The Complete Series Boxed Set (51 page)

All this for a
one-
in-a-million chance of the worst po
s
sible outcome in life
ever
.

It hardly seemed worth it until he realized: he, Laura, and Dylan were long shots, too.

And so he was married.

No rings. No celebration. Nothing to indicate this was a special occasion—on that, he and Dylan had agreed. This was a contractual formality, a point of law,
a
marriage of convenience
,
and by God, that’s all it was going to be.

He loved Dylan, but he adored Laura, and the ache inside him persisted. He wanted more. The piece of paper now on file with the town clerk didn’t remove his ability to find that
more
with her, Dylan, and Jillie, but it left a bad taste in his mouth anyhow.

“Have a great honeymoon!” the town clerk’s office worker called out as they exited the building,
h
is pleasant wave making Mike’s guts tighten. Dylan snorted. Laura groaned but said nothing.

Jillian waved back and squealed.

At least the whole family had been there.

His family of creation, that is. His family of origin was a whole other story. He snorted as he imagin
e
d making that phone call.

Hi, Mom and Dad. I just got married!
Her
name? Her name is Dylan.

Giving Dylan the side eye as Laura corralled them all, Jillie in her arms, he relaxed his shoulders. Being married to Dylan wasn’t the worst thing in the world, right?

“Doing taxes just got more complicated,” Dylan said with a laugh.

Ah, God.

“
Stand close! Let’s get a nice wedding photo of the happy couple!” Laura chirped, holding up her smartphone and tapping the screen a few times.
 

Out of the corner of Mike’s eye he saw movement, his mouth frozen in a smile for Laura’s sake, teeth grinding together so hard he could crack walnuts.

A white van. An antenna. Something black and machinelike, moving toward them. Mike’s arm was around Dylan’s f
or
the picture and he felt his partner stiffen, the two turning toward the mo
tion
in unison.

A camera.

A video camera.

A big one, too, from a news station.

“Fuck,” Dylan said, drawing out the word, just as Laura turned around to see what they were staring at.

“Oh, no!” she gasped, pulling Jillian in to her chest, covering her face.

“Get in the Jeep,” Mike snapped. He didn’t have to say it again, all the adults scrambling in, Dylan on one side of the back seat, protecting Jillie from the camera.

“Mike! Dylan! How’s the happy day? Did I hear someone say ‘wedding’?” The same news reporter Mike saw on the morning news channels was clip-clopping over on high heels that looked
like rock-climbing crampons.
 

Fuck. The hulk inside him roared to life, his insides like a Bessemer furnace fed a half-ton of coal, the embers about to fire up and flame in glory and destructive heat. A series of clicks, snaps, and mutters from the back seat told him Dylan or Laura was putting Jillian in her carseat, and then the snap of two car doors shutting entered his consciousness, his foot easing off the brak
e
, Jeep in reverse, his impulse to floor it tempered only by the fact that a second news van had pulled in, half blocking him.

If he didn’t maneuver very, very carefully, he would have more than a gay marriage announcement in the news within the hour.

The slow, tedious process of moving the Jeep out of the parking spot gave the two cameramen plenty of time to capture them in the Jeep, though Laura threw a blanket over Jillian. A few months ago the baby would have thought it was a game, but toddlerhood had turned Jillian into an independent being with her own very firm ideas about how the world work
ed
, and it did not include being covered.

Thrusting the blanket to the floor, Jillian looked right at the bright lights on the cameras.

“Jillie,”
Mike
heard Dylan sa
y as the Jeep’s bumper cleared the second white news van, as two reporters with microphones now dodged the line between getting the story and not being run over, as the two cameramen clearly experienced a different, more adventurous line. On multiple occasions, as the seconds rolled out with agonizing slowness, Mike was certain he’d run over someone’s foot, or would pin one of the men carrying the bulky cameras under a tire.
 

Thankfully, no. Cleared of the vehicles and the people, he pulled out of the parking lot with painful slowness, caught at the right turn by gridlock in the street, held up by a red light.

His teeth were grinding so hard they’d surely become bone dust soon, and Jillian began to wail. “No bankee! No bankee!”

Mike caught a glimpse of Laura trying to play “
p
eekaboo” and failing, covering Jillie here and there. The two fe
m
ale reporters with microphones now held up cell phones, obviously snapping photo after photo as he sat there, rage flowing through his veins like blood.

Finally, traffic cleared, and he pulled out, signaled right at the light, and headed for the Mass Pike.

Dylan’s sigh of relief matched Laura’s, but no such sound could come out of Mike.

“What in the hell just happened?” Laura asked in a breathless voice, mindlessly stroking Jillian’s hair to the point of the baby’s annoyance.

“Mama, top!” she shouted, pulli
n
g her head away. Mike saw Laura fold her hands in her lap and pick at a cuticle.

“We just got stalked,” Mike said in a bitter voice. “Someone tipped them off.”

“No, it’s my fault,” Laura declared in a shaky voice. “I made that ‘married’ comment in the parking lot a little too loudly, and I’ll bet the camera people just happened to be there for—”

“For what?” Dylan
said
. “For nothing. You saw the town hall.
I
t was dead. Empty. No election, no event, no scandal.”

“
We’re
the scandal,” Mike muttered as he floored it, ripping the accelerator up to
seventy-five miles per hour
cru
i
sing.
His eyes jumped to the rearview mirror to find Jillian’s eyes drooping, ready for a nap. Perfect timing. The longest part of the drive home was on Route 2, with smooth sailing.
 

By the time they got home, he could put in a call to their lawyer and see about damage control.

“Frank,” Dylan muttered. “I’ll bet this was all him.”

Laura just stared out the window, wringing her hands now that Jillian was slumping against one side of her carseat. Mike saw Dylan reach across the baby to hold Laura’s hand. She grasped it like a lifeline. Mike smiled, a sad stretching of muscle triggered more by relief than anything else.

The drive home was quiet. Too quiet.

Just married.

The first thing Dylan did when he got home was to call Nick, to find out if he could learn who had tipped off the news reporters. He suspected Frank, but wanted to know as much as possible before letting the accusations fly.

T
he news coverage of his wedding was about as bad as he’d anticipated.

His
wedding
.

His…whatever.

Dylan Mike and Laura took
Cyndi’s time with Jillian
to regroup and examine the news online and on television.

“Date with a bachelor won by the billionaire!” screamed one headline, a front-and-center photo of an oiled-up Dylan in suspenders and a firefighter’s pants, strolling down the charity auction runway. The picture itself was surreal—had he really been
that
guy? Two or so years felt like a lifetime ago as he watched Laura and Mike huddle over the laptop on the kitchen bar.

“We have a hashtag,” Mike declared, shocked.

“What is it?”

Mike sighed
but said nothing. Laura just frowned.
 

Dylan walked over and looked at the Twitter account.

#billionairebisexuals

“Oh, great,” he sputtered, not sure whether to laugh or punch something.

“Oh, there’s another one,” Laura muttered. He looked again.

#
billionaire
sandwich

As in: Hey @lauramichaels you go girl #
billionairesandwich
 

He and Mike shared a scorching look as Mike closed the laptop with a sharp slam.

They’d been the butt of jokes and scrutinized by the media before. As long as no one listened to commuter radio for the next few weeks, and Josie and Darla screened calls and online threats, they should be fine. Dylan thought about Frank, considered what Nick had told them, and turned to Mike.

“We just need to buy him off.”

“And then what?” Laura protested. “He’ll create another mess like this and come back for more?”

“Tell her,” Mike demanded. “We need to tell her what we learned about him.”

“
You learned something about Frank and didn’t tell me?” Laura descended on Dylan and came at him so fast he had to work hard not to flinch.
 

“Yes.” Admitting the truth was better than lying.

“Why?” Anger was easier to deal with than hurt, too—and he did flinch at the tone in Laura’s voice.

“Because,” Mike said, enveloping her in a half-hug, pulling her soft, sweet body into his side and making Dylan’s throat tighten with need, “we didn’t know what to do with the information and we needed to let it percolate a bit.”

She let a puff of air out through her nose, lips too tight to open. “You mean,” she said in a voice pulled tighter than a violin string, “you are both pulling this overprotective husband bullshit.”

“You’re my overprotective husband?” Dylan cracked as he looked at Mike with exaggerated glee. “There’s finally a pro to this whole marriage thing!”

And that
wa
s when Laura crumpled, leaving
Dylan
feeling like the complete and utter ass Josie always said he was.

Hurting Laura’s feelings was bad enough.

Making Josie be
right
was intolerable.

“
I want to marry
you
!” Laura said fiercely, sitting on the ground now, head between her knees, hands buried in her curly golden locks. She wouldn’t look at him or Mike, and Dylan knew that if she did, her eyes would be red and would make his heart feel like someone had put it through a document shredder.
 

“
Both
of you,” she added with a sob so distinct it made Dylan glad Cyndi had taken Jillian out for a long day of errands and baby gymnastics.
 

“You’re supposed to be my husbands. Not each other’s husband! If anyone has a right to an overbearing, overprotective, stupid thug of an inconsiderate, pompous husband, it’s
me
!”
 

“Are you the pompous one, or am I?” Dylan asked Mike out of the corner of his mouth.

And that
wa
s when Laura threw a stuffed teddy bear at him. The kind with a big, heavy music box in it.
It clipped him in the head and made him see stars.
 

“I think that means
you’re
the pompous one,” Mike said too casually, dodging a foot to the left as a softer stuffed snake flailed uselessly in the air as it missed its intended target.

“She’s never thrown things at us before like this!” Dylan said, rubbing his temple. Damn bear had a wallop to it. He never liked that animal anyway.

“Quit talking about me like I’m not even here!” she screamed. “You two don’t need me! You just act like I don’t have a say in anything and then you go off and get married and I’m alone and will only ever have Jillie and my cats and oh my
G
od…”

M
ike studied Laura with extreme concern. “What the hell?” he whispered to Dylan.

“I don’t know. The last time I saw her like this was when she was—”

“
PREGNANT!”
 

Laura’s single, shouted word echoed through the house like an alarm.

She’d guessed, based only on being a week late, but her cycles had come back a few months ago, right as rain.
A week’s delay might not mean anything, but the swollen breasts, the moodiness, the feeling of full-body flushing and a sense of inner sweetness, like she had a secret, made her realize what was going on.
 

It wasn’t official, but it was pretty damn close.

“You’re pregnant?” Mike asked softly, his face turning gentle and loving.

“You’re pregnant?” Dylan asked with disbelief,
jaw hanging open like a ventriloquist’s dummy. His hair was messy and eyes wide and open, not shut off and angry like she’d feared.
 

“I don’t, I…
W
ell, I’m late.”

Dylan frowned, letting a great burst of air out in what could have been a sigh but sounded like an indictment. “Just because you’re late doesn’t mean you’re pregnant.” But he didn’t even seem to be able to convince himself.

“Have you tested yet?” Mike asked, crossing the room to place a warm, reassuring palm on her forearm.

“No.”

And with that, he sprinted out the door.

“What the—?” She looked at Dylan, who just shrugged.

“Drugstore!” Mike called back, leaving her alone with the one man who wanted her to be pregnant about as much as—

Her phone rang. The number was one she didn’t recognize. Without thinking, she answered and said, “This is Laura.”

“Laura.” The voice was unmistakable.

“Hi Frank,” she said flatly. Dylan’s nostrils flared, his head tilting, jaw working like an auger.

“
I wanted to say my goodbyes.”
 

“Goodbye?” She frowned, giving Dylan a look that asked,
Did you do this?
 

He just shrugged, a
w
ho,
m
e?
gesture that made her want to throttle him. Why didn’t anyone tell her anything anymore?

“
Ah, yes. I have business that will take me out of the area for a very long time, and I simply wanted to visit in person, but regret that I cannot.”