Double Team: A Menage Romance Read online

  "Noah Ashby and Aiden Jackson said they were your boyfriends?"

  "Yes. I mean, we agreed they were, I guess. They decided they were and I agreed." I pause. "God, it really does sound like I have no backbone, doesn't it? They wanted to be my boyfriends and I wanted them to be my boyfriends." I pause again. "That just makes us sound like we're all in junior high."

  Vi laughs. "Love always makes us sound like we're teenagers."

  "Stop using that word."

  "What would you like me to use instead?"

  "I don't know, all right? Not that word. That's a big fucking word, Vi."

  "We'll come back to it. Noah is pursuing contracts outside of Colorado…"

  "Right. Noah drops his bidding war news on me, like it's good news. And it is. It's great news for him. I'm happy there's a bidding war over him. I'm thrilled. He loves football and he should get paid well for it and – it's wonderful."

  "But…" she prompts.

  "I don't care that he's going to Miami or Dallas or wherever - at all. I'm a big girl. It just… it rubs me the wrong way that they lied about it. Or omitted the truth."

  "It feels dishonest."

  "I feel like a terrible bitch. I walked out when they told me the news. He was happy, giving me this good career news, and I just walked out. I don't know why. They were saying I was… theirs, that I was their girlfriend, but there's this big piece of information they just didn't tell me. I mean, sure, it's public information. You and other people knew. Hell, you and the rest of America knew."

  "But that almost makes it worse." Vi voices what I'm thinking before I even say it.

  "Yeah, I'm the only idiot in this country who didn't know. And if I didn't know that…"

  "What else are they keeping from you?" Vi finishes.

  "Exactly. And, I mean, they're athletes. If they hid this, it makes me wonder what else they'd hide– girls, drugs… oh hell, I don't know."

  The look on Vi's face makes me stop.

  "I know. I sound crazy," I admit. "It's just… I'm taking a lot of risk by even being with them."

  "I know," Vi says. "I'm proud of you."

  "For screwing two football players and getting myself into a hot mess?"

  Vi laughs. "I love that this is your version of a hot mess, doll."

  "This is a hot mess!"

  "Oh, honey," Vi says. "This is hardly a hot mess."

  Her tone makes me laugh. "I know, I know. It's not a hot mess unless someone is pregnant or there are twenty tabloid articles being written about your scandalous behavior."

  Vi waves her hand dismissively as she looks over and gives me a grin. "Even then. It's all good publicity, right?"

  "For you, yes! Not when you're the president's daughter. Not when you're my father's daughter."

  "Well, maybe it's time the president's daughter got herself into a little bit of trouble."

  "Isn't that what they call it when women get knocked up?"

  "Yeah, in the fifties, maybe. I'm referring to you not playing it so safe anymore."

  "I'm not playing it safe! I've been… with both of them. A lot. That's as unsafe as it gets."

  "It's a little unsafe."

  "It's a lot unsafe."

  "More unsafe would be admitting you L-word them," Vi says.

  I glare at her, but her eyes are on the road. "I told you to stop using that word."

  "You don't know that I meant love. I might have meant that you like them. Or that you want to lick them. Or that you lust after them."

  "Like. Like is fine."

  Vi is silent for a moment as we near the building. "Do you think maybe it's not just about the fact that they didn't tell you?"

  "Like what? It's not enough that they omitted pertinent information that everyone else in the world knew about?"

  "Maybe," Vi says, downshifting and coming to an abrupt stop in front of the building. "But maybe there's a part of you that's a little afraid of where things might be going?"

  "They're going nowhere, obviously," I say, suddenly annoyed. "If they didn't think it was important to tell me about that, what the hell else are they going to hide?"

  But Vi doesn't stop. She keeps talking, even as a valet nears the car. "Or maybe you expected this to be nothing more than a crazy, wild fling, the kind of thing you've never done before and that's it. And now it's not. It's more than that and now the consequences are starting to be real. Your feelings are starting to be real and now you're afraid of where it's all going."

  I'm silent for a minute as the valet stands outside Vi's door. I watch couples walk up the stairs to the building entrance dressed in tuxedos and gowns. "When the hell did you become so insightful about relationships, Oprah?"

  Vi grins. "Just because I don't enjoy serious relationships myself doesn't mean I don't see what it takes to have one."

  "Maybe you just need more than one guy," I tell her.

  She pauses with her hand on the door handle. "Honey, if you find me three hot football players, I'll give a relationship a whirl. Triplets would be preferable."

  I grimace. "Vi, that is – how would you even manage–" I hold my hand up. "Nope, I don't want to know."

  She grins as we get out of the car. "I can see you just figured out how I would manage."

  "I need to rinse my brain thanks to that image."

  Vi waits until she's beside me with her arm linked in mine to whisper. "I have a feeling there are far dirtier images in that brain of yours now, thanks to certain men who shall remain nameless."

  "Shhh." I slap her lightly on the arm as we walk inside the building and straight into the crowd. We're immediately spotted by a couple who head straight for us.

  "Oh God, it's that lobbyist and his wife – you know, the guy who smells like cheese," Vi whispers. "Quick, run. It's every man for himself."

  "Thanks a lot, Vi," I whisper, but I dodge them by walking around another couple, turning toward a canapé tray and pretending to be mesmerized by the selection, and winding up out of the line of fire. But when I look back for Vi, I see she's been sidelined by the cheese-smelling-lobbyist.

  Vi peers around him, mouthing, "Save yourself."

  I'm about to go rescue her when I run directly into the chest of a tall man in a tuxedo.

  "Grace," he says, looking down at me as his hands grip my forearms. I look up into the eyes of a classically handsome man– well-bred, white-collar, obviously wealthy– and I feel… nothing. Nada. No spark, nothing like when I ran into Noah that night, when he stepped on my dress and cupped my breasts in his hands.

  Heat rushes through me at the recollection, followed immediately by a pang of regret. I should talk to them. I shouldn't have just run out of there the other day. I should tell them it was more about being afraid to trust them than it was about their lie.

  "Yes," I say, giving the man my best press smile. There's something familiar about him, but I can't quite place how I know him.

  "Brandon," he says, as if he can read my mind. "Redding. Our mothers know each other, I believe."

  "Oh. Right." Oh, God. It's my would-be suitor. "Brandon. It's… lovely to meet you."

  He smiles warmly. "You know, it's not often that I get stood up."

  Stood up? "Oh. I didn't think my mother actually arranged a date between us. I mean, you called and I was just so busy that I didn't have time to respond and–"

  He laughs, turning to grab two glasses of champagne from one of the catering staff that passes by and hands one to me. "It's okay. I know when I'm being blown off. My ego can take it – I don't need to be let down gently."

  "I wasn't exactly blowing you off," I explain lamely. "It's just that I was–"

  "Busy," he finishes for me, sipping his champagne. "As you say."

  "Yes." I swallow half my glass in one gulp. "And I wasn't especially thrilled about being set up."

  "Ah, there we are," he says, the edges of his lips turning up. "Admittedly, I'm intrigued by the fact that you didn't want to be set up with me."

  I