Shannon's Fairy-Tale Foursome (6 page)

“Must you talk that way, J? You’re just annoying us,” Katie-Anne grouched, her voice sounding oddly high pitched. If Katie-Anne donned green fur and lived in a trash can, she would be Oscar the Grouch.
A female, soprano version of Oscar.

“Speak for yourself, Katie-Anne,” Shannon snapped. “Ignore Oscarina.
I
want to hear this.”

Jaycee leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees and balancing her chin on her hands. “They have some sexual tension festering. Obviously, both of the men want the other, but neither of them will admit it.” She shook her head. “Men are so obtuse.”

“Says the pot to the kettle. As fucking usual,” Katie-Anne remarked snidely.
There’s the diva we know and love.

“Kiss my ass,” Jaycee sneered.

Pretending to shiver, Katie-Anne ribbed Jaycee, “No. I know where it has been.”

With a lecherous grin, Jaycee responded, “Hell yeah!”

Katie-Anne pretended to gag, “He’s my brother, Jaycee Elizabeth.”

Jaycee seemed to be confused. It was all for show, of course, but it was no less funny. “And?”

Shannon coughed to cover her laughter. Right now, she would be in huge trouble if she made the mistake of finding humor in the two women’s half-joking, half-serious verbal exchange. They fought about this constantly, and Shannon wished they would just get over it. It was funny as hell but seriously annoying.

“I don’t want to hear about you and Gray or Cade and Gray. I certainly don’t want to hear about all three of you.” Katie-Anne crossed her legs and arms simultaneously. “Hell, I don’t want to hear about you and Cade either. He is my honorary brother. Both of them are virgins.”

Giving into her amusement, Shannon nearly fell out of the chair howling with laughter.

Jaycee scoffed, but her lips twitched. “Those two have never been virgins. Trust me. I’ve heard every rumor about their raunchy escapades.” She wiggled her eyebrows and gloated, “It used to all be hearsay, but I can now confirm every salacious detail. I’m one lucky bitch.” At the end of her bragging, she winked audaciously.

“You are about to be—”

Having grown tired of the whining, Shannon cut off Katie-Anne before this conversation spiraled into a complete bitch-fest. “Stop the bitching. She’s never going to quit talking about your brother, Cade, and fucking. She is a pervert, and she loves to piss you off.”

Katie-Anne rolled her eyes, jumping from the trivial topic into the one that Shannon had hoped to avoid. “I’m going to say this as nicely as possible, my dear.”

Shannon cringed internally, waiting for the brutal attack. Katie-Anne rarely pulled her punches, and she wasn’t going to do it now. Katie-Anne proved her right. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Fight or flight?
The question pounded in her temples as adrenaline careened through every, single one of her body’s systems. She sensed the not-so-subtle differences. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest, and her breathing increased drastically.

A burst of energy had her off the lounger, pacing the elegant room like a caged animal. The irrepressible restlessness controlled her, and she couldn’t subdue it.

“Shannon Roberts, you tell us what the hell is going on with you,” Katie-Anne demanded in the firmest voice Shannon had ever heard her friend use. Refolding her tanned arms hostilely across her chest, Katie-Anne pinned Shannon against the wall with the daggers shooting out of her eyes. “No more hiding and no more fucking lies.”

Guessing her best course of action became Shannon’s priority. She needed to get inspired in the next minute or so. Otherwise, there would be hell to pay, at her expense. When the coolheaded Katie-Anne morphed into the hotheaded diva, trouble was up ahead.
Danger, Will Robinson!

Katie-Anne didn’t even give her thirty seconds. “Spill, Shan. We are
waiting
.”

Watching in avid fascination, Jaycee twirled a gorgeous blonde lock of hair around her skinny finger. “Come on, Shan. It’s us. We share everything.”

Shannon turned her back to them and paced away. “I can’t.” She couldn’t hide the crack in her voice. If she hadn’t been so lost in the turbulent sea of her emotions, she would be mortified at revealing her pain, even to Jaycee and Katie-Anne. “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

“Yes. You can.”

Shannon whirled back around to meet her friends head-on. “No, really,” she denied emphatically, hoping she could impress upon her two friends that it wasn’t them. It was her. “I can’t or I won’t or whatever you want to call it.”

Katie-Anne and Jaycee looked at each other intently. They seemed to be sharing a brief moment of silent communication that made no sense whatsoever.

Puzzled, Shannon whipped her head back and forth between her two friends who were studiously ignoring her. “Why do I feel like I’m missing something important?”

“Because you are,” Katie-Anne replied haughtily as she and Jaycee turned their attention back to Shannon. She didn’t seem inclined to share the big mystery, choosing instead to cock her head to the side and scrutinize Shannon with an intensity that had her fidgeting. “You want to play hardball, Shan? Then we’ll play hardball.”

“Yep,” Jaycee agreed gleefully, rubbing her hands together. “Dare time!”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“No,” Shannon cried with more volume than she’d intended. She rubbed her sweat-coated hands up and down her oversized pant legs, the roughness of the black jeans chafing the soft flesh of her upper thighs. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to play Truth or Dare. It might have saved Jaycee from her rut, but it won’t work for me.”

“Ah-ah.” Katie-Anne wagged an obnoxious finger that Shannon instinctively wanted to break in her general direction. “We think that it’s about time to shake out all the monotony in your life. You know, the life where there is nothing going on, nothing you need to talk about, and nothing you need to share.”

Flipping her dark hair over her shoulder, the high and mighty Katie-Anne smiled disdainfully. “If the garbage you want us to believe is true, honey, you’re going to need more than a little shaking. It’s going to take a fucking earthquake.”

For one second, Shannon’s animosity reached a feverish pitch, causing her to forget that this woman was one of her closest friends. “You sarcastic bitch.”

“Aw, thank you, dear. You’re just too sweet,” Katie-Anne thanked her facetiously.

Shannon wanted to wrap her fingers around that swan-like neck and throttle her.

“Behave, Katie-Anne,” Jaycee chided. “No need to be so damn nasty.”

Katie-Anne talked over Jaycee as if she weren’t there. “Shannon Roberts, I dare you to prove me wrong.”

“Huh?” That wasn’t a dare.
Was it?

“Show me that there is nothing wrong. Show me that there is nothing going on. Show me that you don’t care about Jaycee’s brothers. If you have nothing to hide, prove it,” Katie-Anne challenged scornfully.

Katie-Anne’s response left a lot to be desired. Shannon still couldn’t grasp what she meant.

“Um, okay.” Shannon wasn’t sure if her words were a question or an answer. It wasn’t significant anyway. Right now, the only critical thing was finding out what the hell was going on. And, even more important, what exactly they wanted
her
to do.

She didn’t have to wait very long before Katie-Anne set her straight.

* * * *

Lounging in the living room, Randy heard the front door open with a bang, followed closely by a noisy clatter that sounded suspiciously like something tumbling headlong to the floor and busting open.

Getting to his feet, Randy flipped off the television and headed for the foyer to check on his more than likely inebriated brothers. They only made this kind of ruckus when they were drunk out of their minds.

Bastards.
Randy was definitely not in the mood to deal with two shit-faced brothers tonight, not when he was stone-cold sober.

Randy stopped short when he spotted his brothers standing in the entryway. To his surprise, Jared and Drew wore masks of stoicism. However, their wild eyes directly contradicted their faces. These two were not intoxicated in the slightest. They probably wished they were, but neither of them had overindulged.

“I thought you were going to stay over at Mary’s tonight,” he said nonchalantly, as if he could care less that they had planned on fucking Shannon’s greatest adversary tonight. It made him violent that they would be such assholes. Who the hell dated their woman’s rival for two months?
Seriously.
Who were they kidding anyway?

They didn’t give a damn about that poisonous bitch. If they did, they would have fucked her before now. Hell, Randy figured they wouldn’t have fucked her tonight, either. They could pretend all they wanted, but he knew better.

Randy prayed Shannon forgave the morons when they worked out all this bullshit between them, and he had no doubt they would work it out eventually. He had started the ball rolling last week by hiring a private investigator to find out what she hid from them and, he suspected, everyone else.

Jaycee didn’t have a clue or she would have shared everything a long time ago. She wanted the four of them to be happy even if she stretched the boundaries of friendship to get there.

After the lengths Gray and Cade had gone to win Jaycee back, she understood that a person will do whatever it takes in the name of love. Randy ought to have a plotting session with his sister. Even if Jared and Drew had given up, he hadn’t. And he wouldn’t.

Jared glared at him viciously, apparently spoiling for a fight. “No.”

Only one thing could have them turned this inside out. “You saw Shannon.”

“Keep your comments to yourself, Randy. I’m not in the mood.” Drew obviously wanted some hand-to-hand combat, too.

Randy turned his back on his brothers and lazily strolled over to a picture of Shannon, Jaycee, and Katie-Anne. He pretended to straighten the frame even though it didn’t need it then swung back around to face his brothers once again. “So what happened?”

Drew ripped at the buttons on his jacket and said, “None of your damn business.”

“Ah-ah,” Randy disagreed. “That is where you are wrong. If it involves Shannon, it’s my business, especially now.”

In the process of kicking off his shoes, Jared froze. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you two did decide to move on. Right?” Randy smiled cockily. “That makes her
my
business and not
yours
.”

Jared rushed at him, grabbed him by his collar and wheeled around to smash him against the wall. It hurt far more than Randy would admit, but he faked a smile he didn’t feel in the least and taunted anyway, “What, big brother? You’re the guys that gave up on her. Don’t you think that you’re both being wishy-washy? Make a decision.”

His brother tightened his grip, making breathing increasingly difficult. Randy wheezed, “Get off the pot or shit, boys.”

Baring his teeth, Jared warned him, “Randy, don’t push me right now.”

“Ah, why not? Big brother didn’t get to fuck out all his aggression?” Randy’s rationality faded as his black temper took possession of his body. “Did Mary have a headache? Poor you. Why don’t you call Leila? She’ll spread her legs as fast as Mary would.”

He peered over Jared’s shoulder to see his middle brother standing against the wall. “Drew, Drew, Drew. Couldn’t you get it up? Usually, a man is much older before that problem sets in.”

Watching his brother’s outrage climb, a compulsion to push Drew over the edge arose inside him. “Dr. Murphy will prescribe you something for your erectile dysfunction. Call him in the morning and you’ll be set.
Or
, if you are too embarrassed, I’ll be more than happy to call for you.”

Seething, Jared asked Drew, “Want to kill him? Or do I get the honors?” without looking away. Poisonous toxins poured out of Jared’s pores that could kill a thousand men, but Randy was immune to this side of Jared, the side that sent many people scampering away like pussies.

“Yeah, Drew. Who’s calling dibs on killing the only honest man in the room?”

A look of deep contemplation flittered across Drew’s face. The V between his brows deepened, as did his frown.

“I’m waiting, Drew,” Jared groused. “Decide something. My patience is nonexistent.”

Drew continued to think silently, giving Randy even longer to prod them. “See, I told you that you needed to get fucked. If you had, then you wouldn’t be about to commit a crime that will get you thrown into the nearest jail. If that happens, you definitely won’t get laid.”

Looking directly into the eyes identical to his own, Randy took his last stab at Jared. “I bet she won’t even visit you in jail.”

“Fucker, she isn’t visiting me now.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” Randy barked at Jared sarcastically. “But at least here you have some cheap piece of ass who’ll fuck you while you pretend she’s the real woman you want. And not even complain when you moan another woman’s name instead of hers.”

Jared snarled. “Yeah, well, we’d have to fuck her first. Wouldn’t we?”