Lars closed the door but didn’t slide the bolt. He led her over to the worn sofa and pulled her down beside him. “What’s got you so scared, love?”
The softness in his tone nearly undid her. She hated it, but she was totally the kind of girl to go all squishy inside when a guy called her baby or love. She couldn’t help it. Taking a shaky breath, she tried to sound normal. “I haven’t seen any evidence of anyone around since the stupid piece of parchment, but I keep feeling like someone is watching me. It’s been driving me out of my mind all night. Then a few minutes ago, I heard a car. Was that you?”
He took her hands in his and lifted them to his mouth, brushing a kiss over her knuckles. “No. I found a car parked a ways north of your property.”
“Near the burned-out house?” Mattie couldn’t imagine who’d be back there. Teenagers looking for a place to drink maybe?
There was a soft scratching noise at the door, and Mattie tensed. By now she was unhinged enough to imagine some kind of demon pushing its way into her house and trying to eat her soul. Instead, the door opened, and Van Gogh trotted in with Owen on his heels.
“I’m assuming this guy belongs here?” Owen’s voice was so blessedly normal that Mattie burst into tears.
Owen looked as if he might chase down Van Gogh and throw him out. “Not yours?”
“No! He is.” Mattie blubbered like an incoherent freak. “I’m just so relieved you’re both here.”
Owen glanced at Lars for an explanation. Lars gave him a loaded expression in return. Mattie wished she knew what they were saying but not saying. Lars cleared his throat instead. “Mattie feels like someone has been watching her, and she heard a car a few minutes ago.”
Without waiting for an invitation, Owen nudged his way onto the sofa at her other side. It wasn’t a large seat, but she was plenty glad to be sandwiched between their warm bodies. For the first time in hours, she began to unwind. No matter the emotional ups and downs, if they were here, she was physically safe. Her heart was another matter.
Owen cupped her cheek in the palm of one hand. “Lars found out that the car parked out on the dirt road belongs to a guy named Tobias Meecham.”
“Meecham?” What was that smarmy little prick doing in her woods? Why would he even come near her place? He lived in Beverly.
“Take a deep breath, baby, I’m not done,” Owen said gently. “I couldn’t tell if he was working alone or with others, but I’m suspecting Daniel Hyde is somehow involved because there’s an altar in the ruins of that old house, and it’s not the good kind.”
Her heart was thundering so fast she couldn’t hear anything but the pounding of each beat. “What sort of altar?”
“I’m going to say it’s Samhain in nature. I don’t have a lot of experience with that sort of thing.” He hesitated, his features growing almost scary as he frowned. “It feels evil.”
Lars said a few choice words. “Did you tear it down?”
Mattie knew what Owen would say, so she saved him the trouble. “He couldn’t.”
“Why the hell not?” Lars demanded.
Mattie realized she was gripping his hand so tightly she was cutting off the circulation to her own fingers. Forcing herself to calm down, she loosened her grip. “Because you can’t just tear down someone else’s altar. You don’t know what kind of stuff they’re messing with. It’s hard to explain.” She struggled to find the words, but Owen saved her the trouble.
“Lars, you could probably walk in there and dismantle it because you don’t put any faith in the kind of power you can’t see or touch.” Owen’s smile tempered his words. “But there is power in this world, whether you acknowledge it or not. I’m not talking about the wand-waving stuff. I’m just talking about what occurs naturally in the spirit realm, and pretty much everywhere in between. The occult does exist, and most of what people can access isn’t of the benevolent variety.”
Mattie gazed up at Owen, willing him to understand how much she appreciated what he’d just said. Explaining her beliefs to someone generally involved a lot of strange looks, eye rolls, or skepticism.
To his everlasting credit, Lars didn’t look the least bit weirded out. “So basically, the bad guys are much more willing to screw around with human lives than the good guys. And unless you undo whatever was done, you might be setting off some kind of spiritual booby trap?”
Owen reached behind Mattie and tousled Lars’s hair. “Actually that’s a pretty good summation.”
Mattie started to laugh but yawned instead. “I’m sorry. I was too freaked out to sleep. I’m just so tired.”
She couldn’t resist the urge to lean back against Owen’s warm bulk and tuck her bare feet beneath Lars. It was like being cocooned inside a safe bubble of yummy-smelling male goodness. Another yawn made her jaw creak.
Owen pressed his lips to the top of her head. “We have some things that have to be said, but they can wait just a little longer. Not much, but a little.”
“About what?” Mattie worked to keep her eyes open.
Owen gazed at Lars. “About us—all three of us. About what’s really going on and what’s going to happen in the future.”
“I’m not sure I want to talk about that,” Mattie said honestly. “You two are perfect together. I know that already. I can see it.” She was so tired. Her mind was muddled as she struggled to hang on to the real world. Her psyche was already drifting into the land of dreams where she could say anything without fear of judgment. “I’m sick of loving people who don’t love me back. I just want to pretend you’re both mine for a little longer. Please?”
Owen’s voice seemed to come from the direction of heaven. “You don’t have to pretend anymore, baby. Just rest.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mattie emerged slowly from sleep. Her bed was deliciously warm. It was tempting to sink back into unconsciousness for just a little longer. When she dreamed, it was possible to imagine she wasn’t alone. She could fantasize about a man who would love her, be her partner, raise children with her, and not leave.
“Good morning, love.” Lars’s sleep-roughened voice nearly caused her to leap out of her skin.
Her eyes snapped open, and last night’s events came rushing in. She wasn’t alone. Lars was lounging in her chair with his feet propped on the mattress, and Owen’s body was generating the inferno of heat keeping her toasty warm.
She scrambled into a sitting position, trying to avoid Owen’s bulk. Not an easy task since he was hogging most of the bed. Her queen-size mattress wasn’t long enough for his big frame, so he was sprawled corner to corner on his belly. His shoulders were etched with muscles, tapering to a sleek torso and a dip at the base of his spine that hinted at his exquisitely formed ass.
“Beautiful, isn’t he.” Lars’s words were more comment than question.
Mattie’s fingers itched to touch him. She longed to run her fingers through Owen’s thick black hair and smooth it away from his handsome face. He looked vulnerable in sleep, less like a statue and more like a man.
“I’ve never seen him sleep this deeply before,” Lars remarked. He gave her too-small bed a rueful look. “We took turns, for obvious reasons, but also to make sure there were no uninvited visitors. Owen was only supposed to let me sleep for two hours but gave me four instead.”
Lars appeared uncomfortable, as if he’d shirked his duty. Mattie had the thought that it must be exhausting to be constantly trying to live up to an unnecessarily lofty set of expectations.
“What?” he asked. “You’re staring.”
She had absolutely nothing to lose and maybe even nothing to gain, so why not just tell him what she thought? “I was just thinking that it would make me crazy to spend my whole life trying to be who everyone else wanted me to be.”
“Meaning?”
She frowned. What did she mean exactly? “When I first met you, you were running yourself ragged trying to make sure Selena was safe and happy. Your investigation consumed your whole life and you seemed”—she searched f
or the right word and came up blank—“resigned, I think. It was like you enjoyed working for Interpol, but it’s just a job. And Aasen International is the same way. You’re just okay with it.”
He actually looked amused, but there was something else lurking beneath the sarcastic slant of his brows. “It’s a job. Being passionate about it isn’t a requirement.”
“No, but it makes life a hell of a lot better.” Mattie wished she could make him understand. “What are you passionate about, Lars?” Her gaze drifted toward Owen’s sleeping form. “Aren’t you passionate about him?”
“Is that what you keep waiting to hear?” His expression was utterly devoid of emotion. She couldn’t tell anything about what he might be thinking or feeling. He cocked his head, penetrating her with his gaze until she wondered if he could see her bare soul. “We’re not all like you, Mattie. Not all of us want a home and a family. Nor are we willing to lay ourselves bare to get it.”
She ran her tongue across her lips, knowing she was taking a huge leap of faith and not caring. “But you are.”
“I was twenty-two when my doctor told me I had testicular cancer. I probably could have made a donation to a sperm bank, taken precautions, gone through some less invasive treatments, whatever. But I didn’t. Mostly because my father was dying, and there was a lot of other shit I had resting on my shoulders.”
In that moment her heart broke for him. To be so young, so full of hope and vitality only to have someone hand you what felt like a death sentence.
Lars sighed. “I was engaged to marry a beautiful girl. The perfect wife for a man like me with familial commitments out the ass.”
“Then?” She almost didn’t want to ask. Selena had told her about this woman, but Mattie’s instant hatred of Lars’s nameless, faceless former fiancée was instant and senseless.
“I wanted it all,” he whispered. “The home, the life of making money for my family’s company and living up to my name. I wanted the doting wife and kids to spoil. Then she left. Said she couldn’t see herself living life with a husband who was less than a man.”
Owen stirred as if brought to awareness by Lars’s obvious distress. The way Lars watched him was like a knife in Mattie’s gut. How had she managed to get tangled up with two people who were so unavailable to her?
“Owen was the first person to see me differently. To make me want to see myself differently.” In anyone else she would have called his expression wistful. “It wasn’t that I didn’t love you, Mattie. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to share a home and a family and a life with you. It was that I couldn’t. I couldn’t give you those things, and I couldn’t bear the moment when you’d come to look at me the way she did.”
Shock left Mattie speechless. He loved her? He wanted a family with her? She could’ve leaped with joy had she not been so conflicted. What about Owen? Giving in to desire, she let her fingers trace a light path down Owen’s spine. “How can you love me when you so obviously love him? I can’t give you what he does.”
“That’s the beauty of it.” Lars gazed at her with such warmth she felt it like a physical caress. “You don’t have to give me what he does. He can do that himself. Owen was the one who made me see that.”
A thousand things went through her mind all at once, and Mattie hunched into a little ball and clasped her arms around her legs to gain a moment to think. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t harbored a certain list of fantasies about what Lars was suggesting. After having sex with him and Owen, it was impossible not to, but the reality of a kinky sexual experience wasn’t the same as a long-term commitment that involved three sets of emotions.
“You’ve thought about it, I know you have,” Lars chided. “Don’t look as though you’re completely blown away by the notion.”
“Except I am blown away.” She had good reasons for that, so how come she was uncomfortable trying to explain them to Lars? “Ever since I was little I’ve had this picture in my head of what it will be like to raise a family. What that will look like, you know?”
Lars’s expression turned bitter. “And letting both of us love you doesn’t fit into your ideal?”
This wasn’t about her rejecting them. Why did he immediately have to assume it was? “I know this sort of lifestyle works for people. I’ve seen it with Selena and with her friend Leslie, and I’ve been glad to know that the world is getting a little more open-minded. But it’s not there yet. It’s still a hard life to lead. A decision you have to defend every single day. Do you really want that? Because I’m not sure I do.” On the other hand, was she willing to walk away from both of them just because she didn’t want to be “the girl with the two husbands”?
He stood up as if he couldn’t sit still any longer. He clenched his fingers in his hair and growled. “When did you turn into a woman who lets other people’s opinions define her decisions?”
“So you want me to believe you’re ready to explain to your mother that not only are you unable to father children of your own, but you’re going to raise a few who belong to the man and woman you’re living with but can’t marry because the state doesn’t recognize polygamy?” It pissed her off that he was going to stand there and judge her for something he hadn’t even thought all the way through.
Lars sighed, gazing at Owen’s sleeping form as if he had the answer to their relationship issues. “So where do we go from here?”
Mattie wished she knew. Why did everything have to be so complicated? She was so close to her dream. A man to love her, give her children, fill her life with happiness and warmth. Except any future with Lars was a package deal.
Owen stretched in his sleep. She stared at his beautiful body. His strength was evident in every ridge and angle. The hands resting lightly on the mattress were relaxed, but Mattie remembered what they felt like against her skin. She recalled every touch. From the beginning, she had felt as though she knew Owen. As if she’d known him in this life and the one before. Why was the idea of being with both Lars and Owen so impossible to imagine?
Mattie clenched her fists to keep her hands at her sides. “I have to go to work.”
For the span of two seconds, she thought Lars might argue. Then he reached out and gave Owen’s leg a light tug. “Hey.”
Owen stretched and rolled from his stomach to his back. The sheets tangled in his long legs, and Mattie had to fight back the urge to climb up and snuggle in next to him. He wasn’t hers. She wasn’t his. Turning her back, she grabbed clean clothes and hurried into the bathroom.
OWEN BLINKED THE heaviness of sleep from his eyes and took in Lars’s tight expression. A huge yawn caught Owen by surprise. “What’s up? Meecham come back?”
“Not that I know of.” Lars gazed out the window. “Mattie has to go to work, and so do I.”
“I’ll tag along with her and keep an eye out for a few hours.” Owen rolled to his back and sat up. He’d gotten far better sleep in the last two hours in Mattie’s bed than he generally did in six hours in his own suite beneath Triptych. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
Lars shifted on his feet, looking uncomfortable. “I talked to Mattie about a relationship between all three of us.”
“And?”
Perching on the edge of the bed, Lars seemed as if he was trying to decide on the best way to deliver bad news. “She wants a regular life with regular relationships. She doesn’t want to have to defend her choice to live an alternative lifestyle, and she thinks I’m fooling myself that I could ever be happy with it either.”
Owen waited for the straight shot of bitterness to flood his system, but it never came. In its place was determination. He had no intention of giving up that easily. Whatever reservations Mattie had were understandable, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be convinced otherwise.
Lars frowned. “Do you hear what I’m telling you?”
“Yep.” Owen stood up and reached for his clothes. “I’m just wondering why you’d let that stop you from making her realize the benefits to being with us far out
weigh whatever crap she might get from people whose opinions don’t matter anyway.”
“I have to admit that’s not what I expected you to say.” Lars’s rueful chuckle warmed Owen’s heart.
Owen hopped a little to pull his pants up before fastening them low on his hips. He started to yank his shirt over his head but stopped when Lars drew him in for a hug.
A wave of rightness left Owen feeling more determined than ever. Lars was such a curious blend of strength and vulnerability. He was confident, intelligent, and successful, yet he needed Owen and Mattie as much as they needed him. They just had to convince Mattie how true that was, and Owen intended to spend the day trying to get his point across.
Chapter Fourteen
Mattie adjusted the drape of a purple scarf she’d used to add a splash of color to her display before turning back to the painting she was working on. From the corner of her eye she watched Owen casually drinking coffee from a large paper cup. He’d disappeared not long after they’d arrived at her stall on Artists’ Row. When he’d returned, he’d been carrying two huge coffees and a bag of cinnamon-raisin bagels from a shop around the corner.
She had thought it would be uncomfortable having him hanging around doing nothing, but it wasn’t anything like she’d expected. His silent presence was soothing. There was no pressure to have inane conversation while she worked. She sat at an easel in the sunlight that dappled the sidewalk in front of her stall. Owen was settled comfortably on a chair in the shade, one boot propped up on the edge of a wooden tub she’d filled with colorful geraniums.
A couple of young women wandered toward them. Mattie had to admit the only drawback to having Owen around was also a perk. He attracted females like a flower drew bees. She’d had more customers that morning than she’d had in the previous three, but they were all women.
The tall blonde sneaked a look at Owen before giving Mattie a beatific smile. “Is that painting for sale?” She gestured to the one on the easel.
“Actually, this one is already sold.” Mattie set down her brush and wiped her hands on a rag. “I have a similar piece right back here, although it is a little larger.”
Boston Avant-Garde 6: Chiaroscuro Page 13
