Three Rings and a Rose (23 page)

“Good,” Ella snapped. “Now get the fuck out. I am not in the mood for this.”

“Aw, honey,” Leila purred. “You’re probably never in the mood.

Is that why Caedon dumped you the first time around? You couldn’t keep him satisfied.” She smirked. “I bet that Adeline Raines keeps him hard and happy. She’s a total looker. If it weren’t for the fact that
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I know I’m prettier, I would be a twinge jealous.” She sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I am perfectly aware of my beauty.” Much to Ella’s surprise, Shannon released her arm and whispered,

“Punch the bitch. She deserves it. I’ll call one of our men. They’ll take care of bail money.”

At any other time, Ella would have giggled. But not when she was like this. She could barely breathe for the wrath ripping though her body, demanding that she take a pound of flesh from the woman who’d been fucking with her for months. So laughter and amusement of any sort was out.

“No,” Ella said. “I will
not
touch her. I would rather kiss a fucking piranha one day shy of starvation. First of all, I don’t want to go to jail when I can go home to Caedon and Micah. Fucking them trumps beating on Bitchenstein. And secondly, I would be afraid of what she’d give me.”

Rising from her chair regally, Leila sneered, “You need to watch your back, Ella. I want Caedon, and I will get him. Don’t you doubt that.”

Ella laughed. “Good luck, Leila. You can fight dirty, but I’ll fight dirtier. Now I have been nice about this. But if you don’t leave, I will call Belle and have you thrown out. Just because I won’t take a swing at you doesn’t mean that we are going to be bosom buddies. I can handle you without touching a hair on your head.” Leila tugged at her blouse, dramatically re-arranging the silk even though it didn’t need it. The chic yellow fabric was perfectly in place, just like everything else on Leila. “You do what you want, and I’ll do what I want. We’ll see who comes out on top…of Caedon.” With that, she spun on her heel and marched out of the store.

After she disappeared, Maddie popped up from behind the counter. “Damn, I thought she’d never leave.” Turning her head to the side, Katie-Anne arched her eyebrow at Maddie. “Why the hell did you hide behind there anyway? I figured you would be egging us on.”

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Maddie smiled sheepishly. “I don’t have what it takes to deal with someone like that.”

Ella snorted. “You’re kidding me. You could totally take her, kitty kat.”

“I know,” Maddie responded. “That’s the problem. I would have slapped her.” She cleared off the counter. “Besides, you guys had her handled. If you hadn’t, I would have taken care of her for you.”

“You’re the best,” Jaycee declared as she struggled to scoot out of her chair for the second time. “These babies need to get out of my belly. I’m tired of having to pee every five seconds.” When Jaycee couldn’t get up, Ella crossed over and helped her up.

“Here, sugar. Let me help you.”

“Thank you,” Jaycee replied with a grin as she hoofed it toward the restroom, waddling the whole way.

Once Jaycee had gone, the room fell silent. Not long after that, Katie-Anne quietly got to her feet with Maddie’s assistance, and they both went to change Katie-Anne out of her dress, leaving Ella alone with Shannon.

“You’re not worrying about what she said, are you?” Shannon asked observantly as soon as everyone had gone. “I know that Adeline and Caedon’s relationship has to bother you.” No matter how much she wanted to deny it, Ella was disturbed by Adeline and Caedon. After years of hearing gossip about them and seeing pictures where they went here or did that, she couldn’t help it.

Now more than ever, she felt threatened. She was human.

“Yeah,” Ella admitted as she bent down to pick up the bag she’d dropped earlier. “I know he wouldn’t cheat on me. Looking back, I know he never cheated on me. He isn’t like that, but it hurts me to think about how much she means to him. It tears me apart to know that she’s been the one by his side all this time.” Lifting herself up with her knees, she groaned. “And it kills my pride to know that everyone in the world—other than me, Caedon, and Micah—believes that I’m not good enough.”

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Shannon growled, “Stop that. You are pissing me off with that load of shit.”

“Hey, you started it,” Ella defended herself.

“Whatever,” Shannon muttered as she strolled over to the blankets and swept one into her arms. Standing there, she methodically folded the fabric. “You are good enough.
We
know that and your men do, too. Those are the people that matter.” Bending down, she scooped up another blanket and repeated the folding process. “Secondly, you have to move past how you feel. She is going to be around.”

“I know,” Ella agreed. “The three of us have agreed to work through all of this. It’ll take time, but we can do it.”

“You do know that you need to talk to Adeline at some point, correct?”

“Yes, I know. She’s been hiding out at Brooklyn’s since they arrived, but she left me a message to call her. I just haven’t had a chance to do it.”

Shannon stopped midfold and grinned. “I know you can work things out with your men, and I would be shocked if you couldn’t do the same with Adeline. I think that a few months down the road, you’ll be friends. If not, we’ll figure something out.” Resuming her actions, she went from well-behaved to naughty in no time flat.

“So…have you fucked Mr. Wicked Writer and Mr. Naughty Actor yet? If so, I want to know everything.”

Ella tried to hold back her chuckle. She shouldn’t encourage Shannon. But who the hell was she kidding? She would do the same thing in Shannon’s shoes. “Nope, I told them that we had to wait two weeks before we could have sex.”

“Oh my fucking shit,” Shannon cursed then dropped the blanket in her hands. “You are going to be with the men without
being
”—

pausing, she theatrically thrust her hips back and forth as though mimicking sex—“with them? You are a damn saint, sister.”
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“Hardly,” Ella replied. “It’s going to be the longest two weeks of my life. Kissing and touching, but no fucking? I’ll never make it, but I have to try.”

“Good luck with that,” Shannon said.

Oh, honey. I’m going to need it.

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Delighted to see Tate for their weekly dinner, Ella hustled inside Her Majesty’s Pleasure later that evening. She surveyed the shadowy bar, but it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the darkened interior.

Once her vision acclimated, she found her tall, lanky sibling drinking a beer at the bar counter. As always, the light-brown-haired, blue-eyed bonehead was flirting with the bartender, Sam Carrington.

She sighed.
Only my baby brother would hit on a straight man in
a bar with bisexual men drinking in it.

Traipsing over to the bar, Ella felt lighter than she had in years.

Even though she knew this trial might blow up in her face, she couldn’t help but hope for her happily ever after. In all honesty, she was starting to believe they had a chance. That feeling could be because Caedon and Micah seemed different, more sincere and committed—to her as well as each other.

Reaching the bar, Ella hopped onto the stool next to Tate. He immediately turned to her with a happy smile. “Ella-belle, you made it.”

“Of course I did,” Ella replied, laughing. Her brother’s protective instincts amused her to no end. She was older than him by a full year yet he treated her as though he were the elder sibling. “Thanks for coming here instead of making me drive to Luscious to meet you.” Tate’s lips quirked. “It’s the first time you’ve asked me to come to you. I couldn’t turn you down. I had to know what could have changed your mind.”

The gorgeous bartender politely nodded his head to her. “Hey, Ella. Can I get you something to drink?”

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“Blue Moon,” she replied easily, naming her favorite thing to drink—beer.

Tate chuckled then muttered, “Predictable,” with a wide smile that made him look far younger than his twenty-seven years. Whipping his head to the side, he winked at Sam who’d already retrieved a bottle of Blue Moon and was now opening it with a wall-mounted opener on the backside of the bar. “I promise you that I’m not so dull. I like to keep people on their toes.” He raked his gaze up and down Sam with enough heat that she felt it where she sat next to him.

Embarrassed by her brother’s shameless flirting, Ella whapped Tate on the back of the head. “Stop it, bird brain,” she growled. As soon as Sam turned his back, Ella lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “He’s not gay.”

Tate’s jaw dropped then he shook his head and eyed Sam carefully. “Sure he is. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

“You’re a goober,” Ella replied. “Dude is straight.” Tate shrugged. “Believe what you want, but that man is gay.”

“You think everyone’s gay,” she shot back, frowning. “Hell, you thought Micah was, and he is definitely not.” Clearing his throat, Tate turned his face away. And she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he’d been perfectly aware that Micah wasn’t gay. He’d clearly covered for her best friend.

When Sam returned with a Pilsner glass, she and Tate fell silent.

The bartender poured her cloudy orange-amber drink before garnishing it then silently shuffled away. By the time he reached the middle of the bar and took an order from a man that Ella didn’t recognize, her patience ran out and she accused, “You knew!” Tate grimaced. “Of course, I knew, Ella,” he countered. “I have excellent gaydar. You should know that by now.” He did. She’d learned that fact years ago. When she’d had the hots for a guy, her brother would meet them then warn her off the gay ones.
Because I always had a thing for gay men.

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“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, partly in curiosity and partly in annoyance. “You’re my brother. You knew how I feel about him.” Tate cocked an eyebrow. He lifted his glass and took a swig of beer before plunking it down on the hardwood bar without taking his intense eyes off her. Ella had to force herself not to flinch at his scrutiny. If this were any man other than her brother, she wouldn’t have managed it. But this was Tate.

“Micah asked me not to,” he said simply as if it were the easiest answer in the world. Sighing, he bumped her leg with his. “What would it have helped to tell you, Ella? First, he had a boyfriend. Then, you were with Caedon. He and Micah were obviously not going to share you back then, despite their obvious attraction to each other.” Ella ignored the last part of her brother’s statement. She had something on her mind before she chewed his ass out for not mentioning that either. “That wasn’t your decision. I deserved the truth. I had the right to decide.”

Before she’d finished, Tate was already shaking his head. “Ella, you wouldn’t have decided. You would have been hurt and stressed out. I knew it and so did Micah.”

Twisting in her seat, Ella sipped on her beer while she considered his words. He had a valid point which pissed her off. She would have driven herself nuts because she wouldn’t have been able to choose between them. That had already been a problem she’d struggled with—without even having the complication of knowing how Micah felt.

Finally caving, Ella frowned. “I still deserved the truth.”

“Yes, you did.” He draped his arm around her shoulder and gave her one of his famous half-hugs. “Since he obviously told you the truth, does that mean you two are together-together? Is that why I came here instead of you coming to me?”

Ella felt the blush creeping up her neck then spreading into her face, the embarrassing inflammation burning her cheeks up. “Yes.

Kind of, sort of, not exactly—in a roundabout way.”
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Tate’s eyebrows drew together, and he dragged his arm away from her with undisguised reluctance. He snagged his drinking glass, lifted it to his lips, and gulped the remainder down. Slapping his glass down, he wiped a hand across his mouth and asked, “What do you mean? ‘Kind of, sort of, not exactly—in a roundabout way’ is not much of an answer.”

Permitting her eyes to drift away from Tate, Ella noticed the man Sam had just served was watching her, and she squirmed on the barstool. “I know,” she answered honestly. “It’s complicated.”

“I can handle complicated.”

Ella shrugged in too-easy acquiescence, but she couldn’t get out what she wanted to say. Needing liquid courage, she sucked down the drink quickly. “Why don’t we go for a walk outside? That man is creeping me out.”

Tate took a quick peek over his shoulder then nodded. “Yeah, let’s go,” he murmured, retrieving money from his wallet before tossing down several bills on the glossy countertop and ushering her out the door.

Sucking in a deep breath of fresh air, Ella went back to their conversation. “Caedon’s back. He and Micah want to share me,” she explained as she trekked across the parking lot toward her car. “I’ve agreed to give them a chance to prove we can be together as a permanent ménage without confusing everything by getting between the sheets with them.”