Out of Bounds (Reedsville Roosters #5) (2 page)

Dean actually cracked a grin. “Yep.”

“Excellent. What’s the deal? Buy five bottles, get one free?”

“Four.”

“Ooh!”

“I take it you like wine,” Gary said to her.

Lorena shrugged. “More than I like beer. I
really
like moscato, but only good moscato. Not that limey crap people try to pass off as drinkable.”

“A little sweet for me, but hey—who am I to judge?”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t know what to do with something sweet, would you?” She narrowed her dark eyes at him. “And I think you
are
judging.”

“I’m just trying to figure out what aisle I should hit in advance of the next time I expect to see you.”

Her lips parted wordlessly, brow furrowed, and the tight-lipped bringer of beer and sullenness folded his arms over his chest and glowered at Gary.

Not gonna get very far with a demeanor like that, bro.

Olivia sidled over adjusting her baseball cap and slinging Sidney up to her hip. “Lo, where’d your rings go?”

“Huh?”

“Your rings. You have a decided lack of sparkle right now.”

Lo looked down at her left hand. “Shit!”

She looked frantically at the area around her feet and then, cursing under her breath, took off for first base with her gaze locked on the ground.

Olivia sighed and looked at Dean. “You didn’t get those rings adjusted yet?”

He rubbed his temples and closed his eyes. On a ragged exhalation, he said, “Kept meaning to make an appointment.”

“You’ve been married six months.”

Married? No fuckin’ way.

“You should have taken care of that right after the honeymoon,” Olivia said. “I would have thought her losing her rings on a cruise ship would have been fright enough for you. I mean, shit, we’re not talking silver and diamond flecks.”

Ken walked over, glancing from Lorena—who was walking the bases—to the group. “What happened?”

“Lorena lost the motorcycle ring again,” Olivia said.

“The motorcycle ring?” Gary asked flatly, already bored with the conversation. The important thing had already been divulged—his potential bedmate already had one.

Olivia nodded. “Dean sold his bike to buy Lo’s engagement ring. I mean, the wedding band is special, too, but losing an engagement ring like that is enough to give any woman heart palpitations.”

“Well, we’d better help her find it, then,” Gary said, just as flatly.

They started for the field, all looking down at the grass in search of a fat-ass diamond.

Just my luck.

The very first woman he’d been interested in outside of his job was married.

Happily, though?

He glanced up at Lorena who was on her knees at second base, patting the grass. Dean knelt beside her, peering at the ground, his expression neutral as it’d been all afternoon, and Lo was running her mouth a mile a minute.

Dean rubbed her back and, briefly, she laid her head against his arm before continuing her search.

Happily enough.

Another woman Gary had misread.

He wondered if he should turn the tables and start paying for affection like his ex-clients, because that was obviously the only way he was going to get any.

Piece of garbage
.

Dean Yeats gripped his steering wheel a little tighter and glanced across the truck cab at Lo, who was adjusting her wedding rings.

In the six months they’d been married, he’d gotten used to men coming on to his wife. It didn’t matter if she were alone or if he were standing right there, lurking behind her. Men behaved as if he was just a bodyguard or some kind of mute statue with no purpose beyond taking up space.

He didn’t know what else he could do. He’d never been the confrontational type, and Lo wasn’t the type who’d overstep boundaries, but he was getting really sick of being invisible. At over six feet tall, he
shouldn’t
have been invisible. Apparently, Lo spun some kind of magic that made him easy to ignore when she was around. He’d been caught up in her magic, after all. That was why he’d asked her to marry him five minutes after he met her.

Not
really
five minutes, though that was the joke all their friends told. The truth was that he’d popped the question a few weeks after meeting her at Ken’s place, and hadn’t even had a ring at the time. The question had slipped out of his stupid mouth, and she’d given him this long stare that had made him want to say “Just jokin’,” but everyone who knew Dean knew he never told jokes. He was an uninteresting motherfucker. He’d made his peace with that.

For whatever reason, Lo had said “yes,” anyway.

He’d thought he was going to stroke out when she’d said yes.

“Maybe I should just stop wearing them until I get them resized,” she said.

“Don’t.” He cringed, and gave his head a slight shake before turning onto the long driveway of the wooded property Ken shared with Clint and Olivia.

Dean had left some tools there when he’d been helping Ken fix the motor in his hotrod, and needed them to tune up his truck. He probably could have done the task at the garage he worked at—his boss Brent probably wouldn’t care if he needed to take a couple of hours—but that was the sort of weekend project Dean liked to have for whenever he needed to escape Lo.

He didn’t need to escape her because she annoyed him, though. He sometimes fled because he was an uninteresting motherfucker, and he worried he was annoying the shit out of her. He never had anything to say. He just liked to hear her talk, but when he didn’t talk back, she clammed up.

He wished she wouldn’t.

He parked the truck behind Clint’s SUV, and had his door open right as Ken strode outside with Sidney sitting on one forearm.

“I would have taken the stuff to you at work on Monday if you reminded me,” Ken said.

“Nah, that’s all right,” Dean said. “Your house isn’t out of the way, I figured I’d just stop by.”

“Well, come on in for a minute. Olivia’s putting away gear from the party. What took you so long to get out here? You left right behind us.”

“Stopped to get gas.”

“Ah.” Ken poked his head into the truck cab and said to Lo, “Come in for a minute, unless you’ve got someplace else to be tonight.”

“Aw, come on,” Lo said. “You know what happens when me and Olivia get together in the same room. We start talking and we can’t stop, and then you get annoyed.”

“Who?” Ken asked. Whenever he furrowed his forehead the way he did, the barbell at the bridge of his nose angled in a way that made Dean’s stomach lurch. Ken might have claimed he couldn’t feel it, but Dean sometimes thought he was feeling it
for
him. Ken had a lot less metal in his body than he did before Sidney had been born, but obviously he wasn’t interested in turning over a new leaf all at once. The dozens of tats would probably never go away, anyway.

“All of you dudes,” Lo said. “You get really, really quiet, and when we go to see why, you’re just sitting there on the sofas with your hands folded, and staring at each other.”

Ken scoffed. “That’s because you and Olivia tell crazy stories. We’re quiet because we’re eavesdropping.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s true,” someone said, and Dean realized after a moment that it’d been
him
.

Shit.

Lo’s jaw dropped. “Shady husband. What am I gonna do with you?”

Don’t care, as long as you keep me.

“All this time, I thought you weren’t paying attention,” she said.

“Hard not to.”

“Because I’m so loud?”

“Because you’re funny.”

“I am?”

Dean fixed a querying gaze on Ken, who put up his thumb in an
I got you dude,
sort of way. He poked his head into the cab. “Come on in for a while. You know damn well you don’t have anywhere else to be, and I want to hear the rest of that story you were telling Olivia about Dejon Paul.”

“Y’all suckers overheard that story?
Man
.” Lo stabbed the seatbelt fastener and opened her door. “I guess the talk doesn’t count as gossip in your opinion if you’re just listening and not contributing.”

“You’ve got crazy coworkers. Can you blame us?”

“Yep.” Lo hopped down and shut her door. As she walked around the back of the truck, Dean looked to Ken.

Ken made that thumbs-up again.

“I’m not telling you the rest of the Dejon story,” she said, walking backward down the path. “That mess was too incredible, and I don’t want you accusing me of exaggerating again.”

“But the exaggeration is the best part.”

“But the thing is, I’m
not
exaggerating. The stories are worth telling because they’re stranger than fiction. This stuff really happened.”

Olivia appeared in the doorway holding a wineglass and a dishtowel. “What stuff?”

“The Dejon stuff. Ken wants to hear the rest of the story.”

Olivia rolled her eyes and called over to Ken, “Bring that child into the house before she turns into one big mosquito bite, please. I swear, why y’all chose to live in the woods…”

“You know exactly why we live in the woods. Remember what Clint told you? So no one could hear me scream?”

“Behave yourself.”

“I am.” Ken ruffled the top of Sidney’s hair. “As well as could be expected from a hoodlum like me, anyway.”

“You’re my favorite hoodlum, Kenny. Never forget.”

Olivia pulled Lo in out of the heat and mosquitoes and, smiling, Ken watched the screen door close before turning back to Dean. “So, how are things going?”

Dean shrugged. “Hard to say. I mean, she’s always in such a good mood. I can’t tell if she’s really happy or if she’s just putting on a good show.”

“What have you been doing?”

“I try to call her during the day sometimes, when I know she’s on break, but I can never think of anything to say. I feel stupid, just sitting there breathing on the phone.”

“Okay, you’re not a talker. I think she knows that.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Obviously, she
is
a talker, and I don’t want her to think I don’t care what she has to say. I just never know what to say back.”

“What makes you think you need to say anything?”

“Because she always stops. She’ll come in and start telling me about her day, but she never gets to the end of the story.”

“Do you ever tell her about yours?”

“My stories aren’t as good as hers. I mean, what can I say? Not a lot of excitement happens at the shop, and most of the staff either have our ears plugged or have headphones on. Not much conversation going on except at lunch, and we tend to do that as fast as possible so we can get the hell out of there.”

“Is she affectionate at all?” Ken asked. “Does she seem like she’s pulling away?”

“She’s the same as she was before, I guess. She’s not really shy about affection, though she always seems a little stunned when I initiate it.”

“Are you the initiator that rarely?”

Dean winced and dragged a hand through his hair.

He hated to quantify who did what, but he’d been trying to be more observant. He worried about his marriage and that his pretty little wife wouldn’t stay.

“You know how I grew up,” he said. “I don’t think I ever saw my parents touch each other out in the open. Not even so much as a kiss on the cheek. They were too Baptist, I guess. Because of them, I always feel like I’m overstepping boundaries even when I’m nowhere near the lines.”

“Yeah, we gotta work on that.” Ken swatted a mosquito away from Sidney’s hand and then lifted her tiny fingers toward his face. “Huh. Look at that. You’ve got a little freckle there just like your daddy.”

Dean scanned Ken’s large hands and then his face. There was no resemblance as far as he could see.

Ken laughed, obviously at Dean’s confusion. “Oh, come on. Everyone knows. You should have guessed by her last name.”

“But your last name is Morstad, too. That wouldn’t have told me anything.”

“My name wasn’t Morstad when she was born. Hadn’t gotten married yet.”

“How do you feel about that?”

“About what? Sidney being Clint’s?”

“Well, no. That doesn’t seem to make a difference to you.”

“Nope. Sure doesn’t.”

“I mean…about how complicated the relationship is. I’m not sure how I can ask without sounding like a complete hick.”

“Hey. We speak the same language, one hick to another.” Ken shrugged. “Listen, the relationship isn’t complicated to us. Maybe outsiders look at us and wonder how such an arrangement could possibly work, but being a trio is natural to us. Maybe Clint having been in a relationship like this before helped a little. He knew what the dynamics were supposed to feel like. Also helped me to have Brent and his lovers as role models. They were the reason I even considered giving this polyamory thing a shot. Olivia needs different things from Clint and me, just like I need different things from her and Clint and him from the two of us. There’s no single perfect person for any of us, so we sort of compensate for each other’s shortcomings. Works out pretty evenly all around.”

Shortcomings
. Dean rubbed his chin and muttered, “I know a little something about shortcomings.”

Ken laughed, and then started up the path. “You didn’t think this arrangement was all about the kinky sex, did you?”

“Won’t lie. The thought had crossed my mind.” Dean locked the truck doors and followed.

“Yeah. I understand how anyone would. Hell, my parents didn’t understand the relationship until very recently. Obviously, they’ve known about Clint for a very long time, but they didn’t understand how Olivia fit in. They were used to thinking of relationships as a two-party system without regard to the fact that sometimes teams work better.”

They stepped into the house and wiped their feet on the mat.

“They understand now, though?” Dean asked.

“Yeah. They
love
Olivia. I think they know that Clint and I are hopeless cases and that we need a handler sometimes. She’s the organized one of the three of us. If we didn’t have her, we’d never make big plans. We’d just keep spinning our wheels and hoping something clicks.”

That was where Dean was with Lo—hoping something would click so he’d open up.

Lo poked her head out of the kitchen doorway and waggled her eyebrows at Dean. “Guess what they have.”

“Tell me.”

“Cheese straws.”

“Oh. My mother sent those,” Ken said. “Olivia’s the only one here who eats them.”

“I
love
them. Extra paprika gives them a nice kick. Tell her I said so. They go good with the wine.”

“Gotten into the wine already?” Dean asked.

“Well,
duh
, babe. It’s moscato.” Lo disappeared into the kitchen.

Dean shifted his weight and looked to Ken. “So…”

“Come on, dude. I’m not gonna do the Cyrano de Bergerac thing for you. She’s
your
wife.”

“But you’re better at this. What you and Olivia have seems to be easier—more…I dunno.
Natural
.”

“Nah, I think I’m just easier to read. Liv doesn’t have to work that hard to figure me out, so keeping conversations going is kind of like breathing. Just happens.”

“Can’t I just watch you for a while and take notes?”

Ken let his eyes cross and stepped into the kitchen.

“Had to ask.” Dean followed.

He was pathetic, and the revelation wasn’t a new one. He just didn’t want to be in a situation like his parents’ where they stayed married only because they were expected to and because they were afraid of the stigma of divorce.

Dean actually
loved
his wife, and he was pretty sure she liked him a lot, too, but he was under no pretenses that the new groom gleam wouldn’t wear off sooner rather than later. He didn’t really have much going for him besides the fact their house was paid off and he had a steady job with benefits.

Ken settled Sidney into her highchair and scooted her up to the table between Clint and Olivia. He ruffled Clint’s perfect hair—making the man huff in response—and moved to the refrigerator.

Dean filed those reactions away. Their natural flow of being. The effort, or lack thereof. They worked just as smoothly as they would have been if they’d been two, not three.

Lorena sat perched on a barstool next to Gary, looking tiny in comparison, but she always did. She wasn’t much over five feet tall, and her stature was one of the things that had initially sparked his protective instincts over her. That, and the fact she was pretty. Delicate featured. A brown-eyed doll with frizzy hair and a bit of an accent she claimed she didn’t have. She did have one, though. She’d spent half her life in the Dominican Republic and still carried the flavor of the place in her speech.

Gary splashed a bit of moscato into his glass and took a tentative sip. “Ugh. Just as foul as I remember.”

“I invite you to find something else to drink,” she said. “I have no problem with finishing off that bottle on my own.”

“I hear drinking alone is bad luck.”

“What you’re thinking of is driving drunk.”

“You’ve got a response for everything don’t you, Lo?”

“Occupational hazard.”

Dean moved to the fridge and accepted a beer from Ken.

“You might as well be drinking candy,” Gary said.

“Nah, I’m already sweet enough.”

“Are you? I haven’t seen any evidence.”

“I’m perfectly sweet. Aren’t I sweet, Dean?”