Love Is Hell: A Valentine's Story, Book 1 [The Male Order, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Edith DuBois

  Then she said, “Who do you think did that to our garage door? You don’t think it’s anyone we know, do you?”

  “Hmm.” Gavin had, in fact, wondered that very thing. “It is kind of suspicious that it’s in French. That would make it seem as if the perpetrator was targeting our family. Or maybe even you specifically.”

  Emilie shivered and then grabbed his hand. “I don’t like to think about that.”

  “Me either. But then the actual message isn’t directed at anyone specifically. It’s not threatening or menacing. It’s more in the ‘social consciousness’ style of graffiti.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, like Banksy?”

  “Non.”

  “Or Morley?”

  “Non.”

  “Richard Hambleton?”

  “Non.”

  “Hambleton had the shadowmen. He’s like the godfather of street art.”

  She shook her head.

  Gavin pulled out his phone and started pulling up pictures of Hambleton’s shadowmen in New York, lurking creepily on street corners for unsuspecting passersby.

  “Those are scary,” Emilie said, looking at one that had been painted on a brick wall in East Village and looked as if it was about to attack with its smudgy, murky hands. “I don’t think our artist was trying to scare us like this.”

  “Me neither. ‘Love is hell.’”

  “‘L’enfer, c’est l’amour!’”

  “To me, that sounds more like a blanket statement and a general warning.”

  “Yes, and it’s Valentine’s Day.”

  “And the Blackers got hit, too. So those two things make me lean more toward not targeted specifically at you.”

  “But then did the perpetrator target our two houses in particular? Or were they just in the area? I hardly believe anyone who lives in our neighborhood would do such a thing.”

  “There are a few teens, but I can’t picture any of them graffitiing the neighborhood.” He laughed, imagining either his niece or his nephew tagging their house.

  “What?” Emilie asked.

  “What if it was Vivien?”

  Emilie snorted. “She’d probably try to get Dorian in on it.”

  “He’d crumble and chicken out after five minutes.”

  “The whole operation would fall apart before they even made it to our house.”

  “Before they even got the spray paint.”

  They chuckled again at the idea, and Gavin’s phone lit up with a text from Grayson. “The package has been obtained,” he read aloud.

  “Let’s go home.” As they pulled up to the entrance, Emilie said, “I can’t wait to turn on the heater and snuggle under a blanket with you and Grayson. I’m eating my tiramisu first. I want to eat every bite, and I’m afraid if I eat my sushi first, I won’t have room.”

  “You sexy, sexy tiramisu devourer.”

  Grayson was waiting for them at the curb, and he hopped in the back. “Voilà, my sweet.” He handed the dessert to Emilie. It was wrapped in some fancy red paper with a small, decorative fresh flower arrangement pinned to the top.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said as they pulled away from the store.

  They were about two minutes away from the house when Emilie couldn’t stand it any longer. “I just need one teeny bite,” she said, unwrapping the container in her hands. When the paper fell away, she paused, staring down at it.

  Gavin immediately knew something was wrong. “What is it?”

  She didn’t answer but quickly tried to recover the container and shot him a bright smile. “Nothing. I just changed my mind. I’m going to wait.”

  “No, go ahead,” Grayson said. “Dig in. We don’t mind, right, Gav?”

  “Of course not.”

  “No, I’ll wait.” She had her hands on the top of the box, holding the paper over it.

  “Emilie, what’s wrong?” Gavin asked.

  “Yeah, I’d like a bite, too. But you can break the top of it. I know you like to do that part. Like in that one movie with that French girl. What’s it called again?”

  “What do you mean, ‘break the top of it’?” Gavin asked, ignoring Grayson’s question.

  Emilie grimaced.

  “Grayson, what the hell did you get?”

  Grayson wasn’t really paying attention, still trying to remember the name of the movie. “Was it Amanda? Or Melanie? It was a girl’s name. I remember that.”

  Emilie tipped the container over so that Gavin could see inside. “Grayson,” he said. “The movie is called The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain, and she likes to break the top of crème brûlée not tiramisu because tiramisu doesn’t have a hard top to break. It’s creamy and fluffy!”

  “Gavin, it’s okay. Really, there’s no need to shout.” Emilie patted his hand. “I like crème brûlée, not as much as tiramisu, I’ll admit, but I’m perfectly happy with it. Don’t get upset.”

  “This was the one part of tonight’s evening that I thought, ‘Okay, Gavin, let him run in and get the tiramisu. How could he mess that up? How could he possibly fuck up that one small thing?’ But once again, I’ve underestimated your penchant for fuck uppery.”

  “Just take a deep breath, sweetie,” Emilie said. “Everything is fine.”

  “Yeah, you need to calm way down. You’ve been edgy all night.”

  “Are you telling me to calm down? Are you really telling me to calm down right now?” Gavin whipped the SUV into their driveway, jerked to a stop, and then got out of the car. He couldn’t talk to his brother. Grayson was so oblivious. It used to be the other way around. He remembered when they first met Emilie. He’d always been the carefree, obnoxious one. No one thought he would ever settle down or take responsibility for his own life. But Emilie had changed him. So had Gaston Henri and Penny. Every choice he made revolved around his family, but sometimes it felt like Grayson had gone in the complete opposite direction.

  He’d loosened up all right. So much so that it didn’t bother Grayson that he’d spent an afternoon boozing with a potential client rather than at home with his family. On Valentine’s Day, no less, the one day of the year when love was openly and unabashedly recognized. Sometimes Gavin really didn’t understand his brother.

  Hell, maybe Grayson felt the same about him.

  Either way, he could not deal with his brother’s shit. Not right now. Not tonight of all nights.

  Gavin tore through the house and went straight out the back door. After marching over to the shed, he located their stainless steel patio heater. He checked that there was propane in the tank and then hauled it over to the gazebo. Miraculously, he got the fire to start with only about a dozen clicks, rather than the fifty it normally took. He lowered the gazebo’s heavy fabric curtains so that the heat would stay inside and then stalked back to the house for blankets and pillows.

  Emilie and Grayson were standing in the front entrance whisper-arguing. Gavin heard Grayson say, “No, you go talk to him,” before they noticed he’d come back inside. Both of them snapped their mouths closed and jumped away from each other at the same time. If he hadn’t been in a foul mood, the sight would have been funny. As it was, their tête-à-tête only annoyed him more.

  They stood there staring at him as if waiting for him to explode. “Gazebo’s ready,” he snapped. Then he marched down the hall to retrieve the blankets. They would have a goddamn romantic dinner if he had to stuff the sushi rolls down their throats himself.

  Chapter Five

  Grayson trudged to the kitchen. “I so don’t want to deal with his moaning tonight.” He grabbed plates while Emilie grabbed chopsticks and napkins. “Couldn’t he find it in himself to be pleasant and agreeable for one night out of the year?”

  Emilie didn’t say anything, only sighed as she rummaged through the utensils drawer.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, I know your sighs, and that, my dear, was not a ‘nothing’ sigh.”

  She sighed again. �
��Grayson, I love you, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you think you’re being a little obtuse about this?”

  He thought about the evening so far. He came home, and before he even got a word in, Gavin yelled at him. He made an honest mistake and accidentally got their dinner reservation forfeited. Hell, he was still a little tipsy from their drinks with Lars, and Gavin yelled at him. Then he mixed up the dessert that Emilie wanted. She didn’t care, but Gavin still yelled at him.

  “No,” he answered Emilie. “I don’t think I’ve been obtuse at all.”

  “Sweetie,” she said, her tone like the one she used with Gaston Henri when he didn’t want to go to bed. It was a little sweet, a touch gentle, and kind of like “why are you even arguing with me right now.”

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  Emilie only smiled her clever little half smile. “Something isn’t right with Gavin. He’s not happy. He—”

  “How the hell isn’t he happy?” he jumped in. “We have the kind of life that people all over the world dream about having. How could he be selfish enough to think he’s not happy? We’re financially secure. We have a family. A big family, and we’re all healthy. And we all have jobs. What the hell is wrong with him?”

  Emilie stared at him.

  “I’m sorry, Em. Go on.”

  “Thank you. He’s not happy”—Grayson grimaced but Emilie shot him a warning look, so he kept his mouth closed—“and I think he feels like shit because he’s not happy, and he doesn’t know how to tell us he’s not happy because he feels guilty and selfish, and he maybe doesn’t know why he’s not happy so he can’t stand to think about it without feeling all of this other crap and it builds up inside him until it comes out in other ways. Like yelling at us when we destroy the Valentine’s Day that he has so meticulously put together for us.”

  Grayson’s mouth fell open. “You got all that from the crème brûlée?”

  “Non, mon chèr, I got it from the last few months of Gavin slowly building an emotional distance from me. And using the kids as a buffer between us. And refusing to talk to me about anything other than what we should make for dinner. And coming to bed after I’m asleep and getting up before either of us.”

  Grayson listened to his wife. He saw her chin trembling ever so slightly, and it scared the shit out of him. Emilie never cried. She hated it. She thought it showed mental weakness and a lack of self-discipline. And technically, she wasn’t crying now, but this was the closest he’d seen her to it since Penny was born. She’d bawled openly and freely when both Gaston and Penny were born, but those were the only two times she’d cried in front of him in the last few years.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay, let’s go out there and talk to him. Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

  Emilie nodded. “I think we have to. It’s not helping anyone to ignore it, especially not him.”

  “All right,” he said, pacing back and forth for a moment, “I’ll get us started. I’ll bring everything up, but you’re going to have to help me. You obviously know way more about what’s going on in that head of his. God,” he paused, thinking about what he’d just said. “How did this happen? How did I not even notice?”

  Emilie covered his hand with hers on the kitchen counter. “It’s because you are truly happy. It’s because your happiness washes everything negative out of your life. You project that happiness onto everything and everyone you’re around. You can’t help it. I remember when we first met, you were so suspicious of happiness.” He pulled her into his arms and held her close against his body, just needing to envelop her. “We both were,” she said. “Gavin has never had to fight for his happiness like us. We need to help him, not ignore him or push him away.”

  “You’re right,” he said, pulling back and pushing her hair out of her face. He kissed her hard for a long moment and then he broke away with a laugh. “Of course you are. How could I ever doubt that you weren’t?”

  “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. I’m a dense ass. Let’s just get out there before he starts writing really bad poetry or something.”

  “You’re so sweet and understanding.”

  He picked up their bag of food and the carrier with the drinks. “Don’t you ever forget it, honey cakes,” he said, matching her sarcastic tone.

  As they approached the gazebo, where they heard Gavin rustling and arranging the pillows and blankets, a nervous ball settled in the pit of Grayson’s stomach. He didn’t know what the hell he could say to his brother. Even though Emilie had pretty much spelled it out for him, he still couldn’t quite comprehend the idea of not being happy. The life that they lived was better than anything Grayson could have ever imagined for himself. Better than anything he would have ever hoped for in a million years. And goddamn it, it was everything he and Gavin had talked about wanting for themselves. Ever since they were teenagers and understood they could either follow in their fathers’ footsteps and share a woman or go off and find women on their own, they’d known automatically that they wanted a ménage. It had never even entered their minds to want anything else. And now they had it with the most beautiful, smart, empathetic, sexy woman in the world. And they had two gorgeous, unbelievably perfect children.

  Yeah, what the hell was wrong with his brother?

  He wished he could ask Gavin that. It was direct and to the point, no bullshit. But he didn’t think Emilie would be too keen on that approach to the situation. She seemed to want to handle it with a little bit of finesse and tact. He would try his hardest, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was pissed at Gavin, pissed at his self-centered, childish, pointless unhappiness. It didn’t make sense. Not one bit. And he didn’t know if there was anything Gavin could say to him that would make him feel differently about that.

  With a sigh and a sense of inevitability, Grayson pulled back the fabric and entered the gazebo. Without saying anything to each other, they settled onto the pillows and blankets and divvied up the food. Each of them had a few blankets to sit on, a pillow at their back and a pillow in front of them to serve as a little platform for their plates. After they were settled, Grayson didn’t pick up his chopsticks. Neither did Emilie. Instead, Grayson stared at Gavin, who also left his food untouched on the pillow in front of him.

  Grayson knew it was up to him to get the ball rolling. He wasn’t sure of the best method, so he just went with what came into his mind first. “Well, this is awkward.”

  “Grayson,” Emilie hissed.

  “I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant to say.” Okay, that wasn’t the way to go. A little thought would be needed here. He tried to imagine what Emilie would want him to say.

  If he were a better person.

  And wasn’t totally pissed at his brother.

  “I guess I should say I’m sorry,” he muttered. He peeked over at Emilie, and she smiled her half smile and nodded for him to continue. “I’m sorry I messed up Emilie’s dessert.”

  Gavin was staring at him, not responding, but obviously listening.

  “And I’m also sorry I fucked up the reservation at Tosca Ristorante. That was pretty shitty.”

  Gavin was still waiting for something else from him because he didn’t answer.

  “And,” Grayson said, struggling to remember anything else he should be sorry for. He remembered what Emilie had said in the kitchen. “I’m sorry for destroying your meticulously planned Valentine’s Day.”

  Gavin shook his head and rolled his eyes. He grabbed his chopsticks and stabbed at some sushi. “Just forget it,” he muttered.

  “What?” Grayson looked to Emilie for backup, but she had an exasperated expression on her face. “I said I’m sorry. I mean it. What else do you expect?” He wasn’t sure if that question was directed at Gavin or Emilie, but he would take an answer from either. He was completely lost here. He thought he could handle it, but obviously, everything he did was wrong.

  “It wasn’t my meticulously planned Valentine’s Day.
It was ours, Grayson. It was ours, and it kind of felt like you couldn’t give two shits about it.”

  “It was dinner at a fancy restaurant. Not that I’m not appreciative, but sorry if my priority isn’t to run home so your little plans can go on without a hitch. There are more important things in my life, things like working hard for the company, things like spending quality time with my wife, things like learning how to relax and enjoy myself, all of which you seem to have completely forgotten to do.” Speaking of enjoying his life, hell if he wasn’t going to eat his sushi, too. He nabbed a piece from one of the tuna rolls and popped it in his mouth.

  “But how hard is it to make one phone call? How hard is it to do one small favor for me? Out of all the things that needed to be done tonight, you couldn’t Google Tosca Ristorante’s phone number and let them know we were running a little behind? It was the only thing I asked of you, the absolute only thing I needed from you tonight, and you couldn’t do it.” Grayson thought about interjecting but then decided on going for a piece of the California roll instead while Gavin continued. “You came home half drunk after you and Emilie were late from the city. You could barely get Gaston Henri cleaned and ready for the babysitter. I don’t even know if you know about the garage door.” Grayson hadn’t heard anything about their garage door, and he perked up but couldn’t ask as his mouth was full of rice, avocado, and fake crabmeat. “You wouldn’t know responsibility if it bit you in the ass.”

  Grayson swallowed. “You want to talk about responsibility? How about we talk about you holing yourself up in the office and giving the bare minimum with the Outlaws? How about we talk about—”

  He had more to say, but Gavin started speaking over him, and then they were both using overly firm voices at each other, and Grayson couldn’t hear himself, and he kind of lost track of what he was saying and just started blurting out random accusatory phrases.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Emilie waved her hands between them. “Can you two slow it down for just a second?” Grayson shut his mouth and sucked in a breath but continued glaring at his obstinate brother. “Now, you two, this situation is going to take a little delicacy and consideration. The only thing slinging accusations at each other will do is get us all three riled up.”