Something New (41 page)

A half hour later, she kissed each man on the cheek, propped a note against the alarm clock, and left Rodrigo’s house.

* * *

The scratchy, masculine utterance “son of a bitch” sank into Rodrigo’s brain and jerked him to consciousness. On top of that came “cutting the yard early on a fucking Sunday” much too close to Rodrigo’s ear.

“Go back to sleep, Bray,” Rodrigo muttered. Barely opening one eye, he reached out and pushed Braden’s head back to his pillow. “There are no lawn mowers around here except for mine.”

“It stopped now,” Braden said. “You heard it, Abby, didn’t you? Abby?” His voice rose in a way that perked up Rodrigo’s ears again. Then, “damn it.”

“Aaannnd”—Rodrigo bobbed into an upright position—“I’m awake.” He scrubbed the grit from his eyes so he could see. “What’s the matter?”

Braden shoved a note card into Rodrigo’s hands. “She’s gone again. Damn it.” Obvious frustration had him throwing a pillow against the wall. “I didn’t even hear her get up this time.”

“She’s getting stealthy.” Rodrigo reached out and rubbed at the tension knotting Braden’s shoulders.

Over the week and a half since capturing her parents’ murderer, Abby had slept less, not more, and she had slipped out to take walks by herself on multiple occasions. She wasn’t her usual mouthy self either. Rodrigo had tried poking at her in an attempt to get a rise out of her to no avail. It had looked like she’d wanted to go at him once or twice, but something stopped her. Rodrigo didn’t like it. Braden continued to hold himself back in order to give Abby the space they knew she needed, but Rodrigo could see the man’s need to help her fighting against his famous patience and cool.

Rodrigo took a second to read the note in Abby’s flowing script. Short and to the point, it told them not to worry and she should be back by lunchtime.

With a glance past Braden to the clock, Rodrigo brought his attention back to the other man, tapping the note against his chin. “I think I know where she is.”

“Me too,” Braden murmured.

One look between them conveyed their shared intent.

Okay, then. We have a plan.

Rodrigo shot out of bed. “We don’t have much time. Let’s go.”

Braden followed Rodrigo into the closet. “Do you have a tie you can lend me?”

“No lending.” Rodrigo handed Braden a length of silk that would match the work blazer he had with him. “If it’s mine, it’s yours.”

Braden grabbed Rodrigo to him and crushed their mouths together in a fast, hard kiss. With his forehead pressed to Rodrigo’s, Braden made eye contact, and such a burn lived there Rodrigo couldn’t look away.

“You know I love you too, right?” Braden said.

On the outside, Rodrigo kept a straight face, but on the inside, laughter lifted him. This was the first time Braden had directly referenced Rodrigo’s admission, and the man was so very intense and serious about it now.

So like his everyday self.

“Yep.” Rodrigo brushed their noses, nipped the man’s lips, and got back to gathering clothes. “I know.”

Braden’s chuckle carried softly between them. “I love how you’re so matter-of-fact now, Rigo. Like getting into this thing with me and Abby never messed with your head or was much of a big deal.”

“This has been one hell of a few weeks.” His heart somehow light and heavy at the same time, Rodrigo lifted his gaze to Braden’s, clothes draped over his arm. “At a certain point, you gotta stop worrying about everything and just start believing in what you feel. You have to trust that the people you’re with are for real and are going to keep you safe. I guess because of everything that happened, I ended up getting there a lot faster than I might have otherwise.”

“Yeah.” Clouds turned Braden’s eyes murky for a moment. Just as fast, that glint of focused determination Rodrigo had witnessed in him when he’d faced off against Zanger cleared the storm. “Let’s go get our girl.”

* * *

Abby sat at the back of the church, tucked away in the last pew, feeling like a virgin who hadn’t been given any instruction on what to expect from sex. Which was ridiculous. She’d gone to church every Sunday, and often on Wednesdays, for the first eight years of her life, so it wasn’t as if she’d never done this before.

But you never did it here.

She’d never sat through a service at an Episcopal church. She’d never had such an uplifting conversation with someone like Father Kurt—someone who certainly hadn’t signed up to meet the needs of her internal drama. A glimmer of her need for hope rested on his shoulders. He shouldn’t have that responsibility, yet Abby’s heart raced as she waited for the service to start, her expectations high. Nerves and second thoughts kept her hands clenching and her stare directed down on her feet.

Someone shuffled in front of her, murmuring a barely audible “excuse me.”

Before Abby even whispered an apology and shifted her legs out of the way, someone else said, “Scoot over, will you?”

Braden.

Abby snapped her gaze out of hiding and found not only Braden waiting for her to clear a space for him, but Rodrigo too. He’d been the one who’d pushed past her seconds ago.

She moved to give Braden room at the end of the pew, her mouth agape as she looked between them. Her heart now skittered into her throat for an entirely different reason than Father Kurt.

“How did you know where to find me?” she finally managed to ask.

Rodrigo quirked one of those thick brows at her. “We know
you
, Bit.” His hand found hers and stilled the nervous twisting. “That’s how.”

“You didn’t have to come.”
Oh Jesus
. She was going to fall into a puddle of tears in this building again. “You don’t have to feel obli—”

“Shh.” Braden took her other hand, squeezing it as he looked ahead. “I think it’s about to start.”

* * *

The service now complete, rather than exiting the church, Braden pushed through the throng of people leaving, making his way to the front row of pews. “There, I see her up ahead.” He had hold of Abby’s hand, and he knew she tugged Rodrigo along behind her. “I knew she was here somewhere.”

Just as Braden reached the front of the church, a stout woman in vibrant purple, wearing a matching hat, stood up and spotted him.

“Braden!” His aunt Ida rushed to him as fast as her short legs would carry her, and she engulfed him in a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Aunt Ida.” Braden maneuvered under the brim of his aunt’s hat to peck a kiss on her cheek. “I’m here with my friends.” He took hold of Abby’s hand again and this time grabbed Rodrigo’s and pulled the man to his other side. “You know Abby and Rodrigo.” Braden’s aunt lived next door to Christian and Jonah and thus had met their friends on numerous occasions.

Ida touched her hands to Abby’s and Rodrigo’s cheeks. “Hello, my darlings.” Her gaze grew somber as it held on Abby. “How are you, my dear girl?”

“I’m getting there.” Abby offered Ida a small smile. “I have lots of good people looking out for me.” She squeezed Braden’s hand as she said that, and Braden wondered if she even realized she did it. “That’s all I can ask.”

“Indeed,” Ida replied.

“Auntie.” Braden knew his aunt’s ears would perk up at the affectionate form of address. “I need to share that Abby and Rodrigo are more than just friends.” Love for these people clutching his hands made Braden’s voice husky. “They’re my partners. Both of them. We’re all together now in one relationship.”

“Oh, my stubborn boy.” Ida’s eyes lit up, and she pinched his cheek with her bejeweled fingers. “It’s about time.”

Next to him, Rodrigo’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

Ida shrugged. “My Braden tells me about women friends, and he tells me about men, and I even met one of each. I liked them both, but I knew it would not last. This…” She waved her finger in front of all three of them, and her eyes sparkled as brightly as the ring adorning that finger. “The lightbulb finally went on for you. You love both, you need both, and I must just tell you that I sensed this interest in you for these two right from the start.” She pressed her hands together and lifted them in the direction of the altar. “I prayed they would come to feel the same.”

The acceptance from his aunt filled Braden up, not for himself, but for Abby and Rodrigo. “I wasn’t worried about you at all, Auntie.” Time and again, Ida proved to Braden her love did not come with conditions. “We’ll come over for dinner sometime soon.”

“Yes, you will,” Ida responded with a nod. “But now I must go. I have lunch plans with friends, and they will worry if I’m late.” She kissed Braden first, then gave hugs to Abby and Rodrigo and finally singsonged her good-byes as she toddled on down the aisle to outside.

Abby turned, her attention on Ida’s back until the woman was out of sight. “Well, that was easy.”

“Christian and Jonah are her honorary nephews,” Braden reminded her. “Are you really surprised?”

“I guess not.”

Rodrigo broke away from Braden’s hold and stepped in front of Abby. “How about you, Bit?” His hands were casual in his pockets, but the unblinking way he studied Abby was anything but. “Are you feeling better?”

Braden watched Abby’s gaze move around the emptied church. When she completed the assessment, she held on Braden for just as long, showing the burn of blue, and did the same to Rodrigo.

“Yeah,” she finally said. “I think I am.”

Holding out both hands, Rodrigo offered, and Abby and Braden accepted. “Then let’s go home.”

Chapter Twenty-one

They were pulling into Rodrigo’s place, Abby sitting in the middle of him and Braden, when Abby remembered she’d driven her own car to church and had left it in the parking lot. The moment Rodrigo let them inside the house, Abby found the church’s number in the phone book, called them, and promised she would return to pick it up later.

She hung up the phone at the desk, turned, and found Rodrigo and Braden watching her with eagle eyes. Braden held coolly in place, leaning against the back of the sofa, his pale gaze assessing her in that detective’s way of his. Rodrigo paced in front of the wall of windows, his hands clasped behind his back, his line of sight always shifting so he could see her.

Caught.

Guilt nagged Abby’s conscience. She had put these guys through so much since this whole thing started, and she hated the distance she’d created between them the last week.

“You think I’m going to leave again,” she said. She could feel the truth filling the room with everything Rodrigo and Braden
didn’t
say.

What you’re not saying either, girl
. Conscience pricked at Abby again.

His gaze not letting hers get away, Braden crossed his arms against his chest, still openly studying her from his position. “I just want to know why you didn’t simply tell us you were going to church.”

Abby had hoped not to have this conversation this quickly. In dealing with her own uncertainty about church and God and religion, she found them compounded when thinking about Braden and Rodrigo’s reactions mixed in.

Rodrigo stopped his pacing at Braden’s side, and it seemed he’d suddenly mastered Braden’s interrogation stare. “We’re waiting, Bit.”

Just say it already, girl.

“Because this wasn’t who you signed up for when we started dancing around our attraction to each other.” Abby’s voice sounded dangerously screechy to her own ears. “Hell”—she snorted and threw up her arms—“it wasn’t even what you thought you were getting when we all started sharing a bed.”

“What the fuck?” Braden’s stare narrowed, and his brow pulled with puzzlement. “You’re pulling back from us because you’ve discovered you want to go to church every Sunday? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Feeling too warm, Abby yanked off her floral duster and started to pace the length of the room. “I don’t know what I mean exactly. All I know is that while it was sweet as hell of both of you to show up today, I certainly don’t want you thinking you
have
to come or be a part of whatever the heck I’m trying to figure out right now.”

Braden’s forehead only furrowed more, Rodrigo looked at her as if she were speaking a foreign language, and Abby scrambled in her inability to articulate her fears.

“I don’t want either of you to feel pressured to participate in something you might not believe in,” she said. “And you shouldn’t think your feelings aren’t allowed to change about me because I am doing this. If they have or do, or you’re not comfortable, or if you think my attending church makes me someone different than the woman you thought I was…” She dragged her hand through her hair and in the process knocked the barrette loose. “I don’t know… I guess I’m saying you shouldn’t feel guilty if you want to rethink being with me.”

“Wait a damn minute,” Braden said, his voice hard. He snagged her arm and reeled her in front of him and Rodrigo. Nothing in his pale eyes looked remote or cool anymore. “You think your experimenting with faith and church is something that would make me want to break up with you? Do you think I’ll just move on to someone else who is—I don’t know—an atheist or something?”

“No.” Honesty compelled Abby to add, “I don’t know. Maybe.” Her scalp tingled as her hair fell out of its binding, but she ignored the itch of the fall as it surrounded her face. “Look, ‘churchgoing Abby’”—she put her fingers up in quotes—“wasn’t a part of the person you started getting to know ten months ago, and it’s feasible that you might not be comfortable with it.”

Braden kept his hands fisted at his sides, but Abby could tell he wanted to strangle her. “You didn’t have nightmares ten months ago either,” he spat out, “and you didn’t have all the baggage you now have about your parents. You’ll continue to change as that information settles inside you over the next few months too. Should I be allowed to keep that as a free pass to leave you?”

He clamped his hand around Rodrigo’s nape and drew him right in close between them. “Rodrigo didn’t have a father he knew ten months ago,” Braden reminded her. “That changes him; it will continue to do so; it has to. So should I be able to use that to break up with him as well? Just because it wasn’t part of the list of things that made him the person I was originally attracted to?”