Ruled by her Daddies (Harem of Daddies)

“Enough,” Caleb said in a louder voice. He gave them both a stern look. “Sometimes it feels like I’m a kindergarten teacher. Wolfe, what is going on?”

“It’s about Genevieve.”

Caleb immediately straightened, narrowing his gaze while Aleki froze. “Vivi? What about her?”

“Her husband was found dead this morning.”

“Dead? What? Murdered?” Aleki asked.

Wolfe shrugged. “Don’t know yet. Cops aren’t saying.”

Caleb frowned. “What about Vivi? Have they said anything about her?”

“Not a word.”

“Hell,” Caleb muttered.

“So why’d you tell us?” Aleki asked in a bored voice.

Yeah, he didn’t fool Wolfe. He could see the tense way Aleki held himself. He cared.

“Thought you’d be mad if I didn’t. It’s not like I care what happens to her. Not after what she did.”

Caleb frowned at him. “Wolfe, we were kids.”

“She abandoned Aleki.” Us. He couldn’t say it, but it’s what he was thinking.

Caleb shot a look at Aleki, as though expecting him to say something. But he was silent, staring at the screen.

“She didn’t abandon Aleki. She broke up with him. She was offered a place at Yale and we were going into BUD/s training. She didn’t think a relationship would work long distance.”

“It could have worked,” Wolfe stated stubbornly. “We would have made it work.”

“It was their relationship. We weren’t part of it.”

“Yes. We were. When she left him. She left all of us. Aleki was devastated. She was the love of his life.”

“She wasn’t the love of my life.” Aleki frowned.

“You said she was. You drank every night for three weeks. You hardly spoke for days. You didn’t even smile.”

Aleki shrugged.

“You’ve barely even looked at another woman since.”

“You can talk,” Aleki muttered darkly.

Wolfe shrugged. “I have little interest in women.”

If he needed release, he had a hand. A hand didn’t want to talk about his feelings. A hand didn’t require him to be there for it emotionally. A hand didn’t want cuddles.

He didn’t do cuddles.

All right. That wasn’t quite true. On occasion, he’d embraced Caleb’s close friend, Arianna. She was the only person he considered to be his family other than the two men in this room. But those embraces were brief. A greeting. A goodbye. They weren’t cuddling. They weren’t intimate. They weren’t about comfort or love or any of those softer emotions that made him feel ill.

“It was eight years ago. We were all young. We can’t hold a grudge against her after all this time,” Caleb said sensibly. “Right?”

He looked at Wolfe who stubbornly glared back. He didn’t see it that way at all. She was theirs. She left them. She shouldn’t just be forgiven.