“Oy! Dreamy-eyes! Are you going to cut that rose or are you just going to stare at us all day?”
Graeme jerked hard and yanked himself out of his thoughts at Art’s call. Dammit, he’d stopped working and started staring at the two of them, and after telling himself he absolutely wouldn’t. And he’d been caught.
“Sorry,” he called back, raising one hand to wave, his face blaring with heat. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I was just…thinking.”
“Yeah, you were,” Art said, flirty as hell. Worse still, he put down the trowel he’d been using and pushed himself to stand. “Why don’t you come over here and bother us some more?”
“You’re a menace,” Ryan laughed, shaking his head at Art. He glanced Graeme’s way, too, though, an invitation in his eyes.
Graeme’s insides shook like they’d been tossed in the air and didn’t know where to land. Art’s flirting was blatant and obvious, but Ryan’s was just as potent. Having one man tempting him down a dangerous path was one thing. Two of them was a beautiful nightmare.
“I’ve got all this work to do,” he said, nodding to the long line of overgrown rose bushes. “Pruning should have been done earlier in the year, but now’s as good a time as any. Although this will mean you won’t have as many blooms this year.”
“Are you telling us that the bloom has gone off the rose?” Art asked, walking slowly and seductively toward the rose hedge. “Already?”
Graeme laughed and lowered his head, more out of sheer panic as his feelings overwhelmed him than because he thought the joke was funny. When he glanced up, face still pointed down, Ryan had joined Art in walking towards him.
The two of them looked so perfect together. That was the problem. The problem for him, not for them. They were a brilliant pairing. Both of them were handsome, both were confident and easy with themselves, and both knew what they wanted in life. Unlike him.
They were them and Graeme was on the outside. Any chance he’d had of starting something with either of them was gone. They were clearly into each other.
“You’re doing it again,” Ryan said, his voice surprisingly kind as the two of them reached the other side of the thick hedge.
Graeme blinked, knowing he’d fallen into staring again, but said, “Doing what?”
Ryan and Art exchanged a knowing look…that made Graeme feel even more on the outside.
“If you have questions, love, you can just ask us,” Art said. “I know you’re brimming with curiosity about all sorts of things.”
Graeme’s face heated to epic levels. He’d talked to Art more than a few times since both the garden and the excavation project had gotten started. Most of those conversations had started out with him insisting to himself that he would take the lead and find out more about Art and his life, but had ended with him confessing things that he hadn’t wanted to. Although he had yet to say a word about Damien to either Art or Ryan.
“I think I’m just a bit exhausted is all,” he said, hoping that would be a good enough answer to stop any indecent questions. “The rose garden has been neglected for so long that it’s going to take ages to bring it back. Especially since I don’t have a crew.”
Ryan’s grin turned into a look of concern. “Sorry,” he said, walking away from where they all stood toward the gap in the hedge where he could enter the garden. “I’ve been spending all this time procrastinating my work by helping Arthur here, but I can see you need help more than he does.”
“I think our boy Graeme needs much more help than we’ve been giving him,” Art said, innuendo thick in his words. He, too, strode down to the gap and into the rose garden.
“What can we do?” Ryan asked, approaching Graeme along the old path that was now strewn with cut, thorny branches.
What they could do was assure Graeme that everything would be alright, that someone would love him unconditionally someday. They could laugh at his insecurities and make them smaller. And maybe, just maybe, they could decide between themselves which one of them would make an offer to take things to the next level with him.
But no, the two of them were obviously dating each other now. Or, if they weren’t, they would be soon.
“Um….” Graeme pushed a gloved hand over his damp hair, looking around at the chaotic rose garden. “I guess the best thing to start would be to gather up all the debris from pruning to take to the burn pile.”
“Your wish is my command,” Art said, stepping straight into action. “All of your wishes are my command,” he added with a wiggle of his eyebrows.
That eyebrow wiggle was his trademark, Graeme had learned. He used it far too often, to the point where it was kind of laughable. But even though the expression was massively overused, Graeme’s dick still stirred every time those eyebrows were directed at him.
“I’ll get the wheelbarrow,” Ryan laughed, shaking his head again. That was turning into Ryan’s signature expression whenever Art wiggled his eyebrows.
It was like they’d known each other so long that their responses to each other were automatic. Yet another sign that the two of them were building something and he’d missed out entirely.
Not that Graeme would have the first clue how to handle himself in any sort of relationship with either of them.
It was easier to get back to work than he expected once he had a sort of crew working with him. Art and Ryan actually were good workers, despite their constant teasing and flirting. The way they cleaned up the morning’s debris made it possible for him to finish with the pruning and to move on to tagging which bushes needed to be moved and which could stay where they were.
“Roses hate to be moved,” he explained to Art and Ryan once all the debris was cleared and the two men had donned protective gloves to handle the bushes themselves. “If I had my way, I would have done all this a month and a half ago at least.”
