The no-emotional-strings had been a deal-breaker for both of the men, and she’d liked the idea at first—since it felt safer than entering a committed relationship that was so far out of her comfort-zone. They never said they loved each other, and each was free to do whatever they liked with their life except fuck someone outside of their relationship.
But she was starting to want more, and she wasn’t sure she could ever get there in this particular relationship.
Particularly since Mike and Drayton didn’t always seem to even like each other anymore.
It was probably just a phase. Tonight had been good. Maybe the tension was natural—since a no-emotional-strings relationship could only, ever be temporary. Maybe, like her, the men needed more too.
Sex was good, but it wasn’t enough. Not for the long-term.
Her body was sated, and she felt warm and drowsy as she snuggled between the two men in her bed. It felt safe and familiar, and maybe it could get better. Get deeper.
Mike was still stroking her hair, his touch very gentle.
He’d always been surprisingly gentle, for such a big, masculine man. He’d been really into the sex tonight, though. Not so gentle. She’d felt so good and deep and intimate with him tonight, before Drayton entered the room, but that thought made her feel horribly guilty.
“I’m glad you came back tonight, Drayton,” she mumbled sleepily. “It’s not the same without you.”
***
When Julia went into the kitchen the following morning—still putting on her pearl earrings—Drayton was reading the newspaper at the table, wearing his bathrobe. Mike was fully dressed in jeans and a brown sports coat, and he was scrambling up eggs at the stove.
She went to get juice out of the refrigerator and poured the remainder into her glass.
Mike noticed her shaking the final drops from the carton. “I saved the last of it for you. We’re out of eggs now too.”
Julia gulped the juice and rolled her eyes when no one volunteered. “I’ll stop at the store on my way home from work. I’m not sure why I’m the one who always has to do the grocery shopping.”
“Because if Drayton went we’d have to live on wine and cheese.”
Drayton glanced up from his newspaper and sneered faintly in Mike’s direction.
“And if you went?” Julia asked, elbowing Mike as he plated up his eggs and bacon.
“You want any?” he asked, reaching for another plate.
“Not today. Thanks.”
“I can go.” Mike grabbed a fork and ate as he leaned against the counter. “I’ve got a dinner meeting tonight but I can stop by the store afterwards—”
“It’s fine. I’ll do the shopping. Oh, I have one of those parties at my boss’s to go to on Saturday evening. Can I drag one of you along?”
“I’ll go,” Mike said, pouring himself more coffee with his free hand.
Drayton cleared his throat. He’d lowered the newspaper and was looking particularly sexy and decadent with his arched eyebrows and curled lip. “I believe it’s my turn to play escort. You took her to the last cocktail party. Not to mention the wedding two months ago.”
Mike had taken her on a weekend trip to her cousin’s wedding in August. He’d had to, since the story Julia told her very conservative parents was that she and Mike were a couple. She’d figured a stable engineer like Mike would be more acceptable to her parents than a freelance photographer, which is what Drayton did when he wasn’t living off his family money. Julia’s family loved Mike, and they were expecting an engagement very soon.
Sometimes she felt kind of guilty for keeping them in the dark, but they just wouldn’t understand her real situation.
She’d been nervous about the weekend alone with Mike at first. Since she met him after Drayton, she always felt like she didn’t know him as well. When the three of them first got together, he’d been a little distant—like he was keeping a part of himself for his own. But she and Mike had had a really good time on the trip. It was one of the first times she’d really bonded with him outside of the context of Drayton’s personality. They’d been relaxed, talked for hours, and had more fun than she’d been expecting. She’d been a little sorry they’d had to come back so soon.
Drayton was amazing, but he was definitely high-maintenance. Brilliant and jaded and deliciously urbane. He was the most exciting man she’d ever known, but sometimes she just wanted to hang out. And not be exciting.
Mike was an excellent man to just hang out with.
Now that she thought about it, it might have been after that trip she’d started to get a little restless. Just slightly discontent.
“Do you want to come to the party with me?” she asked Drayton, genuinely surprised by his comment.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“All right. Sounds good.” She smiled at him fondly. “I can’t promise it will be very exciting.”
“We can make our own excitement.”
Mike put his empty plate in the sink. “I better get to work. I’m in meetings most of the day, and I’ll be back late.”
Julia leaned over to kiss him, tasting bacon and coffee on his mouth. “Have a good day. Thanks for volunteering to go to the party.”
He mumbled something and strode out—heading to his bathroom to brush his teeth, she assumed.
“I guess I better get going too,” she said, feeling oddly self-conscious under Drayton’s observant gaze.
He just twitched his eyebrows at her, a half-smile on his lips. She gave him a quick kiss and went to her room to put on the jacket to her gray skirt suit.
She was on her way out when she heard something from Drayton’s room. It sounded like low voices, so she wondered if Mike had lingered to talk. Surprised and a little hopeful, she peeked in through the cracked door to investigate.
Drayton must have just ended a phone conversation because he was standing in the middle of the floor, his phone in his hand. He had something else in his other hand, and she thought she saw it briefly sparkle.
“Drayton? What’s going on?”
He turned around quickly as she pushed into the room, and he whisked something out of her sight before she could clearly see what it was. “Nothing’s going on. I was arranging a job on the phone.”
He was convincing. His eyes met hers evenly, and there was no reason to doubt his words. But something definitely felt off.
Julia narrowed her eyes. “What do you have there?” she asked, trying to pull his hand up so she could see what was in his left hand.
“Julia,” Drayton said, a warning in his tone. He resisted her continued attempts until they had a silly, little scuffle.
“Stop prying,” he said at last. “There might be a reason I don’t want you to see it.”
Julia frowned. They all kept their own boundaries, but they tried to be honest with each other. And Drayton didn’t usually keep secrets from her. “What reason?”
“Maybe it’s a present for someone.”
She blinked. She hadn’t even considered that. She didn’t have a birthday coming up, but Drayton was generous. He’d always given her gifts for no reason but to please her.
“For Mike?” she teased. “That’s nice of you. You can show me. I won’t tell him.”
Drayton laughed and dropped the secret object into the drawer behind him. Then he pulled Julia forward until her body was pressed up against his. “You take great pleasure in driving me to distraction, don’t you?”
“Of course.” She wrapped her arms around his neck as he kissed her, but when his hands became more presumptuous—cupping her bottom, stroking under her jacket—she pulled away reluctantly. “I don’t have time this morning.”
He slid her jacket off over her shoulders until it dropped to the floor. He rubbed his hands over her breasts, the silk of her blouse slipping deliciously against her bra. “Of course, you do.”
“I’m serious, Drayton,” she tried to argue, but her body was already reacting to his touch. She groaned as he kissed
her again and fondled her breasts with skillful passion.
She was aroused when he turned her around and bent her over the dresser. And when he pushed up her skirt and pulled aside her panties, she was shamelessly eager to take him into her body, despite her lingering soreness from the night before.
He fucked her until they both came, and she went into work flushed, rumpled, and twenty minutes late.
Two
“Damn it, Drayton,” Julia muttered, watching the rain pound on her windshield four hours later. “Pick up the fucking phone.”
Despite her urgent demand, the phone kept ringing unanswered until it went to Drayton’s voicemail.
“Drayton, where are you? I thought you were supposed to be working in your studio all day. My car was acting up, so I came by to see if you could help me drop it off, but you weren’t here. And now my car won’t shift out of park at all, and I’m stuck on the street in the rain, waiting for the tow truck, and you won’t pick up your phone.”
Her tone got a little too shrill at the end, since the last hour had been painfully frustrating, so she took a breath to control herself before she concluded, “So, if you’re just out for a little while, please call me back. Mike’s in meetings all day, so I can’t ask him.”
She hung up and stared at her phone for a few minutes, but it didn’t ring. The rain was loud as it buffeted the car, and she dreaded getting out when the tow truck arrived. Plus, she’d have to find someone to take her back to work, since damned Drayton had disappeared on her.
He’d never been particularly bound by a schedule. He seemed to have plenty of business—many of his jobs were out of town—but she thought that, when he told her he’d be working all day in the studio space he rented, then that was where his ass would be.
She told herself to be reasonable. Maybe something had come up. He wouldn’t know that she’d have car trouble and need him right when he wasn’t available.
It wasn’t like he was her husband. Or even a committed boyfriend. Their relationship was set up so there were no expectations like that. Drayton—all of them—had always insisted on keeping his freedom.
But sometimes this no-emotional-strings thing was just frustrating. It would be nice to have someone she could rely on to help her out sometimes—whether he wanted to or not.
If only Mike wasn’t in meetings today. He was the one she normally called to help her in everyday crises. He wasn’t obliged to help her any more than Drayton, but he never seemed to mind.
Julia considered herself a mature, competent woman, but car problems always turned her into a helpless little girl. She never knew what to do, and mechanics invariably managed to make her feel stupid and ignorant.
She was ignorant about cars, but she didn’t like to feel that way.
She called a friend from work, who told her she could get out to pick her up in about an hour, since she was under pressure to finish a project before two o’clock. Then she called her best friend, Helen, who said she could pick her up after she met with the student who had an appointment in ten minutes.
Feeling helpless and irrationally upset because nothing was going right, Julia found herself texting Mike. You in a meeting?
It took him just over a minute to answer. Yes. Boring. You okay?
Car problems.
Where are you?
Outside Drayton’s studio. I can’t reach him. Do you know where he is?
No. I can cut out and pick you up.
No need. Helen or someone from work can come in a while.
It’s pouring. I’ll be there in a few.
Julia stared down at her phone, feeling a strange rush of guilt, affection, and relief. She shouldn’t have bothered Mike. She should have known he’d drop everything to come and help her out. He was just like that.
Unlike Drayton, damn him. Where the hell was he, anyway?
Mike’s office wasn’t very far away, but it would take him a few minutes to leave his meeting, get to his car, and drive over here. Maybe he’d get here before the tow truck came. She hoped so. Then he could talk to the driver instead of her.
Unfortunately, the tow truck came almost immediately, so Julia had to get out in the rain to talk to the guy and give him instructions. She was parked right behind a loading area, so her car was accessible for the tow, but the truck still had to block traffic, and Julia was wet and upset as she watched the whole procedure from the sidewalk.
Before the driver had gotten her car hooked up, Mike appeared, parallel-parking his SUV across the street. He got out and crossed over, barely pausing for traffic.
She let out a breath of relief as she saw him.
She was normally quite independent, so didn’t like to be this way—so incapable of dealing with car stuff on her own—but she was still ridiculously happy that Mike was here.
He smiled at her as he approached, his face slightly concerned. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, wiping rain off her face. “You shouldn’t have left your meeting.”
“It was one of those waste-of-time meetings anyway. Why didn’t you wait inside somewhere? You’re soaked.”
She shrugged. “The guy is dealing with my car. Shouldn’t I be here?”
“You told him where to take it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So he knows what he needs to know. Hanging out here getting drenched isn’t going to help him get the car hooked up.” He looked over at the tow truck, shaking his head. “Why don’t you go into that coffee shop across the street? I’ll stay here to make sure everything is okay.”
“But it’s my car. I should be the one to…to mess with it.”
He turned back to stare down at her, and his expression softened, even through the rain on his face. “Standing in the rain is a pretty futile gesture of your independence, but I’ll stand here with you, if you want.”
With a wave of affection, she pressed herself against him. His clothes were wet, and she couldn’t feel him anyway through her stylish, green raincoat, but she liked the way he wrapped one arm around her.
They stood there for a few more minutes, until the driver got her car attached and hauled it away. Then they walked across the street. Julia climbed into the passenger seat of Mike’s SUV, gratefully taking the towel he pulled from the back and then blinking as he shut the door and walked down the sidewalk.
She realized what he was doing when he disappeared into the coffee shop.
She dried her face, blotted at her hair, and cringed as she looked at herself in the mirror. She was trying to fix up her face a little when Mike returned with two cups of coffee.
She took hers with a smile. “Thanks.”
He shrugged and studied her face. “You okay?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why I always seem to turn into such a mess when I have car problems. I just always feel like such an idiot.”
“What did you do that was idiotic?”
“I don’t know. I called Drayton and couldn’t reach him. Then I called the garage, and they said they’d send someone out to tow the car.”
Mike smile, his brown eyes soft again. “It sounds like you did exactly what anyone else would have done. So why feel like an idiot?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know anything about cars, and I don’t like feeling ignorant.”
“You could learn more about cars, if you really wanted to.”
She sniffed. “I don’t want to learn more about cars. I hate the stupid things. I just want them to always work when I turn them on.”
Mike chuckled and reached out to brush her damp hair back from her face. “Now, that I’m not sure I can help you with, baby.”
She sighed and felt a lot better. “I’m really sorry to drag you away from your meeting. Is your boss going to be mad?”
“Nah. He thinks these ridiculous meetings are a waste of time too.”
“What will you tell him?”
“I’ll tell him there was an emergency with my girlfriend, and I needed to go help her ou
t.”
He said the words blandly, matter-of-factly, as if the answer was obvious, but something about the way he said “girlfriend” made it sound intimate, special.
It made her sound special.
She felt a pleasant tightening in her chest, but she had no way to explain her reaction. She knew Mike didn’t tell his work colleagues about his living situation, any more than she told hers. Of course, he would refer to her as his girlfriend and let everyone assume their arrangement was a traditional one.
As ridiculous as it sounded, she’d never really thought of herself as Mike’s girlfriend before.
She wasn’t Mike’s girlfriend. She was part of an unconventional, sexual relationship with him.
“What is it?” Mike muttered, looking slightly self-conscious—perhaps because of what he saw in her expression.
“Nothing.” She smiled, shaking away the strange, emotional response. “Thanks so much for coming. I would have been okay, though.”
“I know you would. It looks like you had everything under control. There’s no reason for you to feel like you’re not up to any car-challenge you’re faced with.”
She felt a different kind of pleased emotion wash over her, and she leaned back against the seat, smiling at him rather sappily.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” he demanded, taking the towel and patting his face and hair.
“Because you’re very sweet.”
“What do you mean, I’m sweet? I’m damn hot.”
She laughed, surprised by a burst of amusement at his wry tone. She reached over to cup his face, his slight stubble rough against her hand. “You’re hot too.”
“Good. Don’t you forget it.”
She searched his face, trying to chase a flicker of expression she’d caught as he said the words, but he’d turned away and was staring out at the rain on the windshield. For just a moment, he’d looked almost slighted, but the expression was gone before she could fully recognize it.
“Do you need to get back to work right away?” he asked. “I could take you to lunch, if you want.”