“Look, I’ll deal with Cole when I’m ready,” I told her. “He needs a cooldown period anyway. And besides, there hasn’t been any time. I’ve been working non-stop since I got back, both at the shelter and the clinic.”
I was in my scrubs right now; my maroon ones, not the blue. On super busy days like today, I had to look down at them to remember which job to go back to.
“And I uh… I’m not exactly staying at home right now, either.”
I glanced up, half wincing, fully expecting her to shout me down and apologize to the restaurant again. Instead, her expression remained unchanged.
“Did you hear what I said?” I smiled coyly.
Amy nodded and went back to picking through her salad. Her reaction perplexed me. She should’ve looked surprised, but for some strange reason, she wasn’t.
“Alright, enough about Cole,” I grinned. “I came here to spill tea.”
In truth I’d been dying to tellsomeoneof my exploits, and Amy was the one person I trusted with such a secret. Best of all, she’d listen without judgment.
“Spill it then!” Amy smiled back at me.
Folding my arms before me, I leaned forward and brought my voice down to a low, throaty growl. “Well then, who do you want to hear about first?” I grinned. “Carter? Sawyer? Or Bodie?”
~ 26 ~
HAYDEN
Three days. Two nights. That’s how long it’d been, living under the boys’ roof, tiptoeing around the things I really wanted. With four different work schedules, it wasn’t at all like our ski weekend at the cabin. Carter and Sawyer were working The Refuge, and Bodie was off doing whatever mysterious shit Bodie did. Collectively, we were busy. We barely saw each other. Between my shifts at the animal shelter, and maintaining my client list at two different physical therapy clinics, our encounters were woefully brief.
That’s not to say there hadn’t been boiling levels of sexual tension; over the course of my stay.
For one, I wasn’t used to passing shirtless hunks in the hallway, on the way to and from the communal bathroom shower. I wasn’t used to seeing long, muscular legs protruding from skin-tight boxer briefs, or the feast my eyes sometimes enjoyed at the dick-shaped bulge that rested between them. The guys had likewise enjoyed similar views, with me wearing some of the shortest shorts and skimpiest tops I owned. I’d made little to zero effort to cover up. I’d even ‘dropped’ things, and bent over a few times, just for good measure.
I had serious regrets about strutting out of Carter’s bedroom the other night; especially since he hadn’t followed me.But hey, everyone made mistakes. And some mistakes, like this one, were made to be rectified.
“You guys need another beer?”
I waited until the strategically perfect time to ask the question. All three of them were on the couch, lounging out, watching television. And not just any television, but the Thursday night game.
“Actually, that would be amazing, thanks,” Carter said mechanically. “If you could—”
His sentence abruptly ended as his gaze swung my way. I was standing to one side of the television, three cold beers already in hand. I was also standing apparently fresh from the shower, in nothing but a white terrycloth bathrobe.
The resulting silence — other than the football announcer on television — was deafening.
“You were saying?” I asked innocently.
Three pairs of eyes were glued to me now. I let my robe hang generously open as I sauntered over, took their empties, and handed each of them a fresh bottle.
“Thanks,” they murmured one by one.
“No, thankyou,” I said sweetly. “Each of you. All of you. Not just for letting me stay here, but also for being such perfect gentlemen.”
My smile was overdone. So was my hair and makeup, which sure as hell didn’t look fresh from the shower.
“Gentlemen,” Sawyer repeated numbly.
“Perfectgentlemen,” I corrected him.
He let out a short laugh. “And how’s that?”
“Well, you took me in, you gave me a bed, and you respected me enough not to climb into it.” I sighed wistfully. “The rumor going around the house is that you boys are giving me space. You’re respecting my boundaries.”
