Seduced by Three (12 page)

Suddenly feeling uncomfortable and self-conscious, she deliberately diverted her mind and feelings away from the man sitting in front of her. “It’s going to be hot today,” she murmured as she got dressed. “I’m going to help Luke finish the backyard since you and Sarge are still pretending you’re injured and aren’t doing any work.”

Van didn’t seem to want to go there though. He stood and captured her in his arms, not letting her pull back and put distance between them just yet.

“I’m glad we had this time to spend together,” he murmured softly into her ear.

Grace smiled. “So am I.”

“Getting shot seems like the best thing that ever happened to me. It brought me to you,” he said as he released her.

His sweet words melted her into a hot bundle of unsure emotions and thrilling sensations. And that reaction gave her a good indication of just how much shit she’d already stepped in.

Luke chuckled as he made his way back down into the shelter.

“Are they out there?” Sarge asked him.

“Oh, they’re out there.”

Sarge narrowed his eyes. “What’s the dumbass grin about?”

“Our beautiful Grace is busy giving Van’s cock a stellar workout.”

Luke watched Sarge’s face grow dark and cold, like the warning of an impending storm. “You said you guys weren’t together.”

“We’re not, at least not as far as she’s concerned.”

“So what’s with the lethal look that just crawled over your face?”

Luke watched more emotions play over Sarge’s face before stone-cold indifference landed there. “No look.”

“Huh.” Luke wasn’t fooled. There
was
a look, and Sarge
did
care. “Okay, I guess I saw something that wasn’t there.”

They sat in silence as Luke worked out the dynamics of the situation within his head. Eventually, Grace would have a preference of one man over the others. Apparently, Van was the frontrunner. Then he felt the lethal look crawl over his own face. Luke, like Sarge, would have a difficult time being the guy not getting the only woman available to them.

His inner thoughts were disturbed by the cubby door being removed at the top of the stairs. Van stepped in and replaced the door behind him.

“Where’s Grace?” Sarge snarled at Van.

Luke looked over at Sarge, who was waiting for an answer, and working on grinding his teeth down to nubs in the meantime.

“She stayed out. She wanted to start digging before it gets too hot.”

Van reached the bottom of the stairs and pulled a chair from the table and sat down.

“We need to talk,” Van said.

“I’ll go up and help Grace.” Luke attempted to leave the two men alone, wanting nothing more than to stay out of whatever was going to explode between them.

“No. You need to stay,” Van piped in. “This involves all of us.” Van paused for a moment when he saw the leer that Sarge was throwing him. “I caught Grace trying to leave this morning. She was halfway over the fence when I pulled her back over to our side.”

“Oh hell no,” Sarge thundered. “She promised me she wouldn’t leave by herself anymore.” Sarge was livid with a dash of the stone-cold chill that had been forming before Van had come down to the shelter. His savage expression was more intimidating than the one that had Luke wanting to leave just moments before. “She’s been pulling this shit since she got here.”

“I tried to talk to her about it, find out where she was going, but she clammed up.”

“Yeah, I heard how you two were talking,” Sarge spat.

Van looked at Sarge for a good long time before he spoke. “She told me you slept together.” Van shrugged. “She also told me she gave you the same spiel about not wanting a relationship as the one she gave me.”

Sarge scrubbed his hand over the top of his head and sighed. “Yeah.”

“It’s her choice. I respect that. I expect the two of you will also?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Sarge snapped.

“It means that I’m going to do my best to make this situation as comfortable for her as possible instead of putting her between us in a tug-of-war that will hurt her.

“He’s right,” Luke piped in.

“Fuckin’ A, I’m right,” Van said.

“Seems like she doesn’t know what she wants,” Luke said. “She’s sampling the treats, trying to find out which one she likes best.” Luke gave the men his widest and most wicked grin.

“You planning on offering up your treats, too?” Sarge seethed.

Luke met Sarge’s angry stare. “I’d be an idiot not to.”

The three men regarded each other in silence.

This woman had everybody’s blood boiling. They were like three angry roosters ready to fight it out, clawing and scratching each other, for the privilege of mating the female. Testosterone hung thick in the air, and it was unspoken but crystal clear that all three men sharing the small space with her wanted her to be his in the worst way. It sounded ludicrous, but now after the EMP, a woman at a man’s side, in his bed, was rare and valuable.

“Well, it seems like we’ve said everything there is to say,” Luke said. “I’m going up to work. Try not to kill each other while I’m gone.” He snickered as he lifted himself from the chair and headed out.

Luke studied Grace as they worked side by side at the fence line for the entire day. She was different, complicated, but still he learned a lot about her during that time. She didn’t seem to care that she was filthy and sweaty from working in the hot sun and dirt. She didn’t care about breaking a nail or what condition her hair was in. She spent the hours on her knees, burying stakes after he pounded holes into the ground, without a complaint.

He had been instantly attracted to her, maybe because she wasn’t all girly lace and “how’s my lipstick.” Plus, she had made a first impression, topless and armed, that would never leave his mind’s eye. Once in a while, she sat back on her heels and looked up at him, waiting for him to finish a hole. It didn’t take long for Luke to imagine her pale blue eyes looking up at him while his cock was in her mouth. His blood surged through his veins, and his cock spasmed with want as his mind groped for a way to make her his.

She had absolutely no idea how fucking sexy she was, and that made her even sexier. She didn’t flirt, and she maintained her personal space. She did a great job of making him feel like she was looking right through him. Not just that he wasn’t on her radar, more like he didn’t even exist. He wondered how easy it would be to find a chink in her cool armor of disinterest.

“It’s been all day. Aren’t you going to make your move?”

Luke’s thoughts snapped back to the present. He looked down at her, amused. “Do you want me to?”

She shrugged. “Not particularly. I just figured it was only a matter of time and since we’re sleeping together tonight you’d try to feel me out before then.”

He laughed. “Well, no game playing with you is there?”

She snorted. “Nope.”

“So in the spirit of the no-game-playing approach, I guess I’ll just ask. What if I lay down next to you tonight with more than just sleeping on my mind?”

Grace stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. Her eyes squinted into the direct sunlight at his back. “I’m not psychic, so think what you want.” She returned to the stake she was burying.

Think what you want?
He chuckled. She was slick. She’d caught him off guard with her original question and was keeping him off balance. He had tried to throw her off with an answer that would rattle her right back, but it didn’t. He liked that. Luke was learning that she was a woman who did what she wanted, when she wanted, with no apologies.

She communicated with the world in a vaguely combative style. She didn’t know it yet, but she was at a disadvantage with him already. Luke was a master with words, at interpreting human behavior, and even better at bringing out the thought processes of someone else.

“What’s wrong, Grace? Did some prick break your heart?” He tested her façade. She showed people only what she wanted them to see, and he wanted to see how good she was at it.

“Leave it alone, Luke.” She knelt there calm and relaxed as if she were talking to him about the weather.

“I would never break your heart, Grace.” He tested her again.

“You’d have to have my heart in order to break it.” She didn’t even bother to look up at him this time.

Nice. She’s very good at this.

Okay, he would have to have the verbal firepower of a Sherman Tank to finesse his way past her defenses, but he was willing to bring out the big guns if he needed to. “Your dad said that you go to college.”

“Yeah.”

“What major?”

“Nursing.”

“That explains the good patch-up jobs you did on Sarge and Van.”

She nodded.

“What did you do before the EMP? Oh, let me guess.” She held up a hand to stop him from talking. “You do something type A personality, cop-soldierish, like the other two.”

Luke laughed. “Nothing as dramatic as that.”

She glanced up at him waiting for him to tell her. “Well?”

“I have a master’s degree in psychology, but I don’t work in that field anymore. I own a bar.”

She looked up at him. “Why would you do that? It doesn’t make any sense to go to school for six years, rack up the student loans, to just pitch the whole profession.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t make any sense at all. But sometimes life has a way of showing you where you’re supposed to be.”

Grace shifted her eyes away from him. She looked back down at her hands and buried the next stake. He knew what she was thinking. She wanted life to show her which way to go, although she’d never admit it to him and probably not even to herself.

“I find my degree is more useful at the bar than in private practice.”

And then he saw it. Her eyes flicked to his bare chest. He’d caught her looking, and by the sudden irritated look on her face, she knew he’d noticed.

He tried to suppress his smile. “So what’s really going on here, Grace? Why are you here?”

She shrugged. “Not sure. My dad made Sarge promise to get me. I don’t know why. I can take care of myself.”

“Yep. That’s obvious.”

“You know my dad. What do you think?”

Luke stopped stabbing the dirt with the digger and looked away, thinking, thoughtfully choosing his words. “Insurance policy,” he said, then started digging again. “If we have something precious to us, something so important that it would be disastrous if it were lost, we insure it. A ‘just in case’ security blanket. Sarge is your dad’s insurance policy.”

Grace snorted. “I didn’t need an insurance policy.”

“It isn’t a reflection of how your father felt about your ability to take care of yourself. I’m here. I needed an insurance policy. Sarge was mine, too.”

Grace squinted up at him thoughtfully. A few seconds of silence passed between them before she smiled. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”

“It sounds like you don’t really want to be here.”

Grace shrugged.

“Sometimes a crisis turns out to be the best thing that could ever happen to a person. In Chinese, the word crisis is written with two characters—danger and opportunity. We already have the danger. Maybe an opportunity will present itself.”

She didn’t look up at him. She didn’t answer. But Luke knew Grace had food for thought. Shit, she had a nine-course meal churning around inside that brain of hers.

He spent the rest of his day trying to force his gaze away from her. Her silence, her total indifference despite working together side by side for hours, felt like a direct challenge to him, and Luke loved a challenge.

When Grace and Luke were done for the day, Luke went inside, leaving Grace alone in the backyard. She brushed off as much dirt as possible then sat on the back steps, taking some time to rest and enjoy the solitude. The fading sunlight brought with it the night sounds of crickets and a cool breeze that felt wonderful on the bare skin of her arms.

Listening to Luke had been interesting. His lazy way of talking made everything he said seem less stressful, not so damn important. It relaxed her. She felt comfortable with him. She was also feeling something else though. An internal alarm, a little red flag unfurled in the back of her brain at some point during the day. He was just too good to be true, too smooth, too casual. It was sexy, and maybe that’s why the red flag was waving. She needed to be careful. She felt like she was in over her head with him. In what way exactly, she didn’t know.

Grace looked down at herself. She was filthy and sticky with sweat. Dirt was embedded under her nails, and she could smell herself. Her last decent outfit was trashed. Only a couple changes of clothes had been packed in her bugout bag, and they all were caked with blood, or dirt and sweat.

She needed more clothes, and there was still the issue of birth control. She had a weird feeling in her stomach when she thought about trying to sneak out again. It was a mixture of nerves and fear, like when she was a little girl and had done something wrong. It was the same feeling she used to get when she knew she was going to be in trouble with her dad.

Grace hadn’t realized that Sarge had her intimidated. Not until she pressured Van not to tell Sarge about her attempted outing that morning. Now, this weird feeling? What the fuck?

She sighed. It seemed like just being herself kept Sarge in a perpetual state of fury. She didn’t have the slightest idea why he was so oppressive, smothering her with his massive personality. She wondered if he would ever accept her just as she was.

Grace looked around at the work she and Luke had done. The yard was almost completely booby trapped, and it would be harder, if not impossible, to get into the backyard by going over the fence. She didn’t like the added restrictions on her movement that these spikes added. She wanted the option of being able to ride her bike home without having to ask Sarge to let her out.

Grace looked over her shoulder to make sure she was alone and then rushed to the garage and wheeled her bike out, hiding it between the side of the house and the bushes. It couldn’t have been a more perfect fit. It was completely camouflaged. She felt calmer, less trapped with her bike out, ready for her if she needed to use it.

She slipped back into the backyard and made her way down to the shelter, replacing the false wall behind her.

“I was just going to go up and see if you were okay,” Van said as she descended the stairs.

“Could you guys give me a minute?” Grace asked as she made a circling motion with her finger. “I need to clean up a little. Oh, and, guys, I need some clothes. What I have here is in pretty rough shape.”

No one answered her, but Sarge and Luke must have heard because they angled their backs away without interrupting the flow of their murmured conversation.

Grace stripped, wiped herself down, and threw on one of the oversized T-shirts she had stolen from Sarge.

When she went over to where the men were hanging out, they clammed up, and Sarge pegged her with an angry stare.

“What’s going on?” she asked. He was obviously angry at her and that “in trouble” feeling fluttered in her stomach again.

“Where were you trying to go this morning?” Sarge’s rough words were so icy, they could have turned to snow and fallen to the floor in front of her.

Grace shot Van a scowl. He had told on her. “What the fuck, Van?”

“I’m sorry, Grace. I’m just trying to keep you safe. Keep us all safe.”

His expression was sincere, but she didn’t give a shit if he thought he was doing the right thing or if he was sorry about it. She burned him with a look that let him know her feelings of betrayal, and he stared right back at her without regret.

Grace was floored. She hadn’t expected this. She’d just assumed they’d come to some kind of understanding this morning when she was sucking his cock! Her blood pressure rose. Not him, too. She’d had sex with him, and he had turned around and betrayed her.

“Don’t get pissed at Van,” Sarge said in a tightly controlled voice. “Where were you going?”

Grace just looked at him with a deliberately polite and amused expression. She would never let him know what his anger did to her insides. All he needed to know was that she didn’t have to answer to him. And she was sure as hell never going to tell him she was going for birth control, especially since the way it looked now, he was never going to get his dick inside her again.

They just didn’t get it, didn’t get her.

“Dammit! Enough is enough, Grace. If I have to start assigning shifts to guard you, I will.”

Grace shrugged. “Do what you got to do. Now, are we done, because I’m starving and dead tired.” Grace turned her back to Sarge and walked the length of the dimly lit shelter toward the canned food shelf.

The sound of Sarge’s limping gait followed her. “Don’t fuck with me, Grace.” His voice rumbled like a distant train.

Grace turned on him quickly and met him eye to eye. “No, Sarge, don’t
you
fuck with
me
.”

Sarge stepped toward her, and she gave no ground. They were nose to nose. Their bodies brushed against one another. Sarge’s gaze seared her, and his breathing was ragged, barely controlled.

“I’m tired of trying to fit into the mold of what you think is acceptable behavior for a poor, defenseless woman! I’m not going to change who I am. This is me.” She spread her arms wide. “If you don’t like the person I am, the decisions I make, it’s your problem, not mine!”

Sarge stood silent for several moments. “All right, Grace.” His tone was lethal. “Go ahead and get yourself killed. I’m done with this.” He turned and began to limp away from her. “I’m done with you.”

His angry dismissal added another wound to her already scarred heart and puny self-esteem she had in the relationships department. Grace couldn’t have been more crushed. She wished her angry rant would have helped him see her and maybe even like her for who she was. But it hadn’t, and wasn’t this her plan all along? Hold out until the men realized they weren’t attracted to her? It sounded easy in theory, but it was harder in practice.

After a brutally silent and tense evening, finally, mercifully, it was time to go to sleep. Grace was turned away from Luke when he climbed into bed next to her. He left a discreet distance between them. Poor guy, he’d probably spent the afternoon mulling over how he was going to handle his night in her bed. She assumed that the confrontation with Sarge ultimately made the decision for him. She had totally shut down, even though she could have gotten an Academy Award for her “I don’t give a shit” performance.

Grace tried as hard as she could to hold back the sobs, but now that she was in the shrouded safety of darkness, it was impossible to hold back. The bed shook almost imperceptibly as the tears started to flow. This was all too much.

She was so bad at this male-female stuff. She didn’t know what she was doing.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she was a shitty judge of character. And so far, she’d opened up a little and trusted both Van and Sarge, and it had gotten her nothing but let down. How many times did she have to be hurt and betrayed before she learned to just keep to herself. Luke propped himself up and leaned over her. “Are you okay?” he whispered in her ear.

She didn’t answer him.

He touched her. At first it was just a brush of his hand, but then, gently, he comforted her, stroking her back, her shoulders, her hair. It was exactly what she needed.

He leaned over again. “He’s not trying to be mean to you. He cares about you. He just wants to see you safe, that’s all.”

Still she didn’t answer. She didn’t want to talk about it, at least not when she was a blubbering idiot. She was embarrassed that words could reduce her to this.

Luke pulled his hand away from her.

“No. Don’t stop, please,” she murmured.

Luke’s hand returned. He rubbed her back and sifted his hand through her hair while she cried like a pitiful weakling. Every once in a while, an almost inaudible whimper escaped with her silent sobs. Luke’s slow, gentle strokes continued until they lulled her into sleep.

* * * *

Sarge lay on the couch cushions mere feet from the bed Grace shared with Luke. He’d heard Luke’s low murmurs, but couldn’t quite make out what he was saying to her. Now, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t block out the rhythmic sounds of movement from the bed. He was about to lose his mind.

He heard the softest of whispers. “Don’t stop, please.” The words sighed from Grace’s lips and stabbed at his eardrums.

He had driven Grace into the arms of another man. Someone else was inside her right now, and there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have a leg to stand on.

He couldn’t blame Luke. Sarge conceded that to the outside observer, it probably looked like he didn’t even like Grace, let alone love her. They were constantly at odds with each other, him wanting to take care of her, and her rebelling against it.

He’d gone about it all wrong. He had been trying to force her to bend to his will, to his rules. He wanted her to submit to him. Just as she’d said, he tried to force her into being what he thought she should be, of what he wanted her to be. But Grace wasn’t submissive and probably never would be.

In hindsight, this whole clusterfuck mingled and fused with other snippets of conversation until everything coalesced and was suddenly painfully obvious.

“Men don’t like strong women like me.”
Isn’t that what she had said?

How come he couldn’t see until now what he was doing? He was trying to change her. Trying to rule her. Trying to make her more like a girl. Fuck! He was being like every other prick who’d treated her like she was weak and incapable and then became dissatisfied with her when she wasn’t.

If he had treated her like she deserved, like an equal, she would have talked to him. She would have told him where she wanted to go and why. He could have helped her plan, and she could have gone with Luke to cover her.

Now Luke was covering her in a whole new way. Sarge heard a whimper from the bed and the soft sound laid waste to his heart. He felt gutted. All his insides ripped right out of him.