added equilibrium to hers.
He was the perfect middle.
Sometimes the woman, the so-called weaker sex, went there. Sandwiched between the two strong he-men, she was protected. Kept secure from all dangers.
But in this case, Luke went there.
The Luck of Love_Happily Ever Menage Page 4
