Dalton, Tymber - Contractual Obligation (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (27 page)

“Let me tell you both something,” Gorden said, his voice low and angry. “If the two of you fucking hurt her, I will fuck the two of you up so badly you’ll wish you’d never even met her. And Harrison, I’m sure, will help me. Do you both understand me?”

Tate stepped in, toe to toe with him. He dropped his voice, too. “Let me tell you something, Gorden. We love her, and we will never hurt her. If you or Harrison give her a hard time about her choice in this, then you’ll deal with us. Do you understand me?”

Doug nodded his agreement.

Gorden studied the two of them for a moment before nodding. He didn’t back down, however. “Fine. But both of you have to prove yourselves to me that you’re looking after her best interests.”

“That’s fair,” Doug said. “I hope you stop feeling that way at some point before our fiftieth anniversary together.”

Gorden rolled his eyes, but he laughed. “You two idiots are just stubborn enough to make this work, aren’t you?”

Tate and Doug both nodded. “And considering how stubborn Harper is, you know there’s no way in hell this won’t work.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Harper napped for several hours before Doug and Tate returned that afternoon. She was happy to see they’d arrived before her father.

“How you feeling, sweetie?” Tate carried an overnight bag she assumed was for her and set it on the floor next to her bed.

“Tired. Hungry. They said I can’t eat yet, but if I feel up to it, I can have clear liquids tonight.”

Tate, then Doug, leaned in and kissed her. “We’ll start bringing you good food,” Doug said, “as soon as they clear you to eat.”

“I’d kill for a cheeseburger.”

“We’ll see,” Tate said. “Maybe I can wrangle you one.”

“Or a milkshake.”

Doug shook his head. “No way.”

“What?”

“No. I’m not letting you have one.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Did you say ‘let’? I know I didn’t hear you right.”

“You have diabetes. You have to watch your diet.”

She glared at Tate. “I’m sorry,” he said. “When we found you, duh, the first thing I did was check your sugar. Kind of obvious.”

She sighed and returned her attention to Doug. “I’m not your mom. I’ve lived with this since I was a kid. I manage it.”

“How did you hide it?” he grumbled.

“The same way you hid Mr. Blue Eyes, here,” she said. “I just didn’t tell you.”

“I mean your meds and stuff.”

She shrugged. “I used the fridge in the garage and the one in my office. It wasn’t that hard.” She poked him in the chest. “Don’t you go all mother hen on me, now. I’d say me hiding that ranks a lot less than you hiding Tate.”

“Yeah, I have an ass that’s too cute to hide,” Tate snarked in an obvious attempt to lighten the tone.

She somehow avoided laughing. “You’ve got that right.” She finally got a smile out of Doug.

“Yeah, it is a cute ass,” he agreed.

She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I should have told you about my diabetes, and yes, it was stupid of me to hide it.” Looking back, she couldn’t understand or explain why she didn’t tell him sooner. It was pretty childish of her. “I was going to tell you the night of your mom’s party, when I saw her and found out about her diabetes.” She felt herself blush. “Then I found out about Tate.”

“Well, I’m not complaining,” Tate teased. He glanced at the open doorway to make sure they were still alone before leaning in and dropping his voice. “I got to fuck her ass first. So nyeh.” He stuck his tongue out at Doug.

Harper couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing, as did Doug. It hurt, and she held a pillow to her abdomen as instructed by the nurse while she tried to stop laughing. By the time she had herself under control again, tears of laughter and pain were rolling down her face. “Stop, please, you’re killing me.”

Doug smiled. At least he didn’t look sad anymore. “He just has this thing about being first, Harper,” he said. “He got to be the first to fuck my ass, too.” He leaned in and kissed her, then whispered, just loudly enough Tate could also hear, “But I’m calling dibs on your ass right now for the first time the three of us are in bed together.”

How could she be in so much pain and yet her pussy had suddenly gone totally wet, her clit throbbing at the thought of making that fantasy come true? She swallowed hard. “Okay,” she whispered.

Tate grinned. He reached across the bed and smacked Doug hard on the shoulder. “See there? You’re a fucking sadist. You just made the poor girl horny. Hell, you just made me horny.”

“Don’t mind me,” she said with a smile. “I wouldn’t be offended if you two wanted to give me a show.”

“Oooh, she likes to watch,” Doug joked.

“You just wait until I’m feeling better,” she shot back. “You two better hope you can keep up with me.”

“I like a challenge,” Tate said. He stroked her cheek. “And there’s the Harper I wanted to see, my sweet, feisty girl.”

She blushed as she looked from him to Doug and back again, then burst into tears. Both men leaned in close, holding her, trying to get her to tell them what was wrong. How could she put it into words that, despite the fact she’d just gone through major surgery,
nothing
was wrong? In fact, she’d never felt like things were going more right in her life.

Except—

Her father swooped into the room, surrounded by a cloud of several dozen Mylar balloons nearly obscuring him. “Where’s that goldbricking little girl of mine?” he boomed from inside the mass.

She tried not to laugh. “Hi, Daddy.”

His head popped out of the balloons. She didn’t miss the glare he briefly shot at both men before his smile returned. Tate and Doug stood and moved out of the way as Harrison took over her bedside. He handed the balloons off to Tate. “Take care of these, please. And welcome back, Doug.” He sat next to her bed and grabbed her hand. “How are you?”

“Daddy, I’m fine, really. They said I can go home in a couple of days as long as I don’t have an infection. They caught it before it ruptured. I’m on antibiotics…”

He wore her out. Doug and Tate stayed out of his way, in the corner, watching the TV and trying to remain invisible. She didn’t miss when her father occasionally shot dark looks their way.

When the nurse came in a little later to give her another round of meds and check her vitals, Harrison grilled her for all the information. Harper rolled her eyes and told the nurse he was her father. Before the nurse would answer any of his questions, she filled out a form with Harrison’s name and made Harper sign it. As Harper took the pen, she noticed additional spaces for people allowed to access her information. She filled in Gorden, Doug, and Tate’s names.

Her father watched but didn’t comment.

As the nurse talked with Harrison, she changed out Harper’s IV meds and took her vitals. She updated the chart. “Any more questions, sir?”

Now satisfied Harper wasn’t dying, he’d apparently been appeased. “No,” he said, his tone gentler than before. “Thank you, nurse.” He returned his attention to Harper. “You sure have a way of scaring the crap out of me, you know that?”

“Considering this is my first hospitalization since I was a kid, I think you’re exaggerating just a little, Daddy.”

“Maybe,” he groused. “But you’re still my little girl.”

“You should go get something to eat,” she said, more to get him out of there than anything.

He looked at Doug and Tate, but didn’t say anything to them. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll stop by again before visiting hours end.” He kissed her. “Love you.”

“Love you, too, Daddy. Thank you for the balloons.” When he left, she noticed Tate and Doug visibly relaxed. “You two will have to face him at some point. You know you will.”

“Just not today and not here,” Tate said as he glanced at the time. “But he’s right, we need to go take care of some stuff at the office and let you get some sleep.” He kissed her. “We promise we’ll play nice.”

Doug agreed as he leaned in to kiss her. “Yes, we won’t get into it with him or Gorden. We’ll come back later.”

“I love both of you.”

Both men smiled. “Love you, too,” Tate said.

Doug laughed. “Me, too. You realize when we get you home we’re going to show you, right?”

“I hope so.”

When she was alone again, she closed her eyes and listened to the TV as she tried to sleep. She’d gone from being virtually alone, to having two men in love with and devoted to her.

How’d I get so lucky?

Maybe she’d have to start rereading some of her Kindle books to find out how those heroines handled having two hunky heroes at their disposal.

* * * *

They discharged her two days later. With no sign of infection and her surgical incision healing well, the doctor signed off on letting her go home. Her father tried to get her to come home with him, but she gently refused both his and Gorden’s offers to host her during her recovery.

She wanted to be alone, at home, with her men.

Tate and Doug got her settled on the couch in the living room with the remote and, yes, her laptop. They finally relented and said she could use it as long as she didn’t wear herself out. That first night back at home, sleeping snugly nestled between both men, Harper began to realize maybe her dreams could come true, that she could have it all. Love and a career. Even better, a career working hand in hand with the men she loved.

Despite their flirting and teasing that seriously stoked her libido and her ego, neither man made a serious attempt to seduce her over the next several days. Both feared injuring her and wanted to wait until she had healed and the doctor cleared her to safely engage in sex again.

They did, however, take great pains to purchase and load new erotic books onto her Kindle. They also took great care of her, one of them staying home with her while the other went in to work, switching off every day so she wasn’t left alone.

After the third day at home, she couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m going stir-crazy. I want to go out.”

The men grumbled a little, bound and determined to keep her home and healing, but agreed to go out for dinner. She picked a sushi place not too far from the house. Once they were settled at a table, she said, “You two realize I’m not going to break, right?”

The men exchanged a glance. “We’re not taking any chances,” Tate said.

Doug agreed. “We already feel guilty enough. If we let anything happen to you, your dad and Gorden will kill us and dump our bodies in the Gulf.”

That was a revelation. Not the body dumping, she expected that, but their guilt. “Guilty over what?”

The men exchanged another glance. Tate said, “That it took us so long to find you the other morning.”

She sat back. “Beep beep, back the truck up. I thought it was like around seven when you found me?”

“It was,” Doug said.

“You make it sound like I laid there all night or something.”

Both men blushed. “If we had gone to talk to you sooner,” Tate said, “instead of…Well, we feel badly about that.”

She fought the urge to both laugh and roll her eyes at them. She leaned in and motioned them to do the same so she could drop her voice. “Listen to me, you two. I’m only going to say this once. You two have nothing to feel guilty about. I didn’t lay on the floor all night. I was getting up that morning when I heard you two. I should have gone and knocked on your door and woken you up in the middle of the night and asked you to take me to the hospital, but I thought I could tough it out until morning. Had you come to check on me, I still wouldn’t have asked to go to the hospital. Okay? So dump the guilt. That’s an order.”