I really didn’t. I imagined it was high, though.
“And with Rangers, like us?” He shook his head. “It’s even worse. We disappear almost overnight. Return without notice. It drives a partner crazy, I’ll tell you. Not that I’d blame them for it.”
I had to laugh. “So you’re willing to give some poor girl four times the heartache?”
“No,” he said. “Actually just the opposite. In doing things this way,” he pointed at his phone’s screen, “you’re getting only a quarter of the heartache, because—”
“—because you’d have three other lovers,” I finished for him.
“Exactly.”
I looked at him and saw truth in his eyes. Truth according to him, anyway. He actually believed this stuff. He saw it as a rational approach.
“And you all live together. In this… lakehouse?”
“It’s actually an old mansion,” he said. “We pooled our money together and bought it last year. Amazing place. It needs a hell of a lot of restoration though.”
A sudden tingle stole up the back of my neck. That got my attention.
“The four of us are like brothers,” Kyle went on. “Dakota and I served in the same unit. Ryan too. And Briggs... well, he just—”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Back up.”
I couldn’t believe it, but he was serious. The ad was serious. This was something they really wanted to do.
“You and your friends—”
“Not friends. Brothers-in-arms.”
“Fine,” I said. “You and your ‘war-brothers’ would actually go through with this? You’d share one girl? As in… well, you know…”
“Share her sexually? Oh yeah.”
A lump formed in my throat. Somewhere in my stomach, a whole flock of butterflies took flight.
“Wouldn’t that create jealousy?” I asked. “I mean… other guys, you know, being with your girl while you were gone?”
“Not other guys,” said Kyle. “Within the four of us, it’s all the same. We’d be a core group. A family unit. Kind of like we are when we’re deployed, only while at home too.”
He noticed the jacket was slipping off my shoulder. Before continuing, he reached out and pulled it tighter around me.
It was sweet.
“And for the girl, she’d have four times the love,” Kyle shrugged. “Four times the attention. Four times the… well… ” He allowed the sentence to trail off with a wolfish grin.
“I get it.”
Kyle settled back on the bench and stared up into the night sky. “Look, you asked. So I showed you.”
I swallowed. The lump just wouldn’t go down.
“I know it sounds crazy. I don’t expect you to understand it. And…” he turned to face me. “And I’m sorry I kissed you. I mean, you certainly weren’t there to answer our ad, so that wasn’t fair.”
“I kissed you back,” I admitted. “It’s not like I was innocent.”
“Maybe. But for what we’re looking for? You’re obviously off limits.”
Off limits… The words rang in my head. Almost like a challenge.