Luke cleared his throat with a deliberate cough. “It’s fine. Come in.” He winced as it suddenly occurred to him that the inside wasn’t in great shape. The cleaner wasn’t due in until tomorrow. Those thoughts ended as she strutted passed; his eyes were glued to her arse. Just as he was closing the door a hand shoved against it, sending him backpedalling.
“Winston,” drawled Connor as he entered.
“Alright there mate,” greeted Dane in a deceptively friendly voice.
“Oh I brought them along,” announced Jaxxon before entering the living room. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Connor smiled at Luke. “Don’t worry, we’re not here to break bones. What reason would we have to do anything like that?” He gestured toward the living room. “After you.”
Choosing to go with the flow for now, or until he got near his mobile phone, Luke waltzed into the living room. Jaxxon, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, grinned at him. “What’s all this about?” he asked.
“Ah, I think he thought she’d come here to shag him,” said Dane as he and Connor covered the doorway of the room, blocking Luke’s path should his flight instinct kick in.
Connor shook his head. “Nah, I’m sure his intentions were totally honourable when he invited her inside.”
“Do you do a lot of jogging, Luke?” asked Jaxxon.
The question took him by surprise. His shrug was small. “Not a lot, no.”
“How often would you say you do?”
“What? I don’t know. I just do it sometimes if I feel like it.”
“And you felt like going jogging on that morning that we met, didn’t you?”
He swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
“Sorry again about Bronty growling at you like that. But as you said, he was just protecting me. Odd choice of words, wouldn’t you say?”
He laughed nervously. “You’re saying you thought I was going to hurt you?”
“You tell me.”
“A lone man jogging in the park has to have dodgy intentions these days, is that it?”
“I never saw you do much jogging. As I recall it, you just appeared out of the woods.”
“Because I’d just spent the past half hour jogging through those woods taking the short cut to the lake.”
“And yet, there wasn’t an ounce of sweat on you.” She gave her head a little shake and shrugged. “What a phenomenon.” She smiled as she assessed his posture. “You’re looking a little nervous. You were looking a little nervous that morning too. And that night in the bar. Funny that you should turn up in the same place like that. It wasn’t so funny that you did your best to get me drunk to bring me here.” Her brows rose. “Nothing to say to that? How about a subject change then? Let’s talk about Anita Donovan.”
He didn’t bother denying that he knew her. Why make the hole he was in even deeper? Besides, technically he hadn’t done anything wrong. Well maybe by Connor McKenzie’s rule book he had. “I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“When did you last see her?” asked Connor.
“That night that I was talking to Jaxxon at the bar.”
“So you two were seeing each other,” said Jaxxon; not a question, a statement. When it was mentioned that she might have a stalker she had tried thinking about anyone who might have acted strange around her, which brought her to think of Luke. But it didn’t make any sense to her that someone like him – gorgeous, rich, always had girls throwing themselves at him – would bother following her around. Then she remembered when they were in the bar and Connor had appeared. Jaxxon had witnessed surprise and betrayal and, finally, understanding flash on Luke’s face, but she had been positive that they weren’t directed at her or Connor – he had been thinking of someone else. So she asked herself, assuming someone else was involved, who could possibly be connected to both her and Connor that would want to play games.
Luke rubbed his chin and sighed. “Only for a couple of weeks. There wasn’t much going on other than shagging. To be honest, I thought she was a bit weird but she was good in bed so that was overlooked; she was adventurous and imaginative when it came to games -”
Jaxxon held up a hand. “Too much information, Luke.”
“Not sex games. I mean, well, they were sex games but not like what you’re thinking. We’d go out to a bar and she’d pick out a bloke and I’d pick out a girl and then we’d dare each other to go after them. We’d try to get their phone numbers, a kiss, an invite back to their place…We never used to go, it was just a game we played. Whichever one of us got the farthest had control in the bedroom that night.”
“But you didn’t try to get my number or a kiss or an invite to mine. You wanted me to go with you.”
“Anita turned round one day and said, ‘Hey I dare you to go after Jaxxon Carter’. I said if we were ever out one night and you were there I’d approach you.” Connor growled but he ignored it, even though the sound chilled him. “But she said, ‘No, I’m changing the rules; you’ve got to approach her out of a bar and then get her to come back here’.”
“Hence, the pretend-jog incident?”
“She told me you walked your dog in the park on Saturday mornings.”
The fact that Anita knew that didn’t sound good to Connor but he didn’t interrupt, he wanted every detail.
“I had it all in my head what I was going to say to you,” said Luke, sighing, “but when I got up close it just all left me. I was just, well, mesmerised by you.” He was surprised when she looked confused about that. He wasn’t surprised that Connor growled. “Anyway she teased me for hours when I came back here without you and she wouldn’t let the dare drop. But, well, my ego was all sore and I didn’t fancy getting brainfreeze and making an idiot out of myself in front of you again so I told her to forget it. Then she said -” Here was where he suspected Connor wouldn’t be too pleased.
Jaxxon arched a brow. “She said…?”
“She said she had it on good authority that you were into threesomes.” As he anticipated, Connor growled again and spat a curse. “She said if I managed to get you back here then the three of us could…I mean come on I’m only bloody human.” He turned to Connor and Dane. “Don’t tell me you two wouldn’t have been intrigued by the idea.”