“Avery, knock it off,” Marlow’s voice chimed in from behind me.
Whipping around, I spotted him slowly making his way over to us, his crutches stamping on the floor with each swing of his body. How he was able to move so quietly through the house with those things, I still had yet to figure out. It seemed whenever he wanted to remain stealthy, he had the uncanny ability to essentially make himself nearly inaudible to pick up on.
Now, though, he wasn’t bothering to remain all that quiet. “You’re such a bully.”
Avery’s mouth dropped open at the sight of him. “You’re kidding.”
Marlow had thrown on a matching robe, making this situation all the more obvious. If Avery hadn’t picked up on what was going on before, he sure did now.
“You’resleepingwith him?”
Marlow grinned. “Yup.”
My hand conveniently found my face to sigh into. Leave it to him to not at all sugarcoat things.
What did I expect, though?
This man was honest to a fault sometimes.
“I can’t help it. Look how cute he is.” A kiss was pressed against my temple, drawing me out from under my hand.
“Cute?Marlow, he almost got youkilled.” Concern was taking over the anger in Avery’s voice, shifting it from a pointed and aggressive tone and turning it into one that was close to almost begging.
As if he were trying to plead with his friend to open up his damn eyes and see the truth for what it really was: that he was taking a liability to bed.
Too bad we were both too far down in the trenches to care.
“It’ll be a fun story to tell our kids,” was all Marlow followed up with.
Wryly, I glanced at him. “Kids, huh?”
He shrugged, grinning again. “Maybe a dog, too. I’m thinking a lab. They like the water. Perfect for the lake.”
Or a golden retriever,my mind helpfully supplied.
All right, I didn’t hate that idea, but that was getting far too ahead of ourselves. Letting my mind wander to the fantasy wasn’t helping with the fact that we had a very angry man in the house who was looking close to throwing whatever casserole dish he had in his hand right at my head.
Turning back to Avery, I said, “I’m sorry we are meeting like this. If I knew you were coming over, I would’ve fixed you up a drink first.”
That had him blinking in surprise.
An arm was thrown around my shoulders. “Blake here is the caretaker type. Kinda like your Brandon.”
The other man’s face pinched suddenly, his fingers lightly tapping the sides of the dish. Whoever Brandon was, most likely the other man who came with him to the hospital, he had a deep and profound effect on Avery. Enough to cool him down almost immediately.
“Silas said you’re the director ofAustin Adventures.” His words were slow as he spoke them. “Don’t you think it’s highly unethical to be sleeping with your clients? Do you do that often?”
“Wow, way to make me feel like a dime-a-dozen, Av,” Marlow said.
Right as Avery was opening his mouth to retort, I cut in. “I’ve never slept with a client. Nor entertained the idea before this.”
“So why do so now?” he asked.
Turning my attention back to the man attached to the arm around my shoulders, I held his gaze for what felt like eons. The fork in the road was giving me two choices: deflect and try to make this all seem like a happy accident that simply turned into a relationship that neither of us were expecting to blossom.
Or, the second choice, and the much harder one: be vulnerable. Open up to Marlow’s friend and show him that this wasn’t a one-off deal, that I wasn’t going to grow bored in a month and skip out before my duties were officially done and save myself from facing any kind of accountability.
Being in it for the long haul meant putting myself in positions where the need to be honest about my true feelings was paramount. For all of Silas’s harsh bites and Avery’s callous words, they were simply trying to protect their friend from some bozo coming in and wrecking their friend emotionally again.
