Rebecca bit down on the loaded toast. Amazing flavors exploded in her mouth. The large-scale caviar was the perfect texture: firm, smooth, the taste a layering of butter and nuts and sea.
“Mm,” she hummed, closing her eyes to absorb it. She felt as if she’d been transported to Mother Russia, to some wintry gray seashore. When she lifted her eyelids, Zane and Trey were fighting laughs.
“You look like that when you come,” Zane explained.
“And you definitely need more,” Trey said, before she could blaze up in a blush.
They ate the decadent feast together—laughing, licking fingers, and enjoying. The salmon was nearly as good as the caviar, the chilled champagne the perfect accompaniment. The food was gone by the time Trey popped the second bottle.
“You do that as neatly as my head chef,” she praised.
“Practice.” He poured for the others and settled back in his chair. “Somewhat to my surprise, Zane is a champagne hound.”
Zane grinned unabashedly, likely a little buzzed. “I’m about more than beer and burgers.” He stretched his bare legs until his feet bumped hers. “You’re wearing my robe.”
This appeared to please him.
“It smelled good,” she said.
“It smells like bad boy,” Trey clarified and laughed.
“Is that an inside joke?”
“We’re testing a new men’s fragrance,” Zane said. “Called ‘Bad Boy,’ of course. We’ve both been wearing it. We’re hoping to launch it next Christmas.”
“It’s nice on both of you,” she observed.
Smiling, Trey slouched deeper in his chair, arms flung out in relaxation, feet nudging hers like Zane’s were. He seemed not only amused but happy, drunk perhaps but not impaired.
This is what he wants, she realized. Trey had no hesitation where he loved. His heart’s desire was to draw both of them close to him. Zane’s body still held a hint of tension, not much but it was there. Like her, he didn’t let down his guard easily. Also like her, he found a lot to admire in Trey.
“How did you two meet?” she asked, sensing the champagne would oil their answer.
Trey turned his head to Zane, silently offering him the option of answering. She realized something else then. Trey was more careful of Zane’s boundaries than Zane was of his.
Zane seemed willing to tell the story—if warily. “We were neighbors,” he said, fingers tapping his chair’s arms. “And we went to the same high school.”
“I was a nerd. He was a jock.”
“You weren’t a nerd,” she said, not believing it. Trey was quirky, but too beautiful for that.
“An outsider then. Zane took me under his wing in our senior year.”
Zane leaned forward over his knees. His sandy brows drew together, creating a furrow above his nose. Rebecca leaned forward too, not close enough to tell him with her touch that his private stories were safe with her.
“Did he know what your father did?” she asked gently.
Zane wet his lips. “Trey’s father hit him too. For different reasons, but we found out we had that in common.”
“And also liking men and women.”
“And also that,” Zane concurred. “One night, my dad and I had a last-straw blowout. I was convinced I was going to kill him and spend the rest of my life in jail. Trey watched the fight from his bedroom window. When I ran from the house, he followed me. I’m not sure what he thought I was going to do. Throw myself off a bridge maybe. We talked for the first time at the high school track. You could say he initiated the other half of what I wanted sexually. We got each other through our last year of school.”
“And then you came here to Harvard.”
“And then we came here.” His lips curved as he looked at her. The smile was wry. She couldn’t read the emotion behind it.
“My father never hit me,” she said.
“That’s not a requirement for us liking you,” Zane teased.
“I didn’t mean— Shit.” When he chuckled, she threw a napkin at him.
Still smiling slightly, he went on. “Everything we have here reminds me my old life is behind me. Every bite of caviar is a bite of freedom.”
Rebecca’s breastbone pressed in against her heart. “That’s a nice way to put it.”
Trey reached out to take Zane’s hand. Zane returned his hold with a squeeze. Zane had told his story lightly, but she guessed sharing it wasn’t that easy.
“I read your brothers’ interview,” Trey said.
He startled her. “Oh,” she said, her hand coming to her chest. Zane was looking at him as if this surprised him as well.
“What you did for your brothers, when you were so young, it can’t help but mean something to people who grew up like us.”
“I just . . . I didn’t want to lose them.”
“You protected them.” Trey’s tone was soft but firm.
“I protected me too. And they helped, even though they were little.”
He leaned back and smiled. “I admire you anyway.”
He turned his statement into a tease, the same as Zane’s crack about not needing to be hit for them to like her. She felt ridiculously flattered but also uncomfortable. She was no hero.
“Well,” she said. She stood and tightened the tie on Zane’s robe. The table between them was scattered with plates and crumbs. “Maybe I should clean up.”
“We’ll take care of it,” Zane assured her. “Why don’t you warm the bed for when we get back?”
“You’re spoiling me,” she said, trying to sound as light as them. “Aren’t you worried I won’t want to go to work tomorrow?”
Trey drew breath as if he meant to speak. Zane stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Just be a guest,” he said. “We’re happy you’re here tonight.”
~
“You need to ease up on her,” Zane cautioned.
They’d brought the food to the suite on a rolling cart. Because Mrs. Penworth was asleep in her quarters, they were trundling it back with the remains. Just in case they ran into staff, they’d pulled on what Trey teased were their Hugh Hefner robes.
“I need to ease up,” he repeated as Zane opened the old elevator’s metal gate. “That’s not what a woman groaning in ecstasy signifies. Anyway, she went at you hard for the finish. I couldn’t have gotten her too sore.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Zane pulled his end of the cart into the car. Closing the gate, Trey got the mechanism going. “She’s a total workaholic, way worse than me. She had the wardrobe she did because she doesn’t like wearing clothes she can’t cook in. I’m not sure she has a shut-off button. She won’t welcome being told she can stay home from the restaurant.”