by Marla Monroe
“Deep down we knew better, Dee, but it hurt and we were both devastated. Amos was sure you didn’t want to see us anymore after that. You’d left us right there in the parking lot, so what else were we supposed to think?” Andy pointed out.
“Carol had been flirting with us almost since the first time the three of us had gone out. We ignored her at first then asked her to back off after a while. That seemed to have worked for a few weeks, but then she started up again.” Andy sighed. “We should have talked to you about it. It wasn’t fair to let you think she was your best friend when she was trying to mess with your men, but we didn’t want to cause any sort of tension around us. Things were going so well between us.”
“That night, we were at Good Times having a couple of beers and Carol was there. She kept trying to get us to dance with her, rubbing all over us and generally acting like a floozy,” Amos said. “We kept telling her we weren’t interested, but she got worse.”
“It should have dawned on us that she knew what had happened. She was your best friend and more than likely you’d gone to her to talk. She was supposed to have your back and help you deal with whatever was going on in your life. That’s what you’d done for her every time she had a problem.” Andy leaned forward in the chair to look directly in her eyes. “She used you, Dee, honey. We could see that, but thought it would be bad form to get in the middle of that. We were wrong on that as well.”
“She kept after us, telling us that you had been talking more and more about Josh. It hurt, burning all through us that she was talking about another man instead of us. I mean, how would Carol have known anything about Josh if you hadn’t talked about him with her? That was the last straw. It was obvious to us that you’d been thinking about seeing the other man all along anyway.” Amos sighed.
It seemed like everything inside of him was behind that small gesture to Dee. His eyes even seemed to glisten as if there were tears in them. She’d never told Carol anything about Josh other than he’d asked her out once and she’d told him she was seeing the Ahfield twins. He’d been friendly to her all along, but the man had become a little more persistent as if the fact that she’d refused to go out with him had made her more interesting to him. Dee wouldn’t have gone out with him even if she hadn’t been dating Amos and Andy.
“We’d had more than was normal for us to drink, but that’s still no excuse. We weren’t drunk by any means. When she begged us to take her home, I misunderstood and agreed,” Andy told her.
That shocked her. Dee had always thought Amos had been the one to give in to her. It just proved again that Andy hadn’t been completely sure about going any farther with their relationship. Dee’s heart tightened, making it difficult for her to take in a normal breath. To her mortification, a soft groan escaped her lips. Both men looked up, but she just cleared her throat to hopefully cover her slip.
“We left with her, never considering what people would think. In my head,” Andy began, “I was taking her home. She wasn’t drunk, and thinking back on it, I’m not even sure if she’d had more than one or maybe two beers. I drove and on the way to her house, she did everything she could to make out with Amos, but he wasn’t interested. Hell, she even went for the snap and zipper on his jeans at one point.”
“Damn near got my short hairs in the process,” Amos added.
“Amos,” Andy snarled, his patience obviously about out with his brother’s mouth.
“Just saying. I was fighting her freaking hands the entire way.”
“When we pulled up outside her house and Amos all but fell out of the truck trying to get away from her, she looked up and yelled at me, ‘What in the hell are we doing here?’ I told her we’d brought her home like she asked. That seemed to make her even madder,” Andy said.
“I thought she was going to scream and hit Andy,” Amos told her. “Then she shook her head and climbed out of the truck faster than a race horse out of the gate.”
“It didn’t make sense at the time, but she said something about this wasn’t were we were supposed to be before she stormed into her house and slammed the door so hard I thought the window next to it would break.” Andy shrugged. “I realized later that she’d planned for us to take her back to our place so that she could somehow prove to you that she’d been there. She was trying to break us up.”
“It had never been about us, Dee, baby. She just wanted to break us up for some reason. I still don’t know why.” Amos suddenly stood up and started pacing the length of the couch.
“Settle down, Amos. Working yourself up isn’t going to help us get this all out,” Andy told his brother.
“I know, but this matters. I’m about to tell her it was all my idea and my fault we ended up in bed with that witch! I’m the screw up. Not you. Maybe she’ll forgive you and you can make her happy. I’ll move and set up a tax service somewhere else. It’s not fair for you to take the blame for what was my fault.” Amos turned to Dee and dropped to his knees at her feet. “Please don’t blame Andy. He didn’t want any part of this. I acted like a fool and ruined the best thing we ever had. He loves you, Dee Dee. Give him another chance. Please. I won’t bother you anymore if you’ll just give him another chance.”
Chapter Seven
Andy nearly jerked his brother off the floor. What was the fool doing? They were a team. He needed his brother by his side to be sure they took care of Dee. Unlike most men who were balanced inside of themselves, it felt like he and Amos were extremes and needed each other to stay focused on what mattered. Dee mattered. There was no way he could take care of her like she deserved with his Type A personality. He got lost in work sometimes if Amos didn’t pull his ass away from the computer. Dee would lose patience with him and leave anyway.
“Get up, Amos. It’s not just your fault. It was my choice to make as well. This isn’t helping. Sit down and let me finish this.”
Andy glared at his twin brother until the other man hung his head and stood up without out looking at the woman of their dreams. When he sat down again, it was at the opposite end of the couch and with his head still bowed.
“Neither of us ever expected her to show up at the house. She had to have gone inside just to get her keys because we’d barely stepped inside before the doorbell rang. My first thought was that it was you. I actually beat Amos to the door, but when I opened it, Carol was standing there with her blouse open all the way to her waist where it was tucked into her jeans. I remember wondering what in the world was she doing there. It hadn’t really hit me yet that she was setting us up.”
“It never hit me,” his brother mumbled from where he sat on the couch.
“You were still reeling from that afternoon when Dee had walked away. You hadn’t thought of anything else since then,” Andy told him. “Carol all but shoved her way inside, and since I wasn’t expecting to see her, I actually stepped back and let her. I’m ashamed of that now.”
He could see Dee’s thoughts churning through her expressive light-blue eyes that still reminded him of an early spring sky. Her confusion carried over in the way her mouth tightened and the slight lines at the corners of her eyes deepened. Were they getting through to her? Was she beginning to see that all three of them had been set up? If nothing else came of it all, he wanted to be sure she did believe that they hadn’t deliberately set out to cheat. It wasn’t like it would make everything better, but it would soften some of the pain that still ate at his heart.
“I remember Amos’s face when she brushed passed me and starting pulling her blouse off right there in the hallway. He looked confused then disgusted. The woman was throwing herself at us. We should have stopped right there and asked why, but we didn’t. We reacted instead.”
“She grabbed my crotch and pushed me against the wall, rubbing her breasts all over my chest,” Amos told her. “I wasn’t impressed, but you know how men are. She got a reaction out of me. I’m not proud of that, but it happened. I wasn’t along for the ride though.”
“I tried to pull
her off of him, but that just turned her on me and the next thing I knew, she was trying to kiss me. I nearly shoved her to the floor, but neither one of us will get violent with a woman. It’s just not something we can do,” Andy said.
“When I tried to pry her loose from Andy, she turned back to me and ground herself against me. Something broke inside of me, Dee. I didn’t want her. Not really, but I was hurting that you weren’t there with us and there she was, practically raping me. I’m not proud of my actions at all. Neither am I making excuses, but I want you to know we didn’t take her home with us. We didn’t go to the bar to pick someone up,” Amos said, finally lifting his head to meet her stare.
Andy was proud of him for getting that out. It had been hard for him to say it to Andy when they’d talked it over. Telling the woman they loved and had hurt was probably crushing him inside.
“When he let Carol drag him up the stairs, I followed. At first I was going to try to reason with both of them to put a stop to it, but it all went out the window when she shoved her blouse off her shoulders and latched on to my cock through my jeans. I remember looking over at Amos and seeing pain and desperation there. It mirrored mine, so I let go.” Andy walked over to the bookshelves filled with DVDs and CDs. He stared at them without really seeing any of their titles.
“We never heard you walk into the room, Dee. It wasn’t until you started saying, then yelling, ‘no, no’ that we realized you were even there,” Amos said.
“We’d, um, messed around, but we hadn’t actually had sex when you walked in on us, Dee.” Andy stared at her, trying desperately to make her understand what he was trying to tell her. “I’m not saying that makes it all fine or anything, but we never actually had sex with Carol. After you called us, including Carol, all sorts of names, you ran out of the room so you had no idea what happened after that. We jumped out of the bed and started trying to get dressed to follow you. We didn’t continue anything with the woman. It was then that I realized she’d planned it somehow. She was just sitting up in the bed laughing.”
“I wanted to slap her across the face, but like Andy said, we just don’t have it in us to harm a woman, no matter how much she might deserve it. We told her to get dressed and get out of our house. Then we left her there to go after you,” Amos told her.
“Only we never found you, and you didn’t go into work the next few days,” Andy reminded her. “We called and left so many messages that all of your answering machines got full and wouldn’t take any new ones.”
Amos rubbed his face with both hands. Andy knew how his brother felt. This was more than a cathartic cleansing as they rehashed all of it, it was like pulling rusty nails from their souls. Every word hurt just as much as if it were still fresh. Every memory of that night burned in their veins until Andy felt as if his body would catch fire. Maybe he wished it would.
* * * *
He couldn’t see anything on Dee’s face that would tell him where they stood with her right then. Amos wanted to shout his frustrations to the world, but for once, he kept quiet. He knew it would do no good and would surely make everything much worse. All he could do was pray she would at least forgive them enough to continue to be friends. He missed her, missed how easy it had been to be around her. She comforted his soul when he felt like nothing fit anymore.
The silence stretched for a few more seconds until Andy finally spoke. Amos could hear the crack in his voice and had only heard that one other time since they’d become adults, when their grandpa had died. Hearing it now was almost more than he could take. Andy didn’t break down. He was the rock in their shared existence and had always been the one with a cool head when problems cropped up. Now his rock was cracking and Amos wondered if anything would ever be the same again.
“Dee, we aren’t asking you to pretend it never happened or trying to excuse our behavior. We know we were wrong. We betrayed you and hurt you. Believe me when I say that it eats at us every day knowing that.” Andy drew in a deep breath and held it a second before letting it out.
Amos wanted to help him but was afraid to open his mouth since just about everything that came out of it lately was the wrong thing. Why hadn’t he learned to control his thoughts so he didn’t vomit them all over people all the time?
“All we’re asking is that you give us another chance. We screwed up but part of the problem was that we weren’t all on the same page. Amos and I thought we were doing the right thing by going slow and keeping everything light, without putting any pressure on you. I guess it made it look like we weren’t serious at the time. Then when Amos jumped the gun and almost demanded that you marry us, you weren’t sure if we were really serious about marriage or just reacting. We’d really never given you very many reasons or clues that we were head over heels in love with you. That was our first mistake and after that, they just kept piling up. We’re so sorry, Dee.” Andy rubbed both hands over his face.
Amos wanted to hug his brother but knew that would come later when they had to walk away from Dee and everything that had made life good for them. How could they continue to live in the same town with her and watch her eventually settle down with another man?
“She encouraged me to go see you and talk to you about what had happened in the parking lot,” Dee said in a strained voice. “She said we needed to talk through it and work it out. I wasn’t being fair to them when they’d been so patient with me. The fact that you’d even considered asking me to marry you should have been a good thing.”
“When did she tell you that?” Amos asked, scooting down to the end of the couch closer to her.
“I called her right after the parking lot incident and told her that I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. She said she’d meet me at Sarah’s Sweets and we could talk about it over a cupcake and coffee.” Dee looked up at Amos then his brother. “We talked for nearly an hour. She said I should go home and turn off the phones and take a long bath to relax and take a nap. Then when I woke up and was rested, I needed to go see you and talk about everything. Carol said I was overreacting. She said everyone knew the two of you loved me.”
“Is that what you did?” Andy asked.
“I was so tired and upset by the time we got up to leave that I wasn’t sure I could drive myself home so Carol drove me. She even helped me inside. I don’t remember much after that. I didn’t take a long bath until after I woke up again. I was still wearing my skirt and blouse from work.” She looked over toward Amos with the biggest blue eyes he’d ever seen. “I was so tired that I slept right up until nearly nine o’clock.”
Amos looked over at his brother to see that Andy was thinking the same thing he was. Carol had not only set Dee up, it looked like she’d drugged her as well. But why? Why had she wanted to break them up? What did she get out of it? She had to know they wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole after what she’d done, and really, she’d never even approached them after that night. So what had she accomplished that benefited her?
His head still ached some after taking the painkillers and with all of this out in the open, instead of feeling relieved to get it all off his chest, Amos sensed that something else was going on and that added a little more punch to the light pounding.
“I don’t understand why she told me to try to work it out with you then betray me that way. I didn’t want anything to do with her after that, but she never even tried to apologize or talk to me afterward anyway. She planned it all, and I still don’t have a clue as to why.” Dee’s eyes glistened with tears bringing them to Amos’s eyes as well.
“Did you change anything after that? Do anything different?” Andy asked, cocking his head to one side.
Amos recognized the look on his brother’s face as the one he got when he was working out a problem. He always looked at you a little sidewise when he was thinking.
“I don’t understand. Change what?” she asked.
“Did you change your hours at work or stop going anywhere that you normally went or talking to anyone you normally
talked to other than us and Carol?” Andy got up and walked over to sit on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of Dee.
“I don’t remember changing anything after I came back. I just did what I always did but without you two or Carol. Hazel handled rescheduling people for me. Then I had her take a few days off as well.”
“So you did go somewhere after that night. Where did you go and when did you return?” Andy asked.
Amos couldn’t help but wonder where Andy was going with his questions. Maybe his brother had gone into the wrong profession. He could have been a damn good lawyer. He’d thought about that on several other occasions when his twin needed information from someone.
“Yes. I didn’t want to go home and mope around in my house, so I drove to Dallas and stayed in a hotel there for a few days. I returned home the following Wednesday afternoon but didn’t open the office up until the following Monday,” Dee said, her brows furrowing together as she looked at his brother.
“So you were gone from Thursday night until the following Wednesday. I wonder what happened businesswise while you were gone and closed. Do you know if you had any scheduled appointments that didn’t reschedule? Any clients who dropped you?” he asked.
“Um. Honestly I’m not sure. I was still pretty upset and sort of drifted along for a month or two before Hazel made me snap out of it. I’d have to ask her if she noticed something. If there had been someone who’d been my client for more than a year, I would remember if they didn’t return. I can’t think of anyone from before that night that I’m not still handling their investments. If I thought about it for a few days, I might remember someone who stopped coming that I hadn’t added to my permanent client list at the time.”
