Snow White and the Seven Hunks editedbymegan .wps (29 page)

I nodded, but I didn’t really register anything except the fact that he was clearly about to leave. Panic wafted through me. I didn’t really and truly believe I was in any danger, but I’d been uneasy since I’d left the Victorian. I thought it was mostly because I’d gotten accustomed to being surrounded by people and just being alone was enough to make me nervous now. The truth was, though, that I was having trouble sleeping because of it and no number of locks on my door was making me feel any safer—I’d added two.

Beyond that, I had a terrible feeling that I was about to watch my last, my one and only, chance to be with
them
slip through my fingers. I knew I was going to have to accept that there wasn’t going to be any sort of relationship—not the kind I wanted. I’d probably just be ‘one of the guys’ if I moved in, maybe a sort of dorm mother—they had mentioned the cooking and although they hadn’t mentioned laundry I was willing to bet I’d be the laundress before long, too. At least I’d be with them, though, get to work with them—maybe fool around a little bit while they were between girlfriends.

Even
I
thought it sounded pathetic to be willing to settle for so little, but realized I had to be practical and try to consider my situation with objectivity. I knew I was reasonably attractive and had a decent figure. I’d never really lacked for male companionship when I wanted it, but I was looking at young, grade A beef—four of them—and they were smart and ambitious. They were on their way up. I knew it. And I also knew I’d hit my peak and was looking at the downward slope. I wasn’t top choice.

It wouldn’t be hard at all for handsome, well built, successful males to command the very best.

Was it really being smart to pitch the whole cake out the window because I

couldn’t
have
the whole cake, though? Or was it better to get a few slices … maybe?

Hell I knew men well enough to know I could pick up the slack anyway. They weren’t going to withhold it, I didn’t think, if I was handy and they were needy.

And, if they did, well, I could always move on when I got tired of playing

doormat.

“You know,” I said quickly when they all got up. “Now that I think about it that actually sounds like a really good deal. If you’re sure you don’t mind?”

The tension went out of Gabe for the first time since he’d arrived. A slow smile curled his lips. “We wouldn’t have offered otherwise.”

“Can I come tonight?”

I blushed when they glanced at each other.

“I mean, as long as you’re here anyway and I’d have a ride ….”

“What do you want to bring with you?” Hunter asked, glancing around.

“I could just grab a few clothes and toiletries and maybe come back this weekend and decide what to do with everything else—if y’all don’t mind waiting a few minutes?”

“No problem.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Hunter offered. “Do you have any boxes?”

“Uh—actually, no. I’d planned to pack a suitcase ….”

“We can head downstairs and see if anybody’s just moved in and discarded

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some,” Shaun volunteered—apparently for both himself and Hunter. They disappeared out the door.

“You guys help yourself to anything in the kitchen you want. I’ll just grab a few things,” I said to Gabe and Basil, rushing toward my bedroom.

I’d tossed my open suitcase on the bed and was surreptitiously counting

underwear and checking them for wear and tear before I put them in the suitcase when Shaun and Hunter breezed in with boxes. Hunter headed to the bathroom with one.

Shaun headed toward my closet.

“I’m probably not going to need anything in there,” I said, moving to the

bathroom door to check on Hunter and remind him not forget my toothbrush. I

discovered he’d already cleaned out my medicine cabinet and the bottles around the shower and was clearing the vanity. It looked like he planned a clean sweep. I decided I didn’t have to worry about him leaving anything I really needed. When I turned back to the bedroom, Shaun had pulled out the drawers of my dresser and was systematically emptying them.

I probably didn’t need half that stuff. Dismissing the urge to tell him, I raced him to the next drawer and finished packing my suitcase. “Ready!” I called struggling into the living room with the suitcase to discover Basil and Gabe heading out the front door, each carrying a box. Gabe stopped and held his hand out imperiously for the suitcase.

“I’ll take that. You check to make sure you aren’t leaving anything you might want.”

I didn’t think I really needed to, but I thrust the suitcase handle at him and turned back. Shaun and Hunter were coming out of my bedroom with loaded boxes, so I

stepped back and held the door for them. When they’d left, I went back into my bedroom and discovered that, between the two of them, they’d pretty well packed up all of my personal belongings. Except for the furniture, of course. One of them had even grabbed my pillows off my bed. Shrugging, I decided to see what was left in the kitchen and saw that Basil and Gabe had cleaned that out.

Alrighty then! That only really left a few pieces of furniture because some of it had come with the apartment. When I got back to the living room, I found Shaun and Hunter disconnecting my TV set.

“Good thinking!” I said, relieved that they’d thought about it. “It might not have been here when I got back!” I frowned. “Is there going to be enough room for everyone with all this stuff?”

“Sure!” Shaun said. “We brought the dooley.”

All at sea, I followed them as they left, locking up. I discovered what they meant when we got to the street. The ‘dooley’ was a monster truck—front and back seat
and
a full sized bed with double wheels on either side of the back. My suitcase and boxes didn’t take up even half of the space in the back of the truck.

“Do I get in the front seat or the back?”

“Front,” Gabe said.

“Back,” Shaun said at almost the same time.

I glanced from one to the other. “It you don’t mind, Shaun, I’d really rather sit in the front. I get motion sickness in the back.”

He looked suspicious.

“I really do. I’m serious.”

Gabe grabbed my arm and helped me up the step and then into the truck. I’d

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never been in anything like it, needless to say. I discovered when I’d gotten in that Basil was climbing in the other side and there was an odd looking seat in the middle, like a seat on top of the main seat. “What’s this?” I asked, disconcerted as I settled on it.

“Jump seat for toddlers,” Gabe said.

I turned to gape at him. He started laughing. “It’s the armrest. It tilts up.”

“You’re so funny!” I said, embarrassed, but I couldn’t help but laugh. I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that it must be an armrest except that I’d never seen one so big—wide enough for my ass. It was clearly a monster truck for big men, though.

I should’ve expected it, I supposed.

I spent a good bit of the trip looking the truck over—what I could see of it. “This is so cool! I’ve never been in a truck before. I had no idea they were so nice! Built in DVD player—cup holders! And it’s so high. I can see over the cars. That must be handy, being able to see the traffic ahead so well.”

They looked amused, but they pointed out different features.

It entertained me until I discovered Gabe was taking the freeway onramp. I

settled back, studying the view of the city at night, listening to the guys talk—expecting any minute Gabe was going to turn off the freeway.

We’d left the city completely behind and I was beginning to wonder where on

earth their place was when Gabe turned on his blinker and moved over to get off. We drove for another thirty minutes before I saw a landmark that looked familiar. I saw several more not long after that.

“It’s weird, I know, but I think I’ve been this way before.”

Gabe glanced at me and then exchanged a look with Basil.

“It looks familiar, huh?” Basil murmured, amusement threading his voice.

“It does! I suppose it might be because it’s dark, though.” I’d hardly gotten the comment out when Gabe slowed and turned in a driveway that was
very
familiar. It totally blew my mind when he passed the arbor gate that led up to the Victorian I’d spent six weeks with them in and drove around the side to a detached garage.

“This is your house? I mean, you live here?”

Gabe turned the engine off and shifted around to look at me. “This is our house—

mine and Shaun’s. Basil and Hunter room with us … and now you.”

I was too bemused to know how I felt about that discovery. I climbed out of the truck behind them and stared at the house while they headed to the back of the truck to unload it.

“Before you get too impressed,” Shaun said dryly, “we inherited it.”

I threw a startled look at him, wondering who they’d inherited from.

Grandparents?”

“There were some wild parties in that house … the first couple of years after

Mom died.” He snorted derisively. “Until the insurance money ran out, anyway.”

I swallowed a little convulsively, feeling my chest tighten at the look on his face.

I knew I shouldn’t pick at the wound, but I couldn’t help myself. “You couldn’t have been very old. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

He flicked an angry look at me. I thought it was because I’d stuck my nose in

until I realized I’d insulted him with the reference to his age. “We were old enough to know better,” he said tightly. “I was seventeen, Gabe eighteen. I doubt there’s many people that get that kind of chance—a hundred fifty thousand dropped in their laps SNOW WHITE & THE SEVEN HUNKS Kimberly Zant 132

without having to work a day for it—and we blew it before we hit our twenties.
That
was impressive! We barely had enough to pay to get in to the college of art and design we’d spent most of high school bragging about going to—the best in the country for computer graphics. Had to bust our asses after that to keep up with tuition.”

I studied him for a long moment, feeling my heart breaking for them. Granted,

they’d been wild and irresponsible, but how many kids that young would’ve done any different? Especially when they’d lost their mother.
Maybe
it had all just been the teen in them, and maybe it had been at least partly grief and fear at discovering they’d suddenly become adults and had no one to fall back on? “What happened to your

father?”

“Wrapped his car around a tree when I was twelve.”

I struggled to think of something to say that might help his feelings, even a little.

“Your mother would be proud.”

He grunted. “She’d be spinning in her grave,” he said dryly, and then blew out a breath. “At least we didn’t lose it when we put it up to get the money up for the show.”

“Exactly!” I said, even though I hadn’t known that that was how they’d come up

with the capital. “She’d be proud that you two are so resourceful.”

“She’d be ashamed and horrified,” he retorted irritably. “She loved this house. I don’t even like to think what she would’ve thought about us using it to film a porn.”

“I don’t believe she loved it more than she did you two! She wouldn’t have been ashamed of you even if you hadn’t turned it into such a success!”

He grinned at me abruptly. “You didn’t know my mother! Believe me, she

wouldn’t have been happy. She didn’t believe the end justified the means.”

“She might have been grieved that you’d been forced to do it, but I still don’t believe she would’ve wanted anything but the best life that you two could have. She tried to insure that with life insurance. You redeemed your folly—and not many people manage to pick themselves up after they’d had that kind of fall.”

He shook his head at me, but I thought he looked like he felt better and that was all I cared about. Maybe his mother
would
have been horrified—if she’d been alive—but she wasn’t and I still believed that the only thing that ultimately mattered to a loving parent was that their children survived.

Surfacing from my abstraction when Hunter passed me with a box, I went around

to the back to wait for a box to carry. Gabe, who was standing in the back unloading, looked at me for a long moment.

It almost seemed strange, looking at him now with what I’d learned in those few moments of talking to Shaun, like he’d suddenly become an entirely different person than the one I’d thought I’d known. I realized he wasn’t, though. He wasn’t any different at all. It was my perspective that had changed. I understood so many things I hadn’t before. I couldn’t say that it had radically changed the way I felt about him, but I certainly admired him more than I had—which was saying something since I’d admired everything about him when I hadn’t known anything about his background at all.

It certainly put a whole knew light on his short-temperedness during the filming, however. I’d known he was one of the investors. I hadn’t known that he and Shaun had gambled all they had that they knew what they were doing and could make it pay off.

“I’ll take the suitcase,” I said when he looked at me quizzically and flicked at glance at Shaun.

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He hefted it as if weighing it and then looked around and handed me a box

instead.

It was so light I nearly dropped it. Discovering it had my pillows in it, I glanced at him, but, really, it needed to be taken in like everything else. Shrugging, I headed in with the box. The garage was connected to the house by a breezeway that led into the kitchen. When I got inside, I discovered the men were unloading the boxes of goods from my kitchen.

“Which bedroom is mine?”