Trace didn’t answer, at first. “You have a point.”
“Yeah, I do. Nobody freaking knows us here. No paparazzi hanging out and stalking us after we leave the building. No one snapping pics of us and posting them on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram. We’re anonymous again. Doesn’t that make you…I don’t know…tingle just a little?”
“Tingle?”
“Come on. How many times did we hole up in one of our places at night and call for GrubHub takeout because we didn’t want to deal with the bullshit going out entailed? Wasn’t that one of the reasons why you pitched us moving here in the first place?”
“Yeah.” Trace ran a hand through his short blond hair. “Okay, yeah, I guess. If I’m not too worn out from moving. We have a lot of shit to take care of.”
“Our timetable to have the house set up is next week, so quit that bullshit. I’m not giving up the hotel room until my bed’s set up and the kitchen stuff is arranged. I’m too fucking old to sleep on the damn floor on an air mattress.”
Trace smiled. “Those were good times.”
“Yeah, they were, but we were broke college students. We don’t have to live like broke college students anymore.”
* * * *
Arden had actually done the adult thing and asked if the men minded if she gave the restaurant two weeks’ notice before she officially started with them. Fortunately, they were okay with that. Sue was still out with her daughter, who it turned out needed surgery for her broken arm. Plus the restaurant had been good to her, all things considered, and had kept a roof over her head ever since she’d moved to Sarasota. They’d known she’d be leaving them once she started working full-time at the end of the semester, so it wasn’t exactly a shock to them.
Although it was a shock to her to think about her fortune changing and improving so radically within a twenty-four hour period.
As she returned to the hotel room, she felt a little—well, a lot stunned.
Usually when things dropped onto her head, it was bad things and she was constantly shifting course to keep her nose above the water line.
She wasn’t used to good luck.
It kind of scared her.
I’ve worked my hind end off for this.
In her mind, she could almost hear Granny whispering to her, You deserve this good fortune, child.
Now if she could only convince herself of that.
Ken had already e-mailed her the forms to fill out and send back to him, employment forms, tax paperwork, NDA, a written salary contract with the terms they’d discussed, and, even better?
Health insurance.
Paid for.
As in, while she’d have co-pays, they were paying her full premium. Once she was working full-time after graduation and they gave her a pay raise, it would change to her making a contribution.
After a year with them, she’d have a 401(k).
She’d never had one of those before and wasn’t even sure what the heck she’d do with the dang thing.
Once she’d finished filling out the forms and returned them to him, she stretched out on her bed and started studying. Now more than ever she couldn’t afford to get distracted. A degree, a better life for herself, standing on her own two feet. Eventually, she’d be able to thumb her nose at her family, but until then she’d work her ass off and not lose sight of her goal.
She’d already given up too much not to keep going.
* * * *
Hal was busy making notes on his phone while Ken drove them back to the hotel. The truck was arranged, and they were all set to start moving in the morning. Hal’s mind bounced all over the place as he processed the day’s events and tried to capture his thoughts about the features he wanted in the notes app on his phone.
Then there was his newest distraction.
“I like her,” Hal said. “Arden. She seems sharp, driven. Just an instinct.”
“I think we lucked out,” Ken said. “Perfect timing.”
“Yeah.” He looked up from his phone. “God, I’m horny.”
Ken stared at him. “Dude, really?”
“What?”
“Okay, I know you’ve been feral for a couple of years now, but those kinds of left-field comments you cannot say around her, a’ight?”
“No, I…” He grumbled. “Sorry. Just…venting.”
“That what you callin’ it now?”
“Hey, not like I’m getting my dick sucked by Steve every night like you are, a’ight?”
Ken looked shocked. “What?”
“Oh, dude, please. If you two aren’t fucking, then I’m Dick Cheney.”
A guarded air suddenly surrounded Ken. “Why you think that?”
“Uh, because you guys have been the epitome of chill the past couple of months, especially since we’ve been at the hotel. Hello, you’re rooming together. Tell me I’m wrong if I am, but I don’t think I am. I’ve never seen two guys act more like they’re getting some on a regular basis than you two.”
“What if you aren’t wrong?”
“I don’t give a shit one way or another, but don’t keep it a secret, for fuck’s sake. Lucky bastards. I mean, I know you’re not into me, and that’s okay, it doesn’t hurt my feelings.”
Silence filled the car for the next several minutes. “I wouldn’t turn you away if you decided you wanted company some night,” Ken said.
Hal’s heart raced—he wouldn’t deny it’d been a fantasy of his for a while. It just never seemed to be the right time to broach the subject. Back in college, Hal was still figuring things out and felt too terrified to screw up their relationship as friends and as business partners.
“Really?”
“Yeah. No pressure, no strings. Only thing is you gotta be neg across the board, and involved with no one else while we’re doing this.”
“What about you and Steve?”
“I meant nobody but me and Steve. Closed group.”
“You’d be okay with that?”
“Uh, let’s see, a guy I trust and think is hot wants to sleep with me. Nah, I ain’t good with that. What’s wrong with you? Of course I’m okay with that.”
“You think Steve would be okay with it?”
“I know Steve would be fine with us being fuck-buddies, yeah. I can’t speak for Steve if he’d want to have that kind of relationship with you, though. He’s bi, but he tends more toward women, usually.”
“How’d you two start, then?”
“We’ve always kind of fallen together, off and on, for a while now. Didn’t get more intense until recently.”
“When are you going to tell Trace?”
“Does it need to be told?”
“We’ll be living together again, so yeah, a heads-up would be nice.”
“Well, we’d kind of thought about mentioning it at some point. Just hadn’t decided when or how.”
Hal shrugged. “Just tell him. Or I can tell him for you. He’s not a jerk—he won’t care.”
“Now that boy, I wouldn’t mind having him at least once. Not that I think he’d want it.”
“I don’t know. He might be a little more flexible than you think.”
“Still, I’m not going to go there unless he expresses an interest.”
“God, can you imagine if the four of us did go there?” Hal laughed. “We’d never leave the fucking house. At least, not for a couple of weeks.”
“Thank god for GrubHub,” Ken said.
Chapter Six
With help from Allie and her husband, Dale, it took Arden less than an hour to clear out her apartment Saturday morning. After six years living there, Arden wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. At least she didn’t have to change her address for her mail, because that all went to a PO box anyway. All she had to change was her insurance address for the motorcycle. Eventually she’d need to change the registration address for the bike and her driver’s license, but she’d wait to do that until she saw how long she’d be living at Allie’s. She might be living some
where else in a few weeks, or she might be there for a year or more.
Dale turned out to be a nice guy, and admitted he knew Allie’s plan was to keep his parents from overstaying their welcome. In fact, he was fine with that, because he admitted he was too nice and not firm enough with his parents.
Even better? Allie and Arden were working the same shift Saturday night, so Arden got to ride with her and for once didn’t have to take a change of clothes or worry about if she’d get soaked riding home later.
She’d even started to feel a little easier about these recent developments. Ken had sent her more information, and she would be going over to their house tomorrow morning to do some work with them. She hadn’t given them all the details of her recent residency change, just that she’d been in the middle of moving.
But apparently the men were in the middle of moving everything into the house, so it worked out perfectly.
That night as she settled into her bed in the RV, Arden couldn’t help smiling.
You were right, Granny.
Sometimes good girls did come in first, no matter what her parents thought. She tried not to think about her family, but in times like these, where she wished she could call them and boast, she knew it was best not to.
Her two younger sisters, now twenty and twenty-two, had been thoroughly indoctrinated by her parents and were now on a path that would likely lead nowhere. Their shares of the inheritance from their grandmother had already been put into her father’s anemic car dealership to help keep it going, as had her brothers’ shares.
She’d been the only one to resist, taking Granny’s recommendations to heart to go to school, the money she’d received just enough to pay her tuition without her needing student loans.
It’d caused a deep rift between her and her parents.
Then again, the rift had already been there, but bucking them, refusing to give in and give over her share of the money, had deepened it. Her father didn’t believe in girls going to school, and despite her mother having been raised by a strong woman who’d made her own way and emphasized how important schooling was, her mother’s deep-seated insecurities had allowed Arden’s father to turn her into a dependent, self-doubting emotional mess.
Her Granny had been fierce and fearsome, running a local hardware store even after her husband—her mother’s step-father—had died when Arden’s mom was only five. She’d run it up until she’d turned eighty, when she’d finally sold it.
And Granny had never liked Arden’s father.
Arden grew up helping her Granny run the store, the only one of the kids who’d loved doing it. Granny could curse someone out in a G-rated way that would leave people thinking she had the mouth of a sailor when she really didn’t. Even more evidence of her strength.
All these lessons Arden had taken to heart despite the teasing from her own family. Her father had always looked down on Granny and assumed he and her mom would be inheriting everything once she died.
To his shock, Granny had left her parents nothing, splitting it all among the kids.
And now…
Now, Arden was on the outs with her family, her father’s hateful words that she’d just be wasting the money on a degree she’d never achieve or never find a use for spurring her on every bit as much as her grandmother’s memory.
I will prove them wrong.
Sunday morning, there was a U-Haul truck backed into the men’s driveway when she arrived, so she parked at the end of the street like the men had. The garage door stood open and she spotted Hal in there, sorting through boxes.
“Hey.”
He looked up, his expression brightening when he saw her. “Hey, Arden. Guys! She’s here.” He stood and brushed off his hands before shaking with her.
Ken emerged from the house and also shook with her. “Perfect timing.” He led her inside and the change from the other day was more than dramatic. In the dining room, several desks were set up but looked like they hadn’t been positioned yet.
“We’re still getting everything out of storage, including two more desks. One will be yours. Where do you want yours set up?”
“You’re giving me a choice?”
“Sure. We live here. We can always take our computer and move to our bedroom or something. For now, you’ll be working in our space, but we want you to feel comfortable.”
She looked at the sliding glass doors and how they faced west. At least the blinds would cut the worst of the afternoon sun. Then she looked up to see where the room’s AC vent was located, because she didn’t want to be sitting directly under it and freezing every day.
“Probably that corner there.” She pointed. It was a natural nook formed by the short wall that made up part of the doorway leading into the living room. “Facing into the room, not against the wall.” She’d be able to see into the living room as well as the kitchen. “What about electrical sockets?”
“Electrician’s coming Monday to run us extra circuits,” Ken told her. “That’s another reason we wanted to hammer out the desk arrangement today.”
“Coming through,” Steve said, carrying one end of another desk, Trace on the other.
Arden and Ken stepped out of the way for them.
“Arden, feel free to use the pool and hot tub any time you want,” Ken said.
“Thanks. I really appreciate that. You guys can call me Denny.”
Ken smiled, and something about it warmed her insides in a way she hadn’t felt in too dang long. “I like that. Denny. It’s cute.”
By the time she got out of there a couple of hours later, she felt even better about accepting the job. They’d started talking tech, liking her questions and apparently enjoying the heck out of explaining not just the hows, but the whys of some of the choices they’d made on their previous platform.
When she made her way back to her new home, she realized that for the first time in a long time, she really felt like she was exactly on the right path. Even before, there’d always been the little doubts she could never totally stamp out and silence.
Not anymore.
Now, she knew everything had led her to this point, to this time, to those four men. If she hadn’t been a waitress, she never would have met them, or Allie.
Everything in its heckin’ good time.
* * * *
The large sectional couch wasn’t exactly where they wanted it yet, but that didn’t stop Trace from collapsing onto it. “We calling it quits for the day yet?”
“You tired?” Hal asked from the doorway leading down the hall where their bedrooms were located.
“Exhausted.”
“We still got several truckloads to move.”
“We don’t need to move them all today.”
Ken entered from the dining room. “Teach y’all to stay out so late.”
“You were with us. How come you’re not exhausted?” Trace asked.
“Good genes,” Ken said. “And we didn’t go down to the bar after we got back, either.”
Trace still felt…off-balance after last night. The club, Venture, was far better than he’d expected it to be. Clean, well-lit for the rope class before the lights were dropped and the play session began. The staff was nice, the prices reasonable, and they’d all had good conversations.
Except it reminded Trace of what he didn’t have in his life—a person to share it with. Not a girlfriend, and not a submissive.
“So why were you two so eager to get back up to the room? You fucking around now?”
He’d only meant it as a ball-busting joke, but the flash of shock across Ken’s face drove the truth home.
Trace sat up. “You are, aren’t you? You guys are screwing around together?”
Ken crossed his arms over his chest and straightened. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
Hell, he knew Steve was bi, and thought maybe at one point he and Ken had probably screwed around, but…
“I don’t know. Is it?”
“We’re friends-with-bennies.”
/> Hal, of course, picked that moment to walk in. “What’s going on?”
“Did you know Steve and Ken are fucking around together?” From the sudden red in Hal’s cheeks, Trace realized yeah, he knew. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Not that it really matters,” Hal said. “And I didn’t know for sure until the other day. Lucky bastards.”
“What?”
Hal flopped down onto another section of sofa that was still not in its final resting place. “Dude, in all honesty, I’m thinking about taking a swing on the bi side. I really don’t need or want a deep relationship right now. I want to get our next project going. What’s the harm in busting a nut with friends?”
Trace felt his face heat and hoped no one noticed he was now sporting wood. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Ken stepped forward. “Look, this don’t change anything between us. Like he said, what’s the harm? This has nothing to do with the business side of things. And before you go getting your nose outta joint, I wouldn’t tell you no if you hit on me, just like I wouldn’t tell Hal no. I trust all of you, just like I hope you trust me. Now, is this a problem?”
Trace scrubbed his face with his hands. “No, I guess not.”
“Is what a problem?” Steve asked as he walked into the room.
“Secret’s out,” Ken said. “And so are we.”
“Ah.” Steve turned to Trace. “I’ll tell you same thing I told Hal—I thought that four-way we had was hot. I’d do either of you. So don’t feel weird on my part. Not like we haven’t seen each other naked before. And we’ve seen each other come.”
“It doesn’t weird me out,” Trace said, weariness hitting him. “I’m…just exhausted, that’s all.”
“You sure?” Ken asked. “We’ve been friends too damn long to ruin things now.”