The Complete Series Boxed Set (20 page)

And then Jillian would need a nursing fest.

So many people. So many demands. So little time for Laura to just sit and think and breathe and figure out who Laura was.
How did she ever hold down a full-time job before, and date guys, and have a life?
 

Oh. That’s right.

She didn’t. Have a life, that is. Or date many guys…

“What about Darla?” Josie whispered, making a skeptical face, as if weighing the quality of her own words and finding them wanting.

“Darla?
Darla
Darla?”

“You know another Darla currently in a threesome relationship like yours?”

That made Laura nearly spit out her mouthful of coffee. “Like mine? You can’t compare some kids barely out of college who met on the side of the road with me and Dylan and Mike.”

“Yes, I can. I was there, Laura. You typed some words on the
i
nternet and rubbed a genie’s lamp. Poof! Insta-b
i
llionaires fawning all over you.”

“It didn’t exactly go like that.”

“Yes, it did. It went exactly like that. So don’t judge Darla’s own threesome weirdness. You have more in common than you might imagine.” Laura realized Josie was defending Darla, as if Laura had said something condescending. Had she? If so, she didn’t mean it. It
wa
s just that comparing her relationship, where the three were committed and raising a child together, seemed so…wrong.

“I have nothing against Darla!”
L
aura protested, raising her palms. “Don’t bite my head off. The comparison caught me by surprise.”

“
You two really should talk,” Josie said. “Alone. Of all the people in the world right now who could empathize and help you, I think Darla’s pretty much it.”
 

“Really?”

Josie nodded. “And I’ll bet she could use someone to bounce ideas off, too.”

“
I just…we’re in such different places.” Laura nearly gagged on her next words. “Darla, Trevor, and Joe are more like I imagine Jill, Mike, and Dylan were. You know. Early twenties, figuring it all out one day at a time. I met Mike and Dylan a decade later, after they’d figured out all the basic rules and…” What would life be like if the three of them
had met ten years ago? What if she’d been their third instead of Jill? Would it have been difficult to be with them as they figured out their relationship with each other, and then their joint connection to a woman? Jill did her a favor, in some ways.
 

For the first time in her relationship with the guys, Laura felt a sense of kinship—and not competition—with the late Jill. She’d paved the way for the most important experience of Laura’s life. To be fair,
Laura’s
daughter was named after Mike and Dylan’s dead partner, so it
wa
s not as if Laura didn’t honor her. And yet she never felt a closeness to her memory.

All those questions about sexuality that
L
aura faced were just
L
aura’s issues. The actual threesome relationship was completely different from Laura’s own individual sexuality, just as Mike and Dylan were s
ep
arate individuals with their own internal definitions of how to function in society and within the private sphere of home (and bed).

Big and small compromises and joys came out every day in their life together. How new, how different it must be for Darla, Trevor, and Joe.

Thank you, Jill
, she thought as Josie stared at her.

“
You are a million miles away,” Josie declared, shoving her plate away and taking a long sip of her coffee.
 

“Thinking about Jill.” Laura took a long drink of her coffee. Tepid now. She pushed it back, looking over the dirty dishes. Her appetite stayed away.

Josie’s face softened. “She pulling up yet? Started driving? Producing grandchildren? They grow up so fast, so treasure every moment!”

Laura laughed. “Not Jillian. Jill. Mike and Dylan’s old…” Old what? Lover? Girlfriend? Not wife. A woman couldn’t marry two men. Whatever label Jill had was the same one Laura had.

Which was…nothing. No word could contain the expansive sense of what she was to them. “Girlfriend” and “
b
aby
m
ama” were the closest, and they made her want to throw up.

“
Jill’s closer to Darla in some ways,” Josie said, nodding slowly. “You’re right.” The comment caught Laura completely by surprise. It was as if Josie had read her mind.
 

“And they’re making it all up as they go along,” Laura pointed out. “So it’s not like me and Dylan and Mike.”

“I don’t think you have much choice, Laura.”

“Huh?”

“If you want to talk to someone about the specifics of life with two men, Darla is it.” Josie pulled out her phone and started tapping, while Madge zipped by and slid the check case onto the booth table like she was an Olympic curler. It landed smack between the two of them, curving around the coffee pot.

“And the U.S.A wins the gold!” Josie muttered without looking up.

Laura paid as usual (because, seriously, why not?)
, and she got up to check her buzzing phone.
 

J
osie had texted,
Call Darla
, and her number.

“I know Darla’s number,” Laura muttered.

“
T
hen call her! Invite her to lunch here. Do the whole girl-chat thing where you talk about how to handle two hoses and one fire hydrant.”

“Josie!”

Her friend waved her hands dismissively. “Or whatever you talk about.” She paused and frowned. “Do the guys cross swords? I know they’re not gay, but doesn’t that sometimes—”

“JOSIE!”

“
Just call her.” A quick hug from her friend did not melt her one bit, her body rigid with overwhelm. “Dial the number now. I want to watch you.”
 

“Voyeur.”

A strange look passed over Josie’s features. Laura couldn’t name it.

“Call!”

Against her better judgment, and yet needing to do something, Laura dialed the number slowly, then hesitated before pressing “Send.”

This would be awkward at best.

A disaster at worst.

“Hello?” said Darla.

Laura opened her mouth to begin.

The phone rang.
Darla
let it go for two rings as
she
cleared
her
throat,
let the flush of surprise die down a bit,
and picked up the receive
r
. “Good Things Come in Threes,”
she
said, smiling, hoping to inject that perfect balance between friendliness and discretion into
her
not-quite-smooth voice. “How may I help you?”

A nervous, twitchy silence almost always greeted
her
. Of course it would. Who picks up the phone, calls a number they read on the
i
nternet, and says, “I'm looking for a threesome and I heard you do that for people”?

O
kay
, so
one
person already had,
and now Darla had to engage her
. But that was a rarity. Generally the potential clients were nervous as all get out
and
stumbled over their words, and about half the time the call dropped off midway, whatever ovarian fortitude the caller had assembled splintering into thousands of tiny pieces.

And yes, they were
always
women. The men seemed more comfortable, by far, with reaching out and asking for what they wanted.

Wasn't that how it all too often worked?

But
Darla
, Josie, and Laura had agreed that this service needed to be different.

And if
Darla
could do anything right, it was
different
.
Different
was
her
middle name. (No
t really.
Josephine
was, but you get the drift.)

“Um, I, uh…is this the dating service?” A young woman with a high, scared voice was on the line. “The one I heard about on Mike Mayhearn's podcast?”

God
b
less Mike Mayhearn, whoever he was.
This was the third call in so many days that referred to him by name. Darla
jotted the name on
her
To Do
list. The ways word had spread online had been so intriguing. Podcasts seemed to be the crazy new thing that brought people to Good Things Come in Threes.

“Yes,
m
a'am,”
Darla
said as brightly as possible.

The woman laughed. “I'm not a ma'am! I'm only twenty-five
years old
.”

“Well, I'm twenty-t
hree
, so sorry about that.”
Darla
chuckled, trying to make a connection. “It's just a formality.”

“I don't think we need formalities for, um, something like this,” the caller answered.

Darla’s
smile widened and
she
gripped
her
pen. So far, so good. “I assume you're calling to get more information about our dating service?”
she
repli
ed, keeping
her
voice neutral.

“Yes.”

“What do you know about us?” Asking that question was dicey. Over the past few weeks a slew of hate calls had come in, which
prompted
Darla
to record them all. Turned out to be from one guy who had been rejected as a client by Josie after he said he wanted sex only, and not a long-term emotional relationship. A hate campaign followed on social media and via phone. A public relations firm had been brought in. Damage control hadn't been easy.

Hell, it was
ongoing
. No one wanted to see this place tank before it ever got off the ground, least of all
Darla
.
She
knew how fucking awesome being with two men could be. Parts of
her
soul
had been
out there, and instead of killing one with
her
car
on that turnpike road one night in Ohio
,
she
’d picked it up by the side of the road, naked and high as a kite. Trevor’s sudden appearance in
her
life
had
preceded Joe’s, but having them both was like learning
she
’d been missing something
she
didn’t ache for until
she
had it.

Other women must feel the same way. Men, too. Helping them made sense to her.

Plus, this was the best damn paycheck
she
’d ever had in
her
life. Long live threesome dating services, even if
Good Things Come in Threes
w
as the only one…

“I've heard you were founded by that woman who is with the firefighter billionaire. And the other one. The ones in the news.”

Darla’s
eyebrows shot up. Very few people knew anything about Laura, Mike, and Dylan's ties to the agency.
She needed to tread super-carefully now, because Josie was ultra-protective of her best friend, and by extension, so was Darla.
You d
id
n’t fuck with her peeps
. Loyalty was her middle name.
 

O
kay
, so
Josephine
wa
s. Apparently,
she
ha
d
a lot of middle names.

“Can I ask how you learned that?”

“Is there a problem?”
The caller’s voice shook.
 

Oh, shit
. This was the part where people drifted off. Or hung up.

“No, it's just that I'm in a permanent threesome and I'm surprised to hear what you said.” Deflect. If
Darla
could get her off topic,
she
could keep her on the line.

“You
are
?”
the woman
squeaked. “Are you a client?”

“Not quite,”
Darla
replied. “But I was hired because of my background.”

“What's it like?” the caller asked, breathless.
This time her voice shook from excitement.
 

Hold on there, sister. Before I tell you about
getting licked and dicked at the same time
, I'd like to know your name
.

“Before I tell you all about my love life, we might want to be on a first-name basis,”
Darla
said cheerfully.
See? She was learning tact.
“I'm Darla. What's your name, hon?”

“C
allie
,”
the woman
said quietly.

“C
allie
, it's nice to meet you.”
Tact. Darla was practically Miss Menage Manners.
 

“I didn't mean to offend you!” C
alli
e said, clearly horrified.
Way to scare off the potential clients with her smart mouth
, Darla thought. Such job security. At this rate Darla’d be back home living with her mama and clicking on pictures of donkeys at a hotel website trying to win a free $5 Subway card.
 

And that would be on date night.

“No offense taken. I understand your curiosity. It's not like you can just go on the
i
nternet and find articles about women who are in loving relationships with two men,”
Darla replied in the most soothing
voice she could muster. No one taught you these kinds of customer service skills in…um…
anywhere
.
 

A long sigh poured out of the phone. “Don't I wish! It's all about swingers and one-time hookups and…you know.” The conspirator's tone Callie used set
Darla’s
teeth
a bit
on edge. Actually,
Darla
didn't
know. It
was
not as if
she
went out searching for a permanent threesome. It fell into
her
lap. And that was the major difference between
her
and their female clients:
Darla
never sought out what
she
had.