A flush of something prickly and unfamiliar crawled over Laura’s cheeks and chest. Oh, yeah. She remembered this. It was called attraction. Had he noticed her and Josie? Was he interested? How was she supposed to act? She was taken. Twice over!
“Um, you mean Josie?” she stammered.
“Is that her name? The one my grandma told me liked to defile the warlock waitress?” When he smiled there was a dimple on one side.
Ah. Not attraction. Notoriety. Stupid stupid stupid, she chided herself, mumbling, “Uh, yeah, she’s coming, too.”
“Two mugs, then,” he said cheerfully, slamming them down with the coffee and a creamer pitcher, then moving with a muscled grace that made her eyes linger a little too long over his denim-covered ass. If Josie was going to be late, at least she had a fine view while she wasted a few minutes. Wow. She’d been out of the market just long enough to forget what it felt like to find someone other than Mike or Dylan attractive.
What did that mean?
Ruminating on it wasn’t in the cards, for Josie careened into the booth, a blur of sinew, her single-digit-sized body making Laura feel big and bumbling. Not that Josie was responsible for that—it was simple comparison and all on Laura. This was her own insecurity she was slowly shaking.
One coconut shrimp at a time.
“Key lime pie?” Josie huffed, reading her mind. As if on cue, her friend poured a cup of coffee, fixed it just so, took a sip, made a frantic burned-tongue gesture, and sat with wide, expectant eyes, fanning her open mouth. She looked like an Affenpinscher with a caffeine habit.
The waiter dude happened to walk by at that moment and stopped on a dime. His sneakers actually squeaked. “Two pieces?” he asked, nodding toward the door. “We’re about to have a huge crowd come in, so if you want to order now, you can get ahead of the crush.”
“Two coconut shrimps, two pieces of the pie, and…” Laura looked at Josie, who shrugged.
“And?” the waiter asked.
“And that’s enough,” Laura added definitively, touching the rim of her mug. “The coffee’s fine.”
“Sounds good.” He ran off, and Josie gave her a look of appraisal.
“That’s it?”
Laura patted her stomach. “Not eating for two any longer.” She actually wasn’t nearly as ravenous now that Jillian had started solid foods, and her appetite was diminishing back to normal. “What about you?”
“Alex and I had lunch an hour ago.”
“You don’t have to eat with me.”
“Give up coconut shrimp and key lime? You crazy?” They shared a good-natured laugh and settled into a very weird, awkward silence that stretched on. And on. And interminably on, until finally Laura broke.
“Why are we being quiet?”
“You’re being quiet. I’m waiting.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“For you to tell tell me why you needed to be rescued from Mike and Dylan.”
“By the way, Dylan read my texts. Thanks for the fake meeting comment, you dork.”
Josie snickered. “Sorry. Is the fact that he’s reading your texts one of the reasons you needed a meeting? Too controlling? Men like that are total assholes. If you have to control your woman to that point, or send her hundreds of texts a day, you’ve got a screw loose.”
Laura waved her hand dismissively and took another sip of coffee. Her shoulders began to relax. “No. He just happened to look over my shoulder at the wrong time.”
“So you’re here because…”
“Because I need help with my relationships.”
“Pffft. Wrong person to ask!” Josie crowed, taking a long, nervous gulp from her mug. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”
“Says the woman who runs a dating service. So inspiring.”
“You hired me!” Josie shot back. “No accounting for your taste.”
“Speaking of which, how is business? I assume you made up the PR comment in those texts.”
Josie went from joking to uncomfortable. Uh-oh. “I did, but there was an element of truth. Some online forum like Fark or someone’s Tumblr made fun of us. We analyzed the inbound traffic to the website and followed it backwards. Just nasty stuff.”
“Let me guess. A bunch of guys moaning about how the only good threesome involves two women and one man.”
“Something like that.”
“Whatever. That we can handle. It’s when the gossip sites get hold of the whole ‘billionaire freak’ meme that we need to worry.” Laura could talk a good game, and was significantly calmer about the occasional bubbles of scandal, but it still hurt. When the gossip sites ripped into the life they chose, it was still her life. Her men. Her child. The jokes she could chuckle at. The barbs, though, drew blood.
And always would.
Jillian wasn’t an “abomination.” Her threesome life with Dylan and Mike wasn’t “unnatural.” The folks who spewed intolerance came from such a wide cross section of people that she found herself studying it from a distance, because sociologically it was fascinating. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheistic, southern, New Englander, male, female—there were equal-opportunity haters out there, and all had an opinion.
Good Things Come in Threes soldiered on, though, gaining a steady clientele as Mike, Dylan, and Laura did everything they could to stay out of the limelight, going as far as hiring a PR specialist who had a sub-niche speciality: keeping clients out of the press. What irony.
So far, so good for the two months since they’d hired her.
And Darla was a treasure. An absolute treasure, and a bargain, from what Laura understood. They’d worked together occasionally, but their schedules never gelled well. Laura lived on Jillian time while Darla seemed to need her nights to play with her guys and their band. Josie said life was working well for her niece, and that the move had been good, which was fantastic. Laura knew how hard and radical giving up your known life for uncharted territory could be.
“I can’t prevent people from finding out that you three are, in fact, freaks. Did you ever get that hip injury checked out?” Josie’s eyes were filled with merry mischief.
Laura blushed. “I’m fine.”
“Alex had to go into a lot of detail that involves physiology and anatomy terms I haven’t heard since college when he was on the phone with Dylan that day. You guys really need to stop abusing that sex swing.” The last words came out of Josie’s mouth just as the hot waiter dude appeared with their shrimp and pie.