Page 25 of Nothing to You (Nothing to… #7)

“DON’T WORRY, she’ll be here,” Roxie’s voice carried from the kitchen. “We have time.”

Rounding from the hall, she strode over to the women at the island by the patio pocket doors. “I’m sorry! I know, I was supposed to be here a half hour ago.”

Actually, the original meeting was scheduled for Monday morning at Mosaic. Somehow, it took her and Rourke until Wednesday to find their way out of the hotel suite. She couldn’t be sorry. Turning off their phones and doing nothing but each other was exactly the medicine both of them needed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Roxie said, swirling red wine in her glass. “We’ve all done it.”

“Done what?” she asked, grabbing the bottle to pour wine into the empty glass next to it.

Lilya sat opposite Jane and Roxie with her own glass of something orange. Fruit juice. Oh, the delights of pregnancy. The restrictions were just another in a long list of reasons she didn’t plan to have children. Ever.

“Locked ourselves in a bedroom with our honeys.” Roxie tipped her glass toward the other side of the island. “Lilya kept Kintyre locked up until he impregnated her.”

Lilya straightened. “It wasn’t a specified criterion. I can’t help it if his sperm are super-swimmers.”

Jane’s focus stuck to Roxie. “We hardly saw Merci and Reid on Crimson Isle.”

“Rainie and Gauge get the award for longest lock-in, that was like two weeks straight,” Roxie said. “He came back from Australia for her; I guess she owed him some kind of reward.”

“Zairn did a Tokyo round trip in like two days when you were broken up.”

“Trust you to remember that,” Roxie said. “Gauge bought the company who fired Rainie. That was hot.”

Lilya picked up Jane’s mantle. “Zairn gave you Lola’s Liberty with a billion dollars in its account for your birthday. What did he tell you?”

Their friend rolled her eyes. “To go play.”

“So romantic,” Jane swooned.

Roxie raised a pointed finger. “Technically, it’s a charitable donation, so he can claim it in taxes… or something. I don’t know. He says I’ll get the hang of the embezzlement thing soon.”

That got a laugh.

“Is there a man alive less likely to embezzle company funds?” Lilya asked.

To which Roxie and Jane replied in unison. “Kintyre.”

Another laugh.

“I could persuade him to be bad,” Lilya said, leaning back to show the hand on her hardly there baby bump. “If I could tell him it was in our child’s best interest.”

“I think he’d do anything for you,” Jane said.

Both Roxie and Lilya flattened their affects.

“Knox Collier,” Lilya said.

“Do we have to say it every time?” Roxie asked.

Jane sighed. “I know.”

“Your stalker’s in jail in England.”

“Not for stalking me!”

“No,” Lilya said. “But that’s how dedicated he is. You don’t think Knox was behind the convenient arrest?”

“Even impressed me, and I don’t like him.” Roxie laughed when Jane whined. “I’m kidding, honey. You know I’m kidding. Besides…” When Roxie’s head turned toward her, all three women’s attention zeroed in on her. “We’re missing the point.”

“What’s the point?” she asked, drinking some wine.

“What’s the script with you and Rourke?”

Maybe she should start on the spirits. “The script? There’s no script.”

“You’re all over each other all the time.”

“They’re doing each other all over all the time,” Lilya said. “Are you together?”

“When we’re having sex, yeah,” she said, slipping onto a stool at the head of the island.

“Hard not to be with him when he’s inside me.

I’m not always paying attention, but that’s on him.

Sometimes you have to let them do their thing, you know?

Let them think they’re good at it. Like when kindergarteners bring art home to their parents.

They have to pat them on the head and stick it to the fridge, even if it’s hideous. It’s an unwritten law.”

“Do you love him?” Jane asked, revealing so much of herself in those glittering, innocent eyes.

“He’s my friend… unfortunately.”

“That means?”

“Unfortunately, he’s an asshole. I have an asshole as a friend. Yep, difficult to admit, but it’s an unavoidable truth. A superior asshole who—”

“Are you exclusive?”

“When we’re fucking,” she said. “I could handle another guy, but I wouldn’t ask any other woman to put up with his sloppy technique.”

“You’re being evasive.”

Not deliberately. She laughed because that was the norm when Rourke was around. Sometimes she forgot when he wasn’t in the room. Probably because he was always in her head, one way or another. And she often forgot that not everyone was like them.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s not like that, we’re not…

” How could she explain it to three women who embraced commitment with stark, obvious boundaries and clear, articulated ownership?

“I love him, yes.” Jane perked up. “He’s my best friend…

” That deflated the innocent beauty a little.

“I would never do anything to hurt him, and I know he wouldn’t hurt me. What we are isn’t like…”

“It’s an open relationship?” Lilya asked.

“We don’t have a relationship to open and close. Talking about forever isn’t us. Neither of us are interested in that.”

“What if he came in here with another woman right now?”

“He won’t. Guy’s been up to his eyeballs at the office since lunch.” When they’d returned from the hotel. “He’s got enough on his plate.”

Had she distracted him? What had he done with his days before she was around, leading him astray? That was a joke. She’d distracted him even back before they’d met in reality.

“But what if he did?” Jane asked.

“Then I hope he has a ball with her.”

“You can’t not care.”

She shrugged. “It won’t happen. His focus is elsewhere. And we’re sort of… unspoken.”

“Do you want to get married?”

Simple question. “No.”

“How do you know that you’re… How do you know when to not…”

“Hit on other people? It doesn’t work like that.

” Now all of them were confused. “Look…” She laid a flat hand on the counter.

“We do what feels good. We do whatever we want whenever we want. It just so happens that right now, what we want to do is screw like rabbits. If I’m not in the mood, he accepts that or changes it.

Same the other way around. We don’t have language or rules, we have… ”

“Feelings,” Jane said.

Respect. Though that seemed like an ironic description given how much time they spent disrespecting each other for sport.

“We’re each other’s default.” Was that a better way to describe it? “We default to each other. Whether that’s talking something out, teasing each other, or getting each other off. We’re open for each other twenty-four, seven.”

“And if someone else got between you?” Lilya asked.

“Wouldn’t happen,” she said, shaking her head.

“If we got involved with other people, that wouldn’t change our friendship.

Yeah, maybe he’ll have to keep it in his pants around me, but so what?

Soon as the lady’s out of his life, if he needs a rebound, I’ll be open for business, for whatever he needs. Just like he’d be for me.”

“I don’t get it,” Lilya said.

Jane was as perplexed though there was a curiosity there.

It wasn’t as potent as Roxie’s. “Are you kidding yourself?” She gestured at the trio. “We’ve all got into the fling mindset. We think it doesn’t mean anything until we lose our guy and then it becomes… clear. If someone took Rourke away from you—”

She laughed. “No one can do that.”

“If I was Rourke’s girlfriend, I would hate you,” Lilya said, lifting her glass. “Just saying.”

“Me too,” Roxie agreed and nudged Jane. “She won’t say it, but she would as well. I put up with Kesley, I like Kesley, and Trish, Zairn’s list goes on and on, but you’re… You two are too…”

“Symbiotic,” Lilya said.

“Thank you,” she said, frowning, unsure if that was a compliment.

“That’s it. That’s exactly what it is. You’re not co-dependent because you’re completely fine, healthy, rounded individuals, but it’s like… you exist together.”

Okay. Now confusion closed around her. Apparently, everyone had to take a shot on the “what the hell?” train.

“Do you think he feels the same way?” Jane asked. “If you were with a guy, would he get mad?”

“Providing he gets something out of the deal, he’s happy to pimp me out.” As his interaction with Franco revealed. “He’d never get jealous and wouldn’t need to be jealous. No third party changes our friendship.”

“Maybe he loves her,” Jane said, almost appealing to Roxie to make sense of it. “Maybe Roux thinks it’s not a big deal, she thinks it’s just sex and then…”

Roxie took Jane’s hand. “I love you.”

“That’s not the same,” Jane said, sagging into a slouch.

“Do you think he loves you?” Lilya asked.

“I know he does.”

“Does he say it?”

“Would he say it?”

Restraining a laugh wasn’t easy. If she wasn’t in it, she might not understand it either.

Male voices carried down the hall. Not clear enough to be heard word for word, but loud enough to herald their arrival.

“Let’s find out,” she whispered, knowing exactly how it would play out.

Rourke and Zairn came into the kitchen. As Zairn peeled away to head for Roxie, Rourke’s focus was the fridge.

“Did the beer come?” he asked.

“I love you, Boy Scout,” she called out, leaning away from the island.

“Yeah, I love you too. Did the beer come?”

She shared a smile with the surprised and confused women. Zairn was frowning too. Yep, they were a conundrum.

“Will the world crash to a halt if our super special imported beer didn’t show up?”

“It didn’t?” His concern turned her around, just to laugh at him, but that was allowed. “You’re screwing with me.”

She gasped. “Me? I would never do that, baby.” His hand was already on the fridge handle. “Open it and see. I haven’t checked.” And hadn’t even thought to. The fridge wasn’t high on her priority list. “These lovely ladies were already drinking when I got here.”

“What a surprise,” Zairn said, kissing the top of Roxie’s head.

“Lilya has a friend for you in Boston, Boy Scout,” she said, raising the rim of her glass to her lip. “She thinks you’d be perfect together.”

“Nah, no, no, I don’t think so,” Rourke said, popping the cap off a beer bottle. Good, his foreign treat was there, maybe now he’d relax. “No more long distance anything. It’s much easier to discipline a woman when you can spank her into submission.”

Jane gasped and Roxie put an arm around her in a half hug. “Don’t worry, honey. I’m sure Roux spanks him back.”

“No, he enjoys it too much. I go straight for the CBT.”

Roxie’s mouth opened like she got it, Jane’s confusion deepened. “Isn’t that like a mental health therapy thing?”

“Yes,” Roxie said, pronouncing her nod. “That’s exactly what it is, honey. Talk therapy.”

“Guess we know what Knox isn’t into,” Lilya murmured.

These ladies were funny. Despite being different in so many ways, their friendship worked. Opposites could attract in all walks of life.

Rourke’s hand landed on her shoulder and kept going, sliding under her neckline to fondle her chest. “Are we going out tonight?”

Good grope. Yep, there were no words for what they were.

“I don’t want to go out tonight,” she said. “I want to have sex in the pool.”

“Before dinner or after?”

“Don’t they always say you shouldn’t swim on a full stomach?”

“Swim? What the hell kinda sex do you want to have? We’re not fucking dolphins.”

“You won’t be fucking anything with that smart mouth.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Better I fuck yours.”

“And who’s hungry?” Roxie asked, slapping both hands on the counter to hop off her stool.