Happenstance(6)

This is work related.

Gabe is a portal into the deputy mayor’s relationship with Jameson Crouch.

You’re going to question Gabe about what he’s heard. Seen. Right?

Yes. I am.

As soon as he spills the tea on his brother and ex-wife. “Why are they living together?”

“It’s not a very nice story,” Gabe says, hesitating for a beat, before stroking a hand down the back of my long, dark hair—and God help me, I’m shivering now for an entirely different reason. Am I attracted to this big bear of a man? “Are you sure you want to hear it?”

“Yeah,” I whisper, my attention ticking over to Banks, then Tobias. They’re both watching Gabe’s giant paw travel down the length of my hair and neither one of them seems to like it. Not one bit. Why? They just met me. They have zero claim on me and I don’t have one on them. Or Gabe. Apparently, that toxin in the air is potent and nothing makes sense anymore. “Tell us.”

Gabe hums. Adjusts his stance.

“My brother and Candace were both popular in high school. Everyone wanted to be him, be with her. But they were with each other. Only. Until after graduation, I went to trade school. Got this job as a foreman and started making money. At the same time, my brother was unemployed. Drinking too much. They broke up, a few more years passed.” A lump slides up and down in his throat. “And suddenly she wanted to be with me. For stability, I guess, since we were pushing thirty. But I guess she never really got over my brother, because, uh…”

“You found them turning each other’s cranks,” Tobias finishes. “Been there. On the crank turning end of things, of course.”

I shoot Tobias a venomous look.

He winks back at me—and he’s very lucky the windows on this tram don’t come down or I might “accidentally” push him out of one. It occurs to me in that moment that I am having vastly different reactions to these three men. Tobias riles me up, irritates me. Banks is like looking into an emotional mirror, giving me a strange sense of camaraderie. And Gabe? I’m protective over him. A man twice my size.

Like I said, nothing makes sense anymore.

Giving myself a mental shake, I refocus on Gabe’s story. “I’m sorry that happened. It can’t be easy living next door to them.”

“They act like it didn’t happen. The marriage. And they park on my lawn.” His tone is disbelieving and I get the impression he’s never said any of this out loud. “Their wheels are only a few inches onto my property but it kills the grass. I like my grass.” He splits an annoyed look between all three of us in defense of lawn maintenance. “Anyway. They…expect me to follow their lead and act like the marriage never happened and I don’t know how.”

“That’s because it’s impossible, Gabe,” I say. “An impossible thing to expect from you.”

He nods, studies my face closely. The sun has gone down and it’s growing darker in the small car. Suddenly everything is more. The intimacy of our position—my hands on his chest, his arms wrapped around my hips. Banks and Tobias observing closely, not breathing. All four of us are sort of suspended in animation, but my pulse is galloping, moving faster when Gabe wets his lips, his hand flexing on the small of my back. Oh my God, I think he’s going to kiss me. Right here, in front of these other men. Why doesn’t that seem as wild and crazy as it ought to?

I mean, it does. It’s bananas. But in the near-dark private world above the river, it’s almost like we’ve momentarily slipped out of reality.

Gabe’s breath shallows—and I feel it. His erection spears up between us, almost shockingly hard, and he immediately drops his arms from around me, backing toward the other side of the car and turning around, bracing his hands on the metal frame that surrounds the glass. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, uh…”

Skin flushed, I nod once, stammering, “I, yeah. I know.”

“Sweet hell, if I apologized for my dick every time it got hard, I would be hoarse twenty-four hours a day,” Tobias declares, looking down at the appendage in question. “I’d advise you all to buy stock in throat lozenges, because I’d be going through bags of them like water.”

The absence of Gabe’s furnace-like heat starts to take effect immediately. It’s like walking out of a hot shower into a snowstorm. I’m even colder than before, because I’ve been to the Promised Land. Gabe must hear my teeth chattering from across the tram car, because he shoots me a miserable look over his shoulder…

But suddenly Banks is stepping into view, blocking Gabe.

Blocking, well, everything.

He wraps his overcoat around me and draws me up against his body. And when I say my mouth begins to water over his scent, it’s not an exaggeration. A scent has never intoxicated me. At the mere suggestion that I might one day lose my chill over cologne, I would have laughed—until now. It’s smoky and sensual and ever so slightly sweet. And where Gabe is thick and rounded, Banks is ripped and tight. He looks me right in the eye while heating me up in very precise, proficient manner that leads me to believe he’s been envisioning how he would do it this whole time.

I’ve been in denial for the last few minutes. Trying to ignore the fact that I was aroused by Gabe. The packed press of his strength, our size difference, his capable energy. But I can’t deny it now when Banks is holding me accountable with eye contact that I can’t seem to break. My nipples are puckered inside my bra and there is a teasing tingle between my thighs that is growing harder to ignore. It was there when Gabe held me and it’s only growing more potent now that I’m in Banks’s arms. So which one of them is doing this to me? It can’t be both, right?