Monroe, Marla - Desire for Two (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (16 page)

“I’m so sorry we hurt you, Desire. We never meant to. We love you.”

“Don’t lie to me now, Elliot.”

“I’m not lying. We fell in love with you the first day you walked into our office. We’ve been trying to figure out a way around the damn boss-employee situation ever since, and nothing we came up with seemed to be right.”

Elliot rubbed his face with both hands then pulled at his hair before letting it go.

“We decided we would semi-retire back here at home. That way we could ask you to marry us and you would be comfortable with other ménage families around you. Plus, it was a way to get you here to get used to the idea and build our home the way you wanted it built. We should have been honest with you up front, but we wanted to surprise you.” Elliot huffed out a breath.

“Why didn’t you tell me all of this once you realized I knew something was wrong? You knew yesterday that something was wrong.” Desire wiped at her eyes with her fingers. She didn’t care about smearing any more makeup, but she didn’t want to get it in her eyes.

“That’s where it gets tricky.”

“Define tricky,” she said.

He walked over to where the chairs were and sat down in one of them. She watched him try to figure out a way to say whatever he was going to say. His face finally went still and he just blurted it out.

“We may have a child that we didn’t know about and just found out about.”

“I’d say that was tricky,” she finally said once it had sunk in.

“We love you, Desire, and don’t want to lose you. Please don’t leave.”

“I’d say you have an awful lot on your plate right now without me complicating it.”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, but he didn’t say anything.

“Everything you planned before you knew about the child hinges on there being a child, doesn’t it?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah, I guess it does. I can’t marry you without knowing if this woman is carrying our baby or not.”

“I wish you had told me about this when it first happened.” She swallowed around the knot in her throat. “I think you both have a lot of thinking to do, and if you have a child, I wish you all the luck and all the best wishes. I know you wanted children. Please let me go now. I really need to go,” she said.

Elliot looked at her and nodded. He got up and grabbed her bag and hanging clothes, and carried them to the front office for her. He left her and the clothes as soon as she was settled and kept walking across the street. Desire watched him until he disappeared behind a building.

The clerk at the desk wisely disappeared as well, and didn’t come back out while she was there. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there waiting on Byron, but he pulled up and jumped out of the car and hugged her close.

“It’ll be okay, D. You’ll see.”

He grabbed her things and stowed them in the back seat before ushering her to the front passenger side, waiting while she fastened her safety belt before closing the door. She watched him climb back in the car and put it in gear. As soon as they were outside the city limits, she started crying as if her heart would break.

Chapter Twenty-One

Desire worked out her notice in the float pool from where she had started. No one said anything to her face, but she knew they were all talking about her. She just ignored them and counted down the days until she could walk out and put the entire mess behind her for good. She already had a new job that wouldn’t start for another two weeks. She planned to use the time to relax and catch up on some reading. She hadn’t been kickboxing in months and needed to start back, but she really hadn’t had the energy lately.

Byron kept her up to date on the men so she wouldn’t accidently run into either of them. They had come back and done some work then left again without replacing her. They would probably do that once she was gone. They were trying to be nice, considering her feelings she guessed.

Her first day free, she lounged in bed, going on crying jags and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. The second day she paid for the first day with a slamming headache. The third day she felt somewhat better, but not enough to go back to the gym. By the weekend, she wanted out of the apartment and called Byron and Jim. They all agreed to meet at a club downtown for an evening out. It wasn’t a normal metrosexual hangout, so having her along helped even the playing field. Neither of the three of them wanted to be bugged about dancing.

By the end of the night, she felt more like her old self again and thanked the guys when they let her out at her apartment only minutes before midnight. She would go to the gym the next day and get back into her old routine. Everything would be fine. She didn’t need her heart to function, she just needed it to love.

Habit had her checking her phone before she cut it off for the night, and there was a missed call from Clay on it. She swallowed down the bile and erased the message without listening to it.

Over the next few days, her phone rang off and on and she ignored all the calls and erased all the messages from both men. Finally, after a week of them calling, they stopped, and she didn’t hear from them again. A month passed and she came home one day to find Clay camped out on her apartment building’s doorstep. She sighed and stepped around him to punch in the security code.

He stood up and waited for her to nod that he could come up with her. What did he want after all this time? He followed her up without a word and waited while she unlocked the apartment before following her inside. She closed and locked the door then dropped her bag and key on the little table by the door.

Turning to Clay, she licked her lips and found him watching her tongue like a starved man. It turned her on so much she felt her stomach sink and her pussy begin to weep. What was she doing with him in her apartment? Had she forgotten what they meant to her?

Clay seemed to come to his senses first. He drew in a deep breath and spoke in a strained voice.

“I know you don’t have any reason to listen to me, but I hope you’ll let me talk to you,” he began.

“What is there left to talk about, Clay? I think we’ve already beaten a dead horse.”

“I love you, baby. I’ve never stopped loving you. Neither has Elliot, but he thinks you’ll never give us a chance again. I’m hoping you will.”

“A chance at what, Clay? Hurting me again? Cutting out my heart and leaving me to bleed to death?”

“We never meant to hurt you. Things got out of hand and then Ann showed up.”

“And the baby comes first.”

“No, it didn’t in the end. Elliot and I tried to call you for two weeks. You wouldn’t speak to us, and I’m guessing that you erased all our messages without listening to them. Because if you had, you would have known that we wanted to marry you right then, regardless of if the baby was ours or not.”

“You’re saying you would have married me still not knowing if you had a child by another woman or not? Why, Clay?”

“Because we didn’t love Ann to begin with. We could still have our child as a part of our lives without marrying her. We couldn’t have you in our lives without marrying you.”

“She would have let you have visitation even being married to me and not her?” Desire asked.

“She wouldn’t have had a choice. We would have sued for custody of the child if we needed to.”

“What if I hadn’t wanted to raise another woman’s baby?” she asked quietly.

“Then we would have sued for parental rights to see the child when we wanted to. She’s in no position to take care of herself, much less a baby.”

“I feel sorry for her then.”

“Don’t, she did it to herself. She was also trying to bilk three other men, telling them the baby was theirs as well.” Clay took a seat on the couch.

“So is the baby yours or not?” she asked.

“Does it matter to you? I mean without knowing if the baby is ours or not, would you still consider marrying us?”

Desire looked at him and realized he was trying to save face as well as ask her to marry him. He’d come back on his knees, so to speak, and she held all three of their hearts in the palm of her hand.

“Clay, it never was about if the baby was yours or not. It was about trust and being honest about things. It wouldn’t have mattered then if the baby was yours or not. I would have married you both.”

“And now?” he asked.

“Now it still doesn’t matter about the baby. It still matters about trust and honesty. I’m scared to trust you.”

“Will you at least give us a chance?” he asked.

Desire looked at him a long time with a longing in her soul. She felt pieces of her heart mend as she let his words sink in. Could she forgive them and trust them again? Maybe.

“You’re a package deal, right?” she asked.

Clay looked startled and a little unsure.

“Yes.”

“Then where is the other part of the package?”

Clay smiled and stood up. “He’s out in the truck waiting to see if I got past your defenses.”

“Call him and tell him to come grovel for my forgiveness and we’ll go from there.”

Clay grinned wide now and pulled out his phone. He punched one button then said, “Get your ass up here, now,” and shoved his phone back on the clip.

“He’s on his way.” Clay took a step closer to her.

She took a step back. “I want to hear his story first. I hope you got your stories straight this time,” she only half teased.

“Remember, Elliot is the hardheaded one of us,” Clay began when Elliot banged on the door.

Desire looked through the peephole and unlocked the locks before letting him in. He almost immediately fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around her legs, hugging them to his chest.

“Please say yes,” Elliot begged.

Desire was so taken aback she almost fell backward, but Clay was there to catch her. Elliot looked up at her with a desperate look in his eyes.

“I’ll never keep anything from you again. Please give us a chance. That’s all I’m asking. Just a chance.”

“Your brother was asking me to marry him,” she teased.

Elliot sprang to his feet and picked her up and swung her around.

“Did you tell him yes? I love you, Desire!” He didn’t put her down but walked her back against the wall and proceeded to kiss her senseless.

Desire pushed him away and laughed. “I haven’t told him anything yet. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me how you feel.”

Elliot huffed out a breath and grabbed her hand and wrapped it around the bulge growing larger down his leg.

“That’s how I feel,” he said. “I want you so bad I could pound nails, but more than anything, I want you to want us again.”

“I never stopped wanting you, Elliot. I just couldn’t live with never knowing if you were telling me the truth or keeping something from me. I couldn’t handle being second best all the time.”

“You’re never second best. I know I treated you that way for a few days, but I figured out quick that wasn’t where you deserved to be. I’m sorry.” Elliot looked deep into her eyes.

Desire returned his stare with warmth in her eyes. She loved them both and together, they were mending her shattered heart. Could she trust them? She wasn’t sure, but she could give them another chance.

“I’d like us to be friends and go from there,” she said. “I can’t just start trusting you like nothing has happened. If we start out as friends and everything works out, then maybe we can be more than friends later.”