Authors: Emily Ryan-Davis
“We should have started in here,” Liam said, his voice rough with new desire.
Kat forced her eyes open and tried to adopt a stern, no-nonsense frown. “I want to know more about Hunter’s reassignment. All these tentative plans have been driving me crazy for the past month.”
Liam sighed and waved toward Hunter. “You might as well. She’s not going to let it go.”
She rolled her eyes at him and focused on Hunter. While Hunter briefed them on the details, Kat did her best to ignore the delicious, kneading pressure at her back.
“Will you be staying in barracks?” She asked when he finished speaking.
Hunter shook his head. “Not if I can help it. There won’t be a shortage of apartments, and on the off chance there are, I have friends at Lejeune. Somebody will have an empty room to rent.”
“Is there any reason you can’t or won’t live with us?” Liam asked.
Hunter gripped the rim of the tub, the only sign he gave that he didn’t like the question. His voice was even when he replied. “It would be best if I didn’t.”
Liam wasn’t content with that answer. “Best for whom?”
Kat knew she should put a stop to Liam’s insistence but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wasn’t thrilled about the idea of separate residences either.
“Best for me, because if something happens, I won’t be able to afford rent by myself on an apartment the size we would need to house all three of us. Best for the two of you because you won’t have to hide my presence every time you entertain. Best—”
Kat interrupted him. “I agree,” she said.
Liam frowned at her. “You do?”
“Yes. God knows I want Hunter with us for breakfast in the morning and sleeping beside us at night, but he’s right. We’re new in this relationship. We
all
need to trust in the long-term viability before we make any legally binding commitments.” And she didn’t say it, but Hunter would have to be the one to initiate any changes that might compromise his military standings. She believed he would relax as he grew more comfortable and confident but that growth had to be organic. If she or Liam pushed, they risked pushing Hunter away.
She could afford to be patient.
“If you can find a rental close enough to headquarters and I can find something that doesn’t involve a roommate, my apartment doesn’t have to be more than a formality,” Hunter said. “I should be able to pin something down within a few days.”
Hunter lifted her hand from the water and pulled her to him. He wrapped one arm around her ribs, holding her against him back to chest. Bending his head to hers, he kissed the sensitive spot behind her ear. “Can you hold on that long, kitten?”
“I’m sure we can find a way to distract her.” Liam pushed off the bench and palmed her knees, spreading them to make room for his hips to ease between her legs.
She inhaled sharply, but it was futile to try to hold on to the thread of conversation. Hunter gathered her breasts in his palms and offered her stiff nipples to Liam, who licked his lips in anticipation. Kat couldn’t contain her shiver as Liam bent claim his prize. His tongue swirled between Hunter’s fingers, rasped across her nipple, and within moments she couldn’t remember what they were distracting her from.
Chapter Six
The remainder of Valentine’s Day weekend passed without any conflict between Hunter and Liam, which allowed Kat to actually enjoy the time she spent in the spa while her two men went for a hike in the snow that had fallen Friday night. During a skin detox session, in which Kat reclined on a chaise with cucumber slices over her eyes and fragrant clay plastered to her skin, she found herself dwelling on Liam’s uncharacteristic push to fuck Hunter, and Hunter’s blunt refusal. On that subject, Hunter was like a bear with a thorn in his paw. Kat knew she would have to be the one to ease him into not only acceptance, but anticipation of that intimacy with Liam, but she hadn’t given it much attention since the shower she and Hunter shared weeks ago.
It was time.
And she had an idea, one that had the spa attendant raising eyebrows and asking her if the room was too hot for comfort. She intended to be prepared the next time she managed to get Hunter alone.
That opportunity came a few days later. True to his word, Hunter had his new living arrangements worked out by Tuesday of the following week. Kat kicked her relocation plan into high gear and by Wednesday, she had a round-trip plane ticket to Jacksonville, appointments to view thirteen rentals, and high hopes for her new address. Liam wasn’t able to join her for the twenty-four-hour tour of North Carolina, but Adele had rearranged her day to do airport drop-off duty. Hunter, whose time was now his own until he had to report for duty at Lejeune, had packed his car and driven half his belongings to his new apartment. He would be waiting when her plane landed at Albert J. Ellis Airport in Jacksonville.
As she’d known it would, just knowing what state she would be living in had removed a heavy weight from her shoulders. She felt physically lighter as she and Adele walked into the coffee shop a few blocks from Kat’s house.
“Oh my God.” Stopping just inside the door, Adele dug her fingers into Kat’s arm. She threw her head back, closed her eyes, and inhaled like it was her job. “Oh. My. God. They’ve been baking brownies.”
Kat snickered. “Showing your O face already? What are you going to do when you get one in your mouth?”
“Something that might get us arrested.” After one more deep breath and lusty sigh of appreciation, Adele snapped her eyes open and zoned in on a table. “You, go sit there. I’ll bring the goods.”
Laughing, Kat made her way to the sunny table Adele had chosen. The window seat provided a prime view of the Avenue, which was one of Kat’s favorite places in the entire world. Despite the miserable cold and the mountains of snow plowed up against the sidewalks, Hampdenites came and went among the trendy shops. Pink flamingos dotted the snowy ground outside one chintzy boutique. As Kat shrugged off her coat and sat down, she felt a twinge in the pit of her stomach. None of the rental possibilities in Jacksonville would hold a candle to her house in Hampden.
“No frowning,” Adele said, drawing Kat’s gaze away from the window.
“I wasn’t frowning.” Kat eyed the plate of brownies Adele placed on the table between them. “Six? Have you lost your mind?”
“Noooo...but I
have
lost my IUD.” Adele wiggled her eyebrows. “I have to load up on the sushi, sugar and caffeine while my body’s still my own. Baby dancing starts for real this month, remember? No more practice runs.”
The barista stopped by to leave two tall paper cups of steaming, fragrant coffee. “One double-chocolate mocha and one dry cappuccino. Do you ladies need anything else?”
While Adele asked the barista for a glass of ice water, Kat tried to make the most of the brief interruption. She needed to cover her shock before Adele picked up on it. Judging by Adele’s narrowed eyes, Kat hadn’t done a good job with her poker face.
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Adele broke the corner off one of the brownies and popped it into her mouth.
Kat grabbed the cappuccino. “I didn’t forget.”
“You’re a lying liar, Katrina Holland.” Adele wagged her finger. “Very naughty. You not only forgot about our Year of the Baby pact, you forgot you wanted one.”
“I didn’t—hell.” She couldn’t deny it, not when Adele laid it out so plainly. Kat covered her face with both hands. “Liam and I forgot our family.”
“No, don’t say that.” Adele dropped her sassy tone and reached across the table to tug at Kat’s sleeve. “Come on. Have a brownie and give yourself a break.”
Lowering her hands, Kat stared at her friend, whose mouth was turned down with sympathy.
“Hunter isn’t going to want kids,” Kat said.
Adele was shaking her head before Kat finished speaking. “You don’t know that. You haven’t talked about it with him, have you?”
“No. Everything happened so fast at Christmas. I think Liam and I were afraid to slow down and invite reality into our bubble. I didn’t even stop to think about anything except how to convince Hunter not to leave us again.” Kat gripped her thighs under the table, overwhelmed by the ache of loss that washed over her. She and Liam had made plans to expand their family within the year, but they couldn’t shove a baby into Hunter’s arms. She suddenly understood what Hunter meant when he talked about the instability of military life, which was the life Kat had insisted she and Liam wanted to lead, as long as they could lead it with Hunter.
When she heard the scrape of the plate moving across the table, Kat looked down at the brownies in front of her. “What have we done?”
“Besides abandoning me to nine months of suffering through swollen ankles by myself?” Adele asked wryly. “Probably nothing. But if you still want kids, either near future or far future, you will have to include Hunter in that conversation. The sooner the better.”
“I don’t want to scare him away.” Sighing, Kat cradled the comforting warmth of her cup. “He’s not difficult to talk to. He’s actually a very reasonable man and listens closely. It’s kind of intense the way he stops everything and focuses when I talk. It’s very different from having a conversation with Liam, who can finish my sentences and sometimes seems to be able to read my mind.”
“Probably a Marine thing,” Adele said. “I doubt the drill sergeants or whatever have much tolerance for daydreaming while they’re talking.”
“Hmm, maybe.” But Kat wasn’t so sure. The more time she and Liam spent with Hunter, the more Kat remembered. Hunter had always been present in the moment. More than one of the girls Kat knew in college had remarked upon Hunter’s intensity, some finding his single-minded focus a turn-on while others thought his intensity was a turn-off.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter whether he’s a good listener or not. If kids aren’t important to you anymore, that’s cool. You’re more than a pair of ovaries and a womb. But if they are, or will be again, you shouldn’t just shove the idea of a family into some black hole. So don’t be a chicken. Talk to him. Do it before you’re moving across the country with him. A move which, by the way, I might never forgive you for making.” Adele glared across the table.
“I told you to come with me. Jay can find a job wherever I’m going. Wherever money is used, people who count it are needed.” Kat forced a light tone but she was only half kidding. She didn’t look forward to leaving her best friend behind.
“Jay isn’t going anywhere as long as his grandparents are still alive.” Adele popped the plastic lid off her mocha and took a cautious sip.
“Yeah, I don’t blame him.” Kat drank from her own cup and made a face. “This conversation is depressing. Topic change?”
A mischievous light entered Adele’s eyes. “Sure. Why don’t we talk about what’s in your purse instead?”
Kat grinned, remembering the item she had picked up at Sugar, an adult boutique a few blocks away. “It’s a present for Hunter, and we’ll just leave it at that.”
“You’re no fun.” Adele made a show of sticking out her tongue, complete with half-chewed brownie, and Kat covered her eyes with a groan.
“And you’re disgusting,” Kat said, laughing. “Hurry up and finish that pile of food. I still have to pack before we can leave for the airport.”
“All right, fine. Clearly my plan to put you in a sugar coma so you would miss your flight isn’t going to pan out.” With the fakest pout Kat had ever seen, Adele broke off another piece of brownie.
A smile lingered at the corners of Kat’s lips as she brushed aside her other concerns and focused on enjoying her friend’s company. She tried not to think about how much she would miss moments like these, and instead committed Adele’s laughing eyes and wide grin to memory.
* * *
Kat and her Sugar purchase made it through security at Baltimore-Washington International without incident. She had planned on using the three hours in-flight to edit photos and write descriptions of the outfits she’d pulled together from a couple of estate sales she’d attended in January, but her mind kept wandering back to her earlier conversation with Adele.
Her initial surprise and panic had downgraded to a low buzz of concern. In the dim quiet of the plane’s cabin, with nobody staring at her expectantly, Kat was finally able to think rationally about the matter. To keep herself grounded, she pulled out the fold-down tray, booted up her laptop and opened a document file. And then she stared at the blank screen. For a woman who thrived on lists, she was having a terrible time starting this particular list.
Frowning, she closed her laptop and stared at her hands. She and Liam had actively discussed children, including the effect having kids would make on their nontraditional sex life. They had both expressed they didn’t want to lose their individuality to parenthood, but they did want to be parents. After closing on the house a few months earlier, they had agreed to stop preventative measures in the New Year. But those were plans she and Liam had made without Hunter, plans they had disregarded when Hunter walked back into their lives and agreed to stay. Kat had flat-out forgotten in the roller coaster of passion. She didn’t know whether Liam had forgotten or if he had simply neglected to raise the matter as a point of caution. While Liam was a planner—some might say schemer—he had leaped on the opportunity of Hunter without the time to do any advance groundwork.
Liam might have forgotten.
He also might have remembered, but shoved the matter under a rug in hopes Kat wouldn’t see it and put the brakes on the idea of a triad.
She exhaled slowly and thumbed the warm circle of her wedding ring, for once wishing she didn’t know Liam as well as she did. Her stomach tightened with a certainty that he hadn’t forgotten. That Liam had simply wanted Hunter so much, he chose to charge ahead without stopping to think about the future he and Kat had already planned.
No. That was unfair. In this, she and Liam shared the weight of responsibility. They needed to have the kids conversation as soon as she got back to Baltimore, and together, they would discuss it with Hunter.
Before then, she had to decide whether she could continue on this path if it meant never having kids someday. The timing was really bad right now. Phenomenally bad, with the three of them still finding their balance together, not knowing where they were going to land either physically or emotionally. No, right now wouldn’t work, wouldn’t be fair to anybody. But never, ever? Could she accept that? Part of her knew the answer, but she didn’t feel strong enough to say it out loud, even to herself.
* * *
Hunter arrived in Jacksonville close to sundown. He immediately drove to his new complex’s management office, where an agent was waiting after hours with the lease paperwork and the keys to the furnished one-bedroom he’d found. That took about five minutes, and soon after, he let himself into the new place. The stale, closed-up smell hit him when he walked through the door. He breathed through it and felt along the wall for the light switch. An overhead light fixture chased the shadows away and revealed the plain, nondescript environment Hunter had come to expect in transient housing. The apartment was no different from any other he’d inhabited, but as he took a brief self-tour through the small rooms with their functional furnishings, he knew something was missing.
The bare walls should have displayed photographs of his life, like the pictures Kat had taken over the weekend and emailed him on Monday. He wanted to inhale the smells of showers taken and meals enjoyed, not the odor of the coat of paint that was applied after the last tenant vacated. His reasons for maintaining a separate residence were solid but as he opened the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom, letting the first sputters of air and rust-colored water out of the pipes, he realized he would have liked to have fewer reasons to remain apart from Liam and Kat.
With a shake of his head, Hunter turned off the faucets and headed down to his car. It didn’t take long to carry his boxes into the apartment. After the last trip, he grabbed his phone and called Liam.
Liam answered halfway through his bubblegum-pop ringtone, not soon enough to spare Hunter’s ears. His voice faded in and out once before stabilizing. “Hey, man. How was your drive?”
“Heavy traffic, but uneventful. What the hell do you have programmed on your phone?” Hunter went for a walk through the apartment, looking for the best connection.
“Song is ‘I Just Want to Be Your Everything.’ It’s a Bee Gees track. Look it up. Maybe there’s still hope for your taste in music.”
“I don’t want that shit in my search history.” But the song title stuck in his head, its significance not lost on Hunter. Liam had always been the mixed-tape type, the one put on music duty for the parties of their youth.
“Right. Someone might be watching and judging.” Liam swore beneath his breath. “Forget I said that. It was uncalled for.”
Hunter found the clearest pocket of reception in the bedroom, where the only furniture was a bed and a chest of drawers. He sat on the bare mattress, braced his forearms on his thighs and considered how to respond. He settled on a direct call-out, not in the mood to play bitchy passive-aggressive games. “Do you have anything else to say about the issue? Maybe a goddamn apology?”
Liam turned off the radio. The absence of background noise and the dark bedroom made their connection too intimate. While he waited for Liam to talk himself into an honest apology, Hunter got up and turned on the light. Even he recognized it was only an illusion, but he appreciated the sense of space he gained.