“Look,” Garrett said, pointing out the window toward the
subdivision’s landscaped entrance. The large stone sign on the corner had the
words
Sunset Estates
etched in a thick yet stylish script. Stunning
indigenous bushes and bright yellow and orange flowers enveloped the sign,
setting off the entryway not only elegantly, but oh-so significantly too.
“Oh, Garrett,” she whispered, pressing the tips of her
fingers against her lips.
Her eyes glistened as she smiled widely, and damn if he
didn’t choke up a little right along with her. The subdivision was
brand-spanking new, dotted here and there with half-built homes nestled along
newly paved streets and cul-de-sacs. The driver steered them down one of those
long cul-de-sacs, to the bottom of the circle. The house at the end looked to
be the only completed one in the neighborhood.
Once the limo came to a full stop, Garrett didn’t bother to
wait for the driver to come around and open the door. He climbed out first,
then held his hand out for Riley. She’d barely gotten out of the car before the
front door to the house cracked open.
The first thing Garrett thought when Evan stepped into the
sunlight on the porch was, Christ, he looked good.
Riley practically squealed before latching onto Garrett’s
hand and pulling him along with her up to the front stoop. She leapt into
Evan’s open arms, and Garrett followed right behind her, holding onto him too.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” she said. “We missed you so
much.”
“Me too,” Evan said, gripping them just as fiercely as they
gripped him. “You two look great.
Better
than great. And you feel so
amazing.”
So did he. The only thing better was the way they all felt
together. They felt like home. They felt like
family
.
The three of them stood that way for a long moment, simply
latched onto each other while they soaked one another in, only letting go once
the driver came up behind them with Garrett and Riley’s luggage.
“Just add this to my account, okay, Nick?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Tucker,” the driver said.
As Garrett and Evan took the bags from Nick, Riley ogled the
wide expanse of the stone façade of the house. “Did you do this, Evan?”
“Guilty.”
“It’s gorgeous,” she said.
“Well, I had a little help,” Evan added. “The crew we’ve
hired does some of the best work I’ve ever seen.”
Garrett scanned the rest of this street. “The lots here are
huge. Certainly nothing like the crowded neighborhood we live in now.”
“No, I imagine it wouldn’t be. Each lot here is an acre or
more, and the houses start at a minimum of three-thousand square feet. This is
the first one we finished, so it’s pretty special.”
When Riley nuzzled in beside Evan, he slung his arm across
her shoulder, pulling her in tighter. “We’re so proud of you, you know that?”
Evan simply smiled.
“Truly, man,” Garrett added, sliding in on Riley’s other
side. “You’ve got some real talent and it shows.”
Evan gripped the back of Garrett’s neck and squeezed. “Thank
you. But this isn’t all there is to it. I have more for you guys. Way, way
more.”
Evan already knew about the surprise Garrett had waiting for
Riley, but the rest of this—the unexpected limo ride, the amazing house, the
way,
way more
Evan referred to… It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out
that Garrett wasn’t the only one with a secret here.
Garrett had a serious hunch as to what that secret was. And
if he was right, he could honestly say all of Riley’s dreams were just moments
away from coming true.
Riley couldn’t stop staring at Evan. His hair had been
sun-lightened, his skin was tanner than it was just three months ago and he
looked more relaxed and at peace than she’d ever seen him before.
And the bonus was he didn’t walk with a limp anymore.
“The foot’s still doing okay? No problems with it?”
“Nah. I’ve got a nasty scar, but other than that, it’s
fine.” Leading them indoors, he stopped in the middle of the bare foyer.
When he’d said this was the first house he and his crew had
completed, she had to admit that seeing the inside unfinished wasn’t what she
expected. The walls were painted a bright new-construction-white, and the
floors were nothing more than bare-wood sub-floors.
“This will be the living room, with the dining room just
beyond it,” he said, gesturing to the room on the left, the one with the
custom-built stone fireplace inset into the far wall. But he didn’t give her
the chance to either
ooh
or
ahh
at his handiwork. Instead, he
dropped her suitcase to the floor and grabbed her hand, pulling her with him
toward the back of the house. “This is the kitchen/family room combo. And
outside…” He yanked open a set of French doors leading to a screened-in
four-season room.
“Oh, Evan. It’s perfect.”
The property backed up to the tree-lined edge at the rear of
the subdivision. “Beyond that is a forest preserve. That’s what makes this lot
so sweet. There will never be neighbors, or anything else for that matter,
behind it.”
Garrett slid in behind her and rested his hands on her
shoulders. “No neighbors? I could absolutely get behind that.”
“But that’s not all. Come on.” Evan led them back indoors,
through the cabinet- and appliance-less kitchen and into the foyer once again.
“When will the inside be completed?” Riley asked, her voice
echoing in the open two-story area.
Evan smiled at her with a hint of something she couldn’t
quite put her finger on. “I need to set up a meeting with the new owner to go
over all that. They get to choose everything that goes in here—the cabinets,
the fixtures, the paint and the flooring. All of it is totally up to them, with
the exception of one room.”
She followed after him as he headed upstairs.
“There are four bedrooms up here,” he told them. “Each with
their own bathrooms. But this one here at the end? This is my favorite room.”
With a flourish, he opened both sides of the heavy cherrywood French doors
leading to the master suite, then stood aside so she could go in first.
When she did, her heart lodged in her throat. “Oh God,” she
whispered. “Evan…”
Garrett came up beside her, looking just as stunned as she
felt. “Oh man. You did this?”
This
came so close to being an exact replica of the
top floor in the house in Inlet Beach it had him doing a double-take. It was
fully furnished, complete with a king-sized four-poster bed and his-and-hers
dressers. Evan had even matched the lamps on the nightstands and made the bed
with the same silky bronze-colored bedding that the beach house had. A leather
loveseat/settee grouping sat next to a wall of sliding glass doors that led out
to a wide balcony, just as it had in the bedroom back in Florida. The carpet
was lush and thick and she practically bounced on it as she moved further into
the room. The layout was a bit different, but still…
When she glanced off to the right, her eyes widened as a
laugh gurgled past the lump in her throat. Evan had installed the same smart
glass window separating the bedroom from the bathroom. Through it, she could
see the identical faucet for the huge garden tub, the one where the water came
out of the spigot from a hole in the ceiling.
“This is so amazing,” she said on a half laugh, half sob. “I
can’t believe you did this.”
Evan perched himself on the edge of the bed, smiling like crazy.
“You like it?”
“Like it? I love it.”
“Man, you’ve completely outdone yourself,” Garrett said.
“You couldn’t have gotten it any closer.”
“Good, I’m glad you both approve, because I have even more
for you.”
“What? More than this?” And what did he mean by
for you
?
He reached for Riley and Garrett’s hands and scooted back on
the bed, bringing both of them with him. The three of them sat in the middle of
the big bed, holding hands as if they were going to have a séance.
“Before I tell you, though, I think there’s something
Garrett needs to let you in on.”
When Garrett’s eyes narrowed on Evan, Riley’s stomach
flipped.
“You want to do this now? It’s not what we had planned.”
There wasn’t any anger in Garrett’s words, just a boatload of
whoa-wait-a-minute
.
“You have to. Because what I have to say hinges on the
surprise you have for Riley.”
“What surprise?” she asked, her stomach flipping now for an
entirely different reason.
Garrett hesitated another moment, but when Evan squeezed his
hand, Riley knew he was going to give in. Thank God, too, because she didn’t
know how much more of this evasiveness she could stand.
He cleared his throat and looked her right in the eyes. “You
know the meeting I had last night with Kramer?” When she nodded, he went on.
“It wasn’t just your typical, everyday kind of meeting.”
Oh boy. “What kind of meeting was it?”
When his lips edged up into a grin, she couldn’t help it,
she smiled too. And she didn’t even know why.
“He gave me a promotion.”
“What!” She lunged to wrap him in a huge hug and ended up
smack-dab in the middle of his lap. “Oh, Garrett. I’m so proud of you! What
kind of promotion did he give you?”
Garrett smiled so widely that his eyes became little
half-moon crescents. “He gave me my own office to run. My own division.”
“Garrett! Oh my god.” When she wrapped him in her arms again
and squeezed as hard as she could, he laughed. “The Midwest?”
That was when he shook his head. When he did, a tiny tingle
fluttered up her spine. “Not the Midwest? Then where?”
Could it be… God, should she even hope…
“The entire Southwest. Including Texas.”
“Wait…” Her gazed bounced from Garrett to Evan and back
again. “You mean…”
“The division headquarters is here. In Houston.”
She thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest as
happy tears burned her eyes. “We’re moving? Here, to Houston?”
“If that’s what you want, then yes.”
She swooped him up again, this time tackle-hugging him so
hard he fell onto his back on the bed. She straddled him and kissed him over
and over again, all over his face. “I want! Yes, I want!”
“Which brings me to my surprise,” Evan said, stretching out
on his side next to Garrett. He propped his head up on his elbow and slid his
hand across her thigh. The excitement in his eyes had her heart melting into a
puddle.
When he didn’t immediately say anything, she bounced a
little, which had Garrett grabbing her hips and growling. She could feel him
getting hard, which, damn, made it just a bit tricky to concentrate.
“What is it? Tell me.” She pathetically sounded like a little
girl at Christmastime, but she didn’t care. She was too excited to care.
“Remember when I said that the new owner of this house gets
to choose everything for the interior?”
Oh God Oh God Oh God
…
“Yes…” she answered, drawing the word out.
“Do you prefer maple- or cherrywood cabinets?”
Wait, that meant…
Before she could manage to get a word out, Garrett sat up
with her still in his lap. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Riley still couldn’t find it in herself to speak. All she
expected from this trip was a quick vacation, not a new house. Not a brand new
life.
Evan just kept on smiling that beautiful smile of his.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. I built this house for
us
. For
all
of us. I built it to have a place to grow old with you two. I built it for a
family. For
our
family.”
Sweet mercy, that was all he had to say. She covered her
mouth with her palm and tried to choke back her sobs, but she couldn’t. Deep
down—ever since she was a little girl living with a mother who seemingly cared
more about scoring a new boyfriend than she did her own children—
this
was what Riley had wanted. A home of her own. To have someone to love and to
have someone love her just as much in return.
And now she had that.
She had it times two.
Her heart burst with so much love for these two men. As she
cried and cried and cried, Garrett shifted to his side to lay her between him
and Evan. They simply held her, letting her get it all out. Once she had, and
was able to speak, she cupped Evan’s cheek tenderly.
“I love you.” She turned to Garrett, sliding her hand gently
along his cheek as well. “And I love you. I love you both more than either of
you will ever know.”
Evan closed his eyes, but only for a second, as if she’d
speared him with her words and he needed that moment to soak it in. “I’ve been
dying to tell you the same thing. God, I love you both. Looking back, I think I
have since the first night I spent with you two.”
“Let me add my love in here as well,” Garrett said. “When
something is right, it’s right. And this, the three of us? It felt right from
the very beginning.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
“So what do you say,” Evan said, tracing the scooped
neckline of Riley’s t-shirt and tickling the rise of her breast with the tip of
his finger. “Now that we know we all love each other, should we seal the deal
on our new home and break this mattress in at the same time?”
Every neuron inside her body fired just like that. “Yes,”
she hissed out a heartbeat before Evan claimed her lips in an impatient kiss.
Garrett nearly groaned. “God, I love watching you two do
that.”
Evan broke away from kissing Riley, laughed a little and
then grabbed the back of Garrett’s head before smashing their lips together as
well.
Damn, that was hot. “And I love watching
you
two do
that.”
“I love it all,” Evan whispered against Garrett’s lips. “It
feels like forever since I last touched you two.”
“It’s been too long,” she agreed. “Way, way too long.”
It took only seconds before they had each other undressed,
before Riley was being cocooned between two scorching-hot male bodies. She
faced Garrett with her rear tucked against Evan’s thick cock. Their lips and
hands seemed to be everywhere, all at once—stroking, licking, biting—and all
she could think about was how badly she wanted them inside her, together, just
as they’d been that last night in Inlet Beach.
When Evan stretched for the nightstand behind him, she
smiled. He’d thought of everything, had planned to make love with them, and
he’d come prepared. Thank. God.
Garrett won the race getting the condom on. He pulled her to
him, grabbing behind her knee to lift her thigh over his hip. In one thrust, he
plunged inside her. Before she could breathe or moan or even think, Evan was
there too. Cool lube coated his fingertips as he gently readied her for him.
This time she did moan, simply because no other feeling in the world quite
compared to the exquisite sensation of having both of them inside her. And when
he replaced his fingers with that delicious cock of his, she thought for an
instant that she might just go insane from how amazing they both felt.
Stark desperation coiled around them so crazy-fast it made
her head buzz. They fucked furiously, almost savagely. Evan slipped his hand up
to her breast, kneading it, pinching her nipple as his staggered breaths and
groans blew across her ear. Garrett tucked his arm under her knee and lifted,
opening her wider, digging his fingertips into her hip as he drove into her
again and again.
Every inch of her body tightened. Her lungs seized. She
clutched Garrett’s biceps, helpless to do anything other than feel. And oh God,
did she ever feel. It was all too much. It wasn’t nearly enough. The dichotomy
between the two was perfect in every way. Just when she thought she couldn’t
take any more, Evan stopped his sweet torture on her breast and dipped his hand
past her stomach to glide in between her and Garrett. He fingered her clit,
once, twice, Jesus, it wasn’t going to take much more than that.
And her men were right there with her. She knew they were
just by the tight set of Garrett’s jaw, by the hurried swirls of Evan’s finger.
Fire raced through every cell inside her seconds before converging on her clit.
With one final stroke, the inferno burst outward, cascading over her in heated,
tingly echoes.
She cried out as Evan thrust once more before stilling
inside her on a shout. Garrett dove for her neck at the same time, sinking his
teeth into her shoulder as he growled out a roar of his own. Despite the
sensual chaos rippling through them, she’d never felt more centered in her
life. She loved these men with all her heart and she couldn’t wait to start her
new life with them by her side.
With gentle strokes and soft, lingering kisses, they brought
each other down off their high. Evan nipped at her earlobe as he slipped his
hand across to Garrett’s waist. He pulled him in closer, if that were even
possible. “You guys didn’t notice the extra decorating touch I added to the
room, did you?”
Despite her head buzzing, she tried to remember if there’d
been something different in the room.
“Look at the nightstand. Over there,” he whispered,
gesturing with a hitch of his chin toward the opposite side of the bed.
When she and Garrett lifted their heads to take a peek, she
broke out in a laugh. There on the nightstand sat the wooden beer flight paddle
they’d picked up at the festival they went to their first day at the beach
house. Instead of holding beer glasses, though, Evan had set a pillar candle in
each notch. Just like the beer flight, the shades ranged from dark-chocolate-brown
on one end to sunny, summery yellow on the other.