It's Always Complicated (Her Billionaires Book 4) (8 page)

Didn’t matter at all.

The sound of his name from her mouth made him shudder, pouring more of himself into the same body that had borne him his children, the same ripe, round ass that drove him mad as it walked past him a thousand times a day during the daily grind of domestic life.

Out here, she was wild and free, whispering, “Dylan, Dylan, Dylan,” over and over like she was etching it into her throat, turning his name into something that hummed from her vocal cords, carved deep into her subconscious, claimed by him.

As she panted, body grabbed by short shivers that meant her nerves were returning to baseline, she ran her hands along his arms, curving and twisting like a cartographer mapping new land.

Except his body was the
O
ld
W
orld in Laura’s hands.

Collapsing against each other, the tree standing there as silent witness to their passion, they both began to laugh, a sultry sound of sexual conspiracy. Whatever the hell that just was, Dylan wanted more of it. Every day. Every week.

Just...more.

Her long sigh as her hands groped for her panties, strewn across a pile of green leaves that he eyed carefully, made him feel the same longing, too.

“Not poison ivy?” she asked, her voice lifting up at the end in a question.

She read his mind. “No,
i
t’s not.” Earlier in the spring, Jilly had run like a free little fairy through a new portion of the woods and learned a hard New England greenery lesson: the little leaves-of-three carried a nasty, itchy oil that meant pure torture for a few weeks. If Laura’s panties had fallen on poison ivy, well...

“That’s the last place I want a rash,” Laura said with a laugh, standing and pulling her skirt up, balancing against the tree with one hand to dress herself.

He watched her from the ground, ignoring the ache of one thigh, smiling at the strange domesticity of their conversation. For a few more minutes they could live in this passion bubble, right? Just the two of them. No kids, no Mike, no wedding plans, no calls from Josie, no worries about Laura’s business, no teething toddlers and—

“I forget, you know,” she said as she sat on the ground next to him, resting her leg against his chest. He sat up, and she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder.

“Forget what?”

“To be Laura.”

“You’re always Laura.”

“You know what I mean.”

He did. Their days were filled with being Mama and Daddy and Papa. With Mike running the ski resort, Dylan managing charities, and Laura working on the dating service that never seemed to gain enough traction—but plenty of criticism—to do what she’d hoped for people like the three of them.

“You can be Laura whenever you want.”

She snorted. A part of him wanted to laugh with her, but another part angered. Not at her, but at the notion that she felt their life did this to her. Suppressed her. Made her unable to be.

Because if being Laura meant wild abandon like
this
, then he and Mike needed far, far more Laura and far, far less Mama in their lives.

“What was it someone once said? The days are long but the years are short?” Laura murmured against his shoulder.

“How about the nights are short because nobody ever gets any sleep.”

She laughed, the sound like the answer to every problem Dylan had ever experienced, as if her giggles alone could solve everything. If he could make Laura laugh like that once a day, he thought, he’d consider his time on earth well spent.

They walked quietly, hand in hand, back to the house. He felt strangely neutral, as if the wild sex had reset him somehow. Was this what it felt like to be Mike? Zen might not be the right word to describe Dylan’s mood, but it was close. He was in balance. At peace.

Calm.

Grateful.

The walk up the steps to the house felt like he was climbing a mountain, his body perfectly drained by the time they reached the cabin. At home, he knew, Mike would expect him and Laura to help out; they’d left him alone for more than an hour, and when you were the lone adult in charge of three toddlers, time multiplied by four.

Parenting math.

Laura turned and looked over her shoulder as she opened the front door, flashing him a dazzling grin that made him hard again. What the hell was going on?

The sounds of happy children playing in the background tickled his ears. Jillian was humming some Disney song to herself while she played with a set of dolls. Adam banged on the back of a pot with a wooden spoon. Aaron stacked blocks in the corner, then kicked them over. All three looked up the second Laura walked into the living room, and Aaron lifted his
fat
little hands to her, begging to be picked up.

Laura complied, then shot Dylan a look so smolderingly hot he wondered if they could get away with a quickie in the bathroom.

Aaron yawned. Adam paused his drumming and yawned, too.

Laura scooped them up, one twin on each hip, a look she called her newest fashion.

“I’ll lay down with the boys for their nap. I could use a little rest.” She gave Dylan a wink.

Dazed, he wandered into the kitchen to find Mike stirring something on the stove.

“You take care of Laura?” Mike asked, his voice casual and pleasant.

Dylan was dumbstruck. Frozen in place, he could only blink. Each time his eyelids snapped shut he tasted Laura, heard her breath rasp against his ear, lived their passion one snapshot at a time. He hesitated for so long that Mike paused, too, tilting his head like he had a question to ask.

Finally, Dylan did the only thing that made sense. He told the truth.

“Um, yeah.” He took in a deep breath, eyebrows raised, and ran a firm hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “I sure did.”

Jeremy

Weddings gave him the willies.

Ceremony. Standards. Rituals and all sorts of protocols that the rest of the world seemed to know, but Jeremy didn’t. Stand here. Wear this. Hold that. Say the following. He’d never been in an actual wedding, thank God. Without any brothers or sisters, and born to his parents so late in life that his aunts and uncles were all married off and his parents had died before he’d formed close relationships with cousins—all much older—he’d only had to attend the weddings of a handful of high school and college friends.

This wedding at the campground carried a kind of dread.

For the past few years, he and Mike and Lydia had lived either at the campground or in various places around the world, their little threesome a haven from, well...pretty much everything. The rest of the world went on, and they lived their life together however they wanted. Lydia had been stubborn, at first, refusing to accept money from him or Mike. She had worked for her parents for the first year they’d lived here, while the house her father gave her was being built.

The house was a beauty, he had to admit. Nicer than any of the others.
H
is and Mike’s money had allowed them to do upgrades, and having an off-the-grid energy system had softened even old Pete when it came to letting him and Mike foot the bill.

Stubborn, these Charles folks. Time had been the best tool for getting them to accept the only resource Mike and Jeremy really had in this new life: money.

Escape Shores Campground was the epitome of a family business, and Jeremy had spent the first year living there just marveling at how so many people could come together to form a cohesive unit. There were arguments and fights. Snits and hurt feelings. Tempers and accusations. But when push came to shove, all of the family members who worked there came together to make sure the customers got what they wanted:

A true escape.

Maybe that’s why he and Mike had folded on the issue of where to live so quickly. Lydia had been adamant that they spend one year here.

At the end of that year, he understood.

“Honey!” Lydia called out. “Can you help with this box of lobster lollipops?”

Sentences you never, ever imagined directed at you.

“Sure,” he replied, ambling over to where a truck was unloading boxes and even pallets. Pallets of what looked like chairs.

“What’s that?” he asked as he jutted his chin toward the chairs, picking up the box that was, indeed, marked “Lobster Lollipops: Gross 144.”

Right.
Gross
.

“Mom and Dad are
so
inundated with requests for big weddings now that enough people are hearing about this one that they decided to buy a hundred more chairs.”

“Where are they going to store them?” Space was at a premium these days.

“We’re building a new storage structure,” Adam replied cheerfully, coming from behind and picking up yet another box of lollipops. What the hell were these wedding people doing with nearly three hundred lobster-shaped lollipops?

He was about to open his mouth and ask that when Adam shouted to Lydia, “We need to schedule the extra security—can you call that in?”

“Sure!” she shouted back, disappearing behind one of the delivery trucks.

“Security?” Jeremy and Adam walked at a swifter pace than he would have chosen. Adam looked just like Sandy, but with a masculine, military air about him. He was in the National Guard, but hadn’t served in combat. Not yet.

Not ever, everyone hoped. After losing one sibling, Luke, to war, Lydia and her siblings couldn’t handle losing another.

“The billionaires and their bride have some mild threats that require increased security,” Adam explained.

Jeremy came to a dead halt. “The billionaires and their bride? That’s how you refer to them?”

“How else am I supposed to refer to them?”

“How about by name. They have names, right?”

Adam chuckled. “Fine, Laura, Mike and Dylan. Better?” His eyes had that same prankster look in them that Miles had.

The comparison wasn’t a compliment.

“Where’s Mike?” Jeremy asked, looking back at the enormous amount of stuff that needed to be unloaded.

“Which Mike?”

“What do you mean, which Mike?”

Adam raised his eyebrows.

Jeremy got it.

“Oh. Right.”

“Two Mikes. Both billionaires.”

“Technically, Mike’s still not one.”

“Fuck you, Jeremy,” said a familiar voice from behind them. “You constantly point that out, don’t you? It’s like a dick-waving contest, only with bank accounts.”

Adam didn’t even try to hide his grin, brown eyes widening, then narrowing. Something in the quirk of Adam’s mouth resembled his brother, Miles. He might as well drop the box of lobster lollipops and grab a bowl of popcorn.

“I am not constantly bringing it up. We were just trying to distinguish you from Mike the billionaire who is getting married here.”

“I’ve seen pictures of him. The guy looks like Thor. Do I look like Thor?” Mike challenged.

Given his silver hair, bright blue eyes, and the fact that he was a good half a foot shorter than Thor, Jeremy had to say:

“No.”

“Then quit talking about how I’m not a billionaire.”

“Touchy,” Adam mumbled under his breath. Jeremy didn’t spend much time with Adam, who was on the road
much of the year,
representing the campground as he tried to expand brand marketing.
Adam and Dan had hopes of creating a chain of campgrounds in the northeast.
 

Jeremy
was quickly becoming fond of him, though.

“You want help unloading, or you want to needle me?”

“I want to beat you at Fallout 4.”

“Never gonna happen....” Mike had developed an insatiable desire for video games their first winter in Maine, stuck inside with nothing to do but have sex, watch television and play video games.

There was, apparently, a limit to how much sex you could have. Who knew?

“Laura and Josie are about to arrive,” Sandy said from behind him, making him jump and lose his grip on a box. His heart hammered in his chest. A little harder and it would thump against the cardboard.

“Aren’t they early?” Lydia asked, shoving some other box at Adam, who grunted as he shifted its weight in his arms.

“They want some girl time. They’re best friends,” Sandy explained with a smile. “Like you and Krysta, honey. Imagine if you had a double wedding with her.”

“And Caleb,” Jeremy muttered. Lydia whacked him, the clip hitting his kidney and making him yelp.

“Someone say my name?” Caleb said, his voice lower than normal. Caleb was the only fair-haired kid in the family, a
young man who carried
the slightly-haunted look of being the youngest brother in a family of six.

Jeremy swiveled and saw Caleb and Adam share a meaningful look. Sandy and Lydia eyed them with suspicion.

He hated all this nonverbal nonsense these Charles family members had going on. He’d never, ever understand what went unspoken between them. Too much history. Too much shared experience. Not that Jeremy minded being an outsider.

Most of the time.

But right now he wished he were part of the tribe, because the ratio of unspoken to spoken words was about a thousand to one.

“Hey,” Mike said, coming up from behind him and placing a hand on his shoulder. Mike’s face had changed over the years, tension easing.
Spending most of their time
in the middle of Nowhere, Maine, had led to a massive change in Mike. The ambition was still there, but channeled into places outside of business.

Mike had become a champion of Jeremy’s nonprofit efforts, but had turned much of his focus to fitness. First, his own, spending hours sea kayaking, running, mountain biking, and hiking. The three planned to hike the long Appalachian Trail sometime in the next two years, though Jeremy and Lydia had barely managed Maine’s largest peak, Mount Katahdin, without oxygen masks.

Mike’s deep interest—Lydia used the word “obsession” frequently—in fitness had morphed into a business idea. He was currently traveling to major fitness events, from Tough Mudder to Ironman Triathlons to cancer fundraising walks and runs to offer an integrated software solution that would tie together the most difficult management aspects of these events and make them seamless to run.