“Same,” they chorused.
Pågat Rock Arch was a gorgeous rock formation that offered a thirty-foot drop into gorgeous blue waters and a lightly foaming surf.
“My mom had a colony of gray hair by her left temple that she swears all came from me,” Lani said.
“My mom’s are bunched together on the left side in one long swath. It’s the only place she has them, just right there in the front, and she loves telling people that my siblings and I are thecause of exactly three of them,” Nyx explained. “She says the rest belong to our dad. He had some close calls over the years that left her thrilled when he retired.”
“You said he was an aviator, right?” I said. “Did he fly jets or Hueys?
“Hueys, or more specifically, Seahawks, mostly on rescue missions. He was deployed overseas a few times and had a rotor engine blow that sent him into a spin. They landed rough on that one, and he got hit with shrapnel when the rotors splintered against the ground. Mom claims that each of us was the result of him being home nursing an injury. It got to be a running joke after Mom announced she was pregnant with my twin sisters. Dad had been home rehabbing a knee injury, the result of his war with a gopher.”
“The ugg, rodent?” I asked.
Their answer was to snicker at me.
“I guess not,” I muttered.
“The gopher was a member of the flight crew who could be a bit overeager when doing his job,” Nyx explained. “To the point where my dad tripped over him and hurt his knee. Mom always said that was the only injury she could laugh about. Dad claimed it was the only one he didn’t earn. It ended up being the one to retire him, though that would come several years later when it started bothering him so much he had to have knee replacement surgery.”
“Ouch,” I said. “So how many siblings did you wind up with?”
“Six,” Nyx replied. “The last two, the twins, came after Mom had retired. “They were actually her second set of twins.”
“I can’t decide if your dad was the unluckiest Seahawk pilot ever or the luckiest.”
“If you ask him, he’ll tell you it depends on the week and which of us needs help getting out of whatever mess we’ve gotten into,” Nyx explained.
“Oh, so you’re a troublemaker?” I teased. “Exactly how much trouble have you been in?”
“Not me; that was mostly my brothers. Aside from a few dustups at school, I rarely found myself in the hot seat,” Nyx explained. “You’ve got to worry about that one over there. He’s the troublemaker.”
Lani didn’t even pretend to look ashamed when Nyx pointed at him; he just whistled and looked the other way as he slowly slipped off the rock he’d been sitting on and into the water.
“Okay,” I said, “so how much trouble did you get in?”
“All very minor offenses that were the result of bad timing and misunderstandings,” Lani said, waving at the air between us as if to clear the question from the conversation.
I turned to look over at Nyx, who shook his head and stage-whisperedsome weren’t so minor.
Water flowed around us, a few waves sending up a spray of water when they hit the rocks, while Lani whistled the tune from Dragnet. Oh yeah, it was going to be fun getting to know them. I was definitely getting to the bottom of the mystery too, no matter how many methods he used to stall me.
Stalking towards him to the surf, I decided to try flirtatious persuasion first, circling him when I neared so I could run my fingertips up his back. “So, tell me more about these misunderstandings.”
I never stopped touching him as I spoke; I just alternated between feather-light and teasing and pressing my palm to his shoulder and rubbing my way up his neck.
“They were all so ridiculous,” Lani grumbled. “This one time I seriously got detained because a store owner freaked the fuck out when I walked into the shop. He accused me of holding theplace up the week before. There was a lineup and everything, and then my lawyer asked him what hand I was holding the gun in when I was supposedly pointing it at his face.”
Snickering, I ran my hand beneath his hair to rub the back of his neck, picturing how the whole mess played out.
“Yeah, you know where the rest of the story is going,” Lani said as he grinned over his shoulder at me.
“Pretty much.”
“And you’d be right. He described the whole thing as going down with me holding the gun in my right hand, only I don’t have a right hand. There was a whole lot of backpedaling after that, and of course, the charges were dropped. You’d best believe I never went into that shop again.”
“I still say you should have sued him,” Nyx said as he rolled over to float on his back.
“Yeah, I think I’d have sued,” I admitted as Nyx kicked water over us as he started backstroking away.
