“He’s looking more and more like Justin every day,” she muses. “Come soon. You can have a snuggle, and then we can leave him with his daddies and go out. I really need some girl time. The testosterone around here can be overwhelming.”
“That’s not what you were saying last night,” a male voice pipes up in the background.
There’s a rumble of laughter, and another voice says. “Yeah…it was all ‘more’ ‘please’ ‘harder.’”
“TMI!” I shriek, but Maggie is laughing, and I end up joining her. When we’ve regained our composure, I say, “You seem really happy, sweetie. I’m so happy for you.”
“I’m happy for me too,” she says. “It’s been a long time coming. I felt adrift for so much of my life. It’s nice to be anchored in one place, even if it is by these big brutes.”
“I feel adrift now,” I admit, swallowing the catch in my throat.
“It’ll change,” Maggie soothes. “You’ll find your place and your person.”
“Or people,” someone yells.
“Can you stop interrupting my conversation?” Maggie snaps, but it’s in a good-natured teasing way. “I’m trying to console my friend.”
“If she needs us to beat them, we will,” another voice says
“No need for that at the moment,” I say, “But maybe.”
“Keep safe, Cora,” Maggie says. “And you show those boys that you’re not to be messed with. You never know. Once you’ve played a few of those pranks, maybe you’ll end up with a mini harem. Get naked girl, and all your troubles could be over in a flash.”
“Ugh,” I sneer, shaking my head vehemently and beginning to pace the room again at the very thought. “Anyway, five dudes aren’t a mini harem unless you compare it with yours.”
“Small can also be perfectly formed,” she laughs.
When we say our goodbyes, I feel a tangled mix of emotions. Longing for the familiarity of my friendship with Maggie and for the life she leads, mixed with sadness about my own situation and loneliness too.
I miss my mom, but not because I need her to take care of me. She was the one person I had in my corner, and that mattered, even if she wasn’t always fully engaged in what it should mean to be a parent.
You’re on your own, my internal voice whispers. Time to put on your big-girl boots and handle some shit.
It’s ridiculously late by the time I head downstairs to deal with the laundry, and even later by the time I finish setting up the pranks the imbeciles upstairs will find themselves dealing with tomorrow.
As I settle into the bed that was the setting for some extremely hot sex earlier, I can’t help but smile at the thought that I might just get my own back if everything goes to plan.
But as I drift off, I find my mind stroking over the muscular planes of Tobias’s big body and the painful beauty of Danny’s face.
If they weren’t such assholes, they’d be setting my body on fire for reasons other than anger, and for just a second, I feel traitorous heat between my legs and an unwelcome pang in my chest.
7
ALDEN
I wake late, having somehow managed to snooze my alarm three times without being conscious of it. My eyelids feel like they’re lined with sandpaper, and my mouth is desert dry. Rubbing my hand over my beard, which really needs a trim, I throw my feet over the edge of the bed. As I reach for the door, my mind grinds into gear, remembering that this house isn’t just a man-zone anymore.
Randolph’s fiancée’s moody daughter has moved in to torture us with her snappy instructions and sullen attitude. I glance down at myself, finding only bed shorts hanging loosely from my hips, still tented by morning wood. This state of undress wouldn’t usually bother me. Mrs. Henderson, our housekeeper, is older than Croesus and doesn’t seem even to notice that we’re all young, attractive red-blooded men. I guess if you’re responsible for cleaning up after people, they lose any kind of allure.
But with Cora in the house, I’m less certain.
Danny told us to ignore her. Actually, it was more than that. He told us to piss her off as much as we could and walking around naked was his first attempt.
I love my brother, but he really does like to take things into a whole different stratosphere. As the oldest brother of five, I’m used to dealing with my younger siblings’ childish attitudes. I’m used to looking past a whole lifetime’s worth of annoying behavior and getting on with my own business.
Mark’s the most like me in that regard. We both had to step up and be more than just brothers to the younger three, especially when Mom died. I guess that’s why we’re less crazy and immature than the rest, and why the prospect of using my naked body to wind up a strange woman doesn’t seem like a great idea.