Teacher's Pets [Unlikely Bedfellows 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (17 page)

“I can’t believe it.” Charles straightened his glasses before grasping the arms of the chair. “Even
now?
How could you rebuke our ideals so easily?”

“Charles, what are you talking about? I had a reason for wanting to sleep with two men, and I have a reason to want to be with Beau and Steve.” It was none of Charles’s business that what had started as pure lust and a desire to be published had turned into something much deeper. She loved the men. Both of them. She hoped never to be without either of them in her life.

“The military establishment, Leah.” Suddenly his eyes widened and he looked at her with a smile. He snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Those bastards didn’t tell you where they were going!”

A worry niggled the back of her mind. “Charles, just tell me what you’re talking about.”

“Your lovers are off to war games this weekend. They never left the Marine Corps.”

“Ready?” Steve called from the driver side of the car.

Beau tossed his duffel bag into the trunk of Steve’s Camaro and slammed the lid. “Let’s go.” Steve started the engine.

Beau walked to the passenger side and had just opened the door when Leah pulled into the drive and blocked their exit. When she climbed out she looked angry. Smiling, he closed the Camaro’s door and strode toward her.

“Hi. We didn’t expect to see you today.” She looked ready to cry. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” He tried to take her into his arms, but she slapped his arm away.

“You lied to me!”

“What? What are you talking about?” He turned to Steve, shrugging his shoulders and lifting his hands in an I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here gesture. Steve killed the Camaro’s engine and joined them.

“Leah, what’s going on?”

She pointed to Beau and then to Steve, her finger accusingly moving from their heads in field caps to their feet in boots. They were dressed for field games in fatigues. Why would that have her upset?

“You look like you’re still in the Marine Corps. You said you were out.”

Steve shot him a look that had
caution
written all over it. “We never said we were out of the Corps. We’re in school, but until a few weeks ago, we were still attached. Now we’re in the reserves. Is there a problem?”

“I can’t—I can’t possibly—be in love with two men who are in the military. Huh-uh.” She planted her hands on her hips and turned away from them.

“Why not?” Steve’s tone was sharp, but effective in making her face them again.

“Because you follow orders like sheep. You do horrible things to innocent women and children, you—”

“Bullshit!” Steve spread his legs in fighter stance. His fists were balled at his side. Beau had seen him like this plenty of times, and often the results weren’t pretty.

“Let’s all calm down here,” he said. “Leah, where did you hear all this shit? The news? Protest groups?”

“I
was
in a protest group. And we heard plenty of what went on over there.”

“
You
were a protester? I fell in love with a
protester?
Why the hell didn’t you say so before I fucked you?” Steve’s face had turned crimson with rage. Something had to be done, and fast.

“Let’s go inside,” Beau pled. Let’s just talk this through.”

Steve, lips tight and face a study in thunderstorms, checked his watch. “We have two hours before we need to report. I can give you ten minutes.”

“That’s nine minutes more than I will need,” she said back. Then she marched past Beau and to the front door of the house.

Beau shook his head, touched Steve’s arm to tell him to come, too, and followed her. When he opened the door, Leah entered first and went straight for the breakfast bar.

“This is the first time I’ve seen you that I didn’t want you beneath me in bed,” Steve ground out.

“Funny, but I can’t say that about you,” she said.

Beau had had enough. “Both of you shut the fuck up or we’ll never get to the bottom of this.” They looked at him, Steve with relief of sorts showing in his eyes and Leah in shock. “Now, Leah. You’ve been handed a load of shit about what it was like in ‘Nam.”

“
Really.
” She gave the single word a world of attitude.

“Yes, really. Do Steve and I seem like the kind of guys who would shoot up a village and kill women and children?”

She took a deep breath and thought a minute. “No. But others did.”

“Maybe,” Beau allowed in a quiet voice. “It’s hard to say what happens to a man when he’s been in war. But we did not. Are you going to hold speculation about others against us?”

“Protesters got guys killed.” Steve walked behind the counter and placed both hands on the counter in order to lean toward her.

She sucked in a breath. “We did not.”

“You did. You showed the enemy that you were on their side. You showed us that we didn’t have a country behind us. It made us weary and them emboldened.
You
did that.”

“We helped end the war early!”

“You helped us end in defeat! Because of you, we came home to a country that hates us!”

“I don’t hate you. I love you.” Tears streamed down her face. “But you’re still warriors, and I can’t… I can’t find a way to forgive that.”

Beau’s heart broke. They had spent so much time in each other’s arms, and they hadn’t really known each other at all. “We’ll always be warriors, Leah. We thought you knew. It’s who we are.” He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and squeezed.

“Then I can’t see you again.”

Silence hung like a veil in the room. Steve sliced through it with his next words. “Then I guess you should leave.”

Nodding, she stood. She turned and walked out the door without a backward glance. When the sound of her Datsun faded, Steve looked at Beau. “What the fuck do we do now? I loved her.”

Beau sank onto the stool Leah had just vacated. “You still love her. I do, too. But Steve, you have to find a way to forget some of the past. If you let your perception of what went on here at home while we were in another country, it will eat you up.”

Steve’s mouth formed a thin line again. “
Me.
What about
her?
” He stomped out of the house. Seconds later, the Camaro’s engine sprang to life and the horn blew.

Beau had to laugh. Steve and Leah would always be sparring, one pushing the other to the limit. But they loved each other, of that he was certain. And as long as that was true, they would find a way through this mess.

* * * *

Two weeks had dragged by. This time when Steve Hardin broke her heart he hadn’t come to apologize or send flowers. In fact, she had heard nothing from Steve at all. Beau called every day, leaving a message on her home answering machine telling her briefly how they were and what they were doing. She rushed home at the end of each day to hear his voice and touch them in that small way. For her part, she had maintained her distance and silence.

Leah hadn’t seen Charles, either. He hadn’t flinched when telling her the information that led to her unhappiness. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing what his interference had done to her.

And she truly was miserable. She looked at Steve and Beau as more than sex partners. Over the past few weeks she’d come to love them, to need them. They talked a lot.
Okay, we talked
some. But they laughed a lot. She missed their laughter. She missed their touch, their sweetness, the way they cared for her in every way.

She missed Steve’s cooking.

What she hadn’t missed was gathering material for the
book,
the thing that had been her focus for weeks and weeks. Tenure and the desire to prove to her parents that she could succeed in her chosen field was why she had slept with Steve and Beau to begin with, but it was the last concern on her mind now.

Dashing into the house, she rushed for the answering machine. The little red light blinked.
Thank heaven!
She pushed the button that would rewind the tape, then she pushed a different button to play.

“
Leah, love.
” Just hearing Beau’s voice made her heart beat faster.

“
It’s been two weeks since we had our disagreement.
” Disagreement? She had practically accused them of war crimes. And Steve had accused her of murdering America’s soldiers.

“
Steve is stubborn. You should know that as well as anyone, and you two do seem to butt heads.
” That was true. But she liked stubbornness and someone who challenged her.

“
But you both need to get past this. What happened before is in the past. I’m concerned about our future. And Steve is, too, though he won’t admit it.
” Their future. Beau thought they had one. It wouldn’t be easy, but could she find it in her heart and mind to ignore her past beliefs?

“
We want you. We need you. We miss you more than we can say. We want to marry you, Leah. But we have to come to terms with whether we’re all looking forward or backward.
”

She clamped her hands to her mouth. They wanted her to be with them forever? She had thought this would be an experiment that would be short-lived. The notion of falling in love had been far from her mind and not in her plans. Robert Burns had said it in his way. She paraphrased with
life threw monkey wrenches into the best laid plans.

“
I’m not going to call anymore, Leah. Now you know where we stand and what we want. You will have to accept that whether we’re actually in the service or not, we’re Marines, and we always will be. But we’re also the guys you fell in love with. The ball is in your court. We hope you’ll come to us. We love you.
” The message ended.

What should she do? If she gave her life and love to two military men, she would lose friends on campus and the cachet that went with it. Inwardly, she cringed at using her mother’s term, but intellectually, she had to admit that influence and position did make a difference. She might never make tenure if she made this move. She would give up the only chance she had to prove to her family that she had the same ability to succeed as they.

Without thinking further, she picked up the receiver and dialed a number she knew by heart.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Evelyn, it’s Leah Morris. Is my uncle Joshua around?”

“Hello, Leah! How nice to hear from you.” In the background, Leah heard a crying baby and a toddler making a funny noise like an airplane. “Harve,” Evelyn said, “can you get Joshua? It’s his niece.” She covered the receiver, but Leah heard her whisper, “She sounds a little strange.”

Seconds later, a click and slight echo told her an extension had been picked up. “It’s okay honey, I have it.”

“Bye, Leah,” Evelyn said. Then another click told Leah she had her uncle all to herself.

“Leah? What’s wrong?”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Nothing. Why would you ask that?” How could she tell him that she loved two men who seemed diametrically opposed to her principles?

“Well, good,” he said hesitantly. “What’s up? Are you doing well?”

“Fine, yes. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, not at all.” A shuffling of papers said that he was assuring her just to be nice.

“I need some advice. I–I seem to have fallen in love.”

“Leah! That’s wonderful! Who’s the lucky man?”

“You mean, who are the lucky men.” She chewed her bottom lip waiting for his response. He didn’t speak for several seconds. Long, painful seconds.

“I see. Are you sure? It’s not an easy thing, being in love with two men. There are just two, aren’t there?”

She laughed. “Yes. Just two. But they are Marines, Joshua. Military men and they aren’t going to give it up.”

“Being a soldier doesn’t mean you stop being a man. Are they good men. Do they treat you right?”

“The best. I only found out they were still in the military after we’d been together for a while. I thought they were wonderful then.”

“They’re the same people now. What’s changed?”

My perception. How I saw them. But not them, not really.

“Nothing, really. But—”

“But nothing. If you loved them before, what’s to stop you from loving them now?”

“Just me.” She was every bit as stubborn as Steve. Could she get past what she had said, and what he had said? They were good men, and no matter what professions they took up, they would still be good men.

“Then you have to decide if what they do as a career is bad enough to stop you from being with them. If it is, face it and try to move on. But if you can love them no matter what they do—as long as it’s legal,” he added forcefully, “then don’t deny yourself the love and happiness your parents have missed all these years.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Leah.” She could hear the sadness in his voice. “Don’t tell me you haven’t seen it. I would have cautioned you years ago not to follow in their footsteps had I known you didn’t see the way they’ve chased position and recognition at the expense of their happiness with each other.”