The Sextet Presents… Turn Another Paige [A Toy Story] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) (9 page)

Something was definitely wrong.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Paige?”

She didn’t reply, so he read the note. Seven words were all she’d left—seven words that ripped his heart to shreds.

I’m sorry, but I had to go
.

Mike hurried to her room. The closet doors were still open, but all that remained were a few empty hangers and some shoeboxes. All of the sex toys she’d bought at Candyland were in a big box and shoved in the corner of the room, half buried by the bedspread draped over the corner of the disheveled bed.

The irrational part of his mind kept telling him that she’d just done a good closet cleaning and headed with Rachel to the Salvation Army drop-off.

He headed to the bathroom. Her things were gone. The pink razors. The girlie antiperspirant. The expensive shampoo that made her hair smell like citrus.

“Fuck.”

Snatching his cell phone off his belt, he texted Jude.

Paige is gone

The reply came quickly.

Gone? What do you mean gone?

Gone. Took all her stuff and left. Can you get here soon? We need to talk.

* * * *

Five days.

Paige had been at the cabin five days. And each and every hour had passed in agonizing slowness.

The job application—and four more that looked promising—were still in her draft folder. She hadn’t found the courage to send them. Probably because she still held some hope that Mike and Jude would come for her, that they’d realize she belonged in their lives and badger Rachel until she coughed up the cabin’s location.

That they’d have their happily ever after for three.

Each minute passing made her hope slip away a little more.

At least the place had Internet, although she had to use a cable to plug in to the wall outlet. That kept her from doing her favorite thing—sitting out on the patio at sunrise and researching while she sipped her coffee. Now, she faced a wall with a deer head staring down at her as she tried to get inspired enough to write the book that had been brewing in her brain forever.

All she could think about were Jude and Mike.

Did they miss her half as much as she missed them?

Or would they be grateful she’d saved them the trial of having to ask her to go when things finally went sour, as she knew they eventually would?

Her self-esteem sucked. That came as a revelation she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with. But she knew she needed to if she was going to make any sense of the mess that was now her life.

When had she become so insecure? It wasn’t the way she’d been when she was younger. Hell, if anything, she was a major extrovert who loved to connect with people. Paige had always been the life of the party.

That part of her personality seemed to have disappeared. At least it had until Mike and Jude handed her their total trust and made her feel powerful and feminine again. Then, she’d been the old Paige. She’d taken control, and not only had she enjoyed their tryst, she was sure the guys had as well.

Why couldn’t
that
Paige come back?

The story idea hit her hard enough she gasped aloud. That was her story—the tale of a woman who’d lost herself somewhere along the way and needed two men to lead her back to herself. In her version, the three of them would find their happily ever after.

Opening a Word file, Paige got down to business.

* * * *

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jude asked. “There’s really no turning back once we sign those papers. Thirty years of debt we have to deal with.”

“I know,” Mike replied. “We’ve talked this to death. I want this. I want this with all my heart, and I want Paige back where she belongs.”

“With us.”

The attorney sat down and put his hand on the stack of papers. “Last chance, guys. You sure you want to do this?”

Mike was getting damned sick and tired of answering that question. He let sarcasm take rein. “No. We’ve changed our minds. We just decided to waste your time and our money looking into this to walk away when it came time to sign contracts.”

Jude put his hand over Mike’s fisted right hand. “Easy there. This guy’s on our side.”

Taking a deep breath, Mike tried to relax. He had always known how important Jude was to him, and the comfort he received from his simple touch only made him more cognizant. While Paige had always seemed to be as important, it had taken her leaving them for the full force of what he felt for her to hit like a hurricane.

I love her. Just as much as I love Jude.

His life was incomplete without her, and in his mind, the only way to get her back—to convince her that he and Jude were never letting her go—rested in those papers. “Can we get this done? Please?”

The attorney started his spiel about what each paper meant, passing them along to Mike and then Jude to sign. Seemed like the pile never got any smaller. About the time his hand started to cramp for putting his signature down over and over, the ordeal was done.

While the attorney’s assistant put together the pile of papers the guys would take away from the closing, the attorney held up a key ring. “I guess the last thing is to give these to you. Congratulations. You’re now the owners of the building at 34
^th
and Concord.”

Paige sipped a glass of sangria, stretched out her legs, and crossed her ankles. This was a nice break from endless hours of writing—sitting on the porch and watching the sun set in a blaze of reds and oranges. In the weeks she’d been hiding out, it had become a nightly ritual.

The cabin wasn’t
home
, but she loved it here. She didn’t even mind not having a car since the grocery in town delivered. She’d made the three-mile walk to Grayville several times, and in the weeks she’d been there, she’d even made a few friends.

It still wasn’t home, and those people weren’t Jude and Mike.

No doubt the locals had concocted all sorts of stories about the strange woman living in the cabin. Perhaps they thought she was a friend of Rachel’s parents. Maybe they assumed she was a runaway Mafia wife. They might even have imagined she was hiding from an abusive husband.

A frown settled on her face, something that happened most of the time when she wasn’t totally absorbed in writing her book. Whenever she let her mind wander, it always went right back to the same place—her guys.

After weeks of her being gone, they hadn’t come for her, which meant one of two things. Either Rachel had kept her promise and hadn’t told Mike and Jude where she’d gone to hide, or they didn’t truly care that she’d left.

What had they been doing? Did Mike get to keep his job as she’d hoped? Was Jude being sure to get enough rest between shifts? Who was doing the laundry since she wasn’t? Hell, Mike would throw everything together, wash it all on the “hot” setting, and then throw the whole lump in the dryer on “high.”

Heaven knew neither of them would clean their bathroom. They were probably using the same sheets they’d used before she left. The apartment probably smelled like guy—dirty socks, musty towels, and garbage no one took to the Dumpster.

In her heart, she’d held out hope that they’d realize how much she did as a roommate and decide they needed her.
How naïve
. They were grown men. They could take care of themselves.

She missed them almost more than she could bear.

The normal sounds of the woods—the happy bird chirps and the rustle of the wind through the trees—were interrupted by the crunch of gravel up the long drive.

A car?

Her heart leaped into a faster rhythm as she worried about being isolated out here on her own—something that made her careful about locking doors every night—until she saw the car. Then her heart seemed to stop beating for a few long moments, and her chest squeezed so tightly she had trouble drawing a breath.

Her guys had come for her.

Jude had been driving the same Honda Civic since college. It had more mileage than a car should be able to acquire, but he swore the piece of shit still got great gas mileage and saw no reason to buy something new. Since the garage at the hospital had incredibly small parking spaces, it got dinged daily by other car doors, so he held on to the antique. This was the first time she’d ever been ecstatic to see it.

Downing the rest of the sangria for courage, Paige set the empty glass aside. Now that the three of them were together again, what would happen?

Would there be a confrontation? Were they angry with her? Or were they concerned about her well-being? Were they here to try to bring her back? If they
were
coming to take her home, why? Obligation? Regret? Sex?

Her whole life she’d overthought everything, often becoming her own worst enemy by drawing conclusions that would later be shown as dead wrong. Trying to learn from her mistakes, she kept an open mind as she waited for them to come to her. They were making the first move by finding her and taking the long trek to the cabin, so she’d give them the opportunity to have their say first.

Mike, as usual, strode right for her like a charging bull. “Paige! What the hell? We’ve been worried sick.”

Jude joined right in. “You should have told us you were leaving.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mike put his hands on his hips and glared down at her. “
Why?
Because you’re our friend.”

Paige didn’t like
that
response one damn bit. She stood up, grabbed her empty glass, and headed into the cabin for a refill of sangria. Since this was obviously going to be a fight, and not a passionate reconciliation, she wanted to brace herself for any nasty things they would say that could reopen wounds that had barely begun to scab over.

Oh, who am I trying to fool?

Those wounds were still raw and bleeding and would probably not heal. The love she felt for these men wasn’t the type a person got over in a few weeks. It was to-the-bone, branded-on-the-heart love. If they rejected her, she’d
never
get over it.

They followed her inside, but when she picked up the wine bottle, Jude snatched it out of her hands and set it right back down. “Nope. No drinking. We’re talking, and that’s that.”

Mike nodded. “Sit your pretty little ass down on that couch, Paige. We’re going to have our say, and you’re damn well going to listen.”

Walking to the couch at the pace of a man heading to the gallows, she made her way across the big room. Then she plopped down, put her hands on her knees, and arched an eyebrow. “What do you have to say?”

“First,” Mike replied as he paced in front of the coffee table, “you are a rude and inconsiderate person. You left me high and dry at the bar.”

“But you had Jillian—”

He glared at her. “Jillian is a conniving little bitch who always wanted your job but didn’t have the skills to do it right. Leaving me with only her as a bartender was the shittiest thing you’ve ever done to me.”

So that was it. This wasn’t about their relationship. This was about his anger at being her boss and her quitting with no notice. “Look, I’m sorry. I should have given you some warning that—”

“Wouldn’t have mattered. I wouldn’t have accepted your resignation. You’re a good bartender. I need you at the restaurant.”

She shook her head. Although the compliment was welcomed, it wasn’t what she wanted. “I can’t go back. I just can’t.”

“Why? Because you’d have to work with me?” His voice quivered in a way that she’d never heard in a man as straightforward and cocksure as Mike. The air of vulnerability made her heart clench.

While she wanted to shout
yes
, she didn’t. Perhaps by letting Mike rant, she’d discover what he really felt for her.

He raked his fingers through his long, dark hair. “Look, I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s okay. I deserved it. I did leave you in a lurch. Sorry.”

His bluster deflated like an emptying balloon. “Jillian’s a pain in the ass.”

A hesitant smile formed on Paige’s lips. “Yeah, she’s that. She’s got a crush on you, you know.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I swore if she touched my ass one more time…”

“Still having to avoid her?”

“No.” He didn’t expand on the answer, which left her wondering why.

Had Jillian grown up a little and stopped throwing herself at Mike?

Not likely.

Had Mike fired her?

Maybe.

Jude stepped into the fray. “What have you been doing all this time?”

“Writing,” she replied.

“The sex toy article?”

“A book.”

Both men stared at her wide-eyed.

She rolled her eyes. “You know I’ve always wanted to write a book.”

“What’s it about?” Jude asked.

She hesitated. Talking about the cathartic story she’d almost finished writing would take this discussion right to the bull’s-eye problem. Writing the book had brought back the old Paige, the one who wasn’t afraid to go after what she wanted. Now was a great time to exercise her rediscovered self-worth.