“The doctor is apparently dealing with a situation.” Lucas’s deep voice penetrated her brain. Everything was a little foggy.
“Well, I have a situation right here. We have to call an ambulance,” Aidan said. His arms tightened around her as though he was afraid to let go.
She forced her eyes open. If she let him, Aidan would have three ambulances, the police force, and a fire truck in the front yard before she could take a breath. “I’m fine.”
“You fainted.”
She shook it off. “Because I haven’t eaten in a couple of days.”
Aidan’s eyebrows came together in a frustrated V. “What? I fixed you a plate.”
She shrugged. “And I couldn’t eat it.”
The thought of food turned her stomach. Ever since she’d gotten the last e-mail from Karen, she hadn’t been able to think about anything but maximizing her career.
“Lucas?”
“I’m on it.” Lucas had a glass of orange juice in his hand. “I brought this with me. Drink it. I’ll go and grab a protein bar.”
“This has to stop, Lexi. You can’t treat yourself like this. You’re making yourself crazy. Drink.” He held the glass up to her lips.
She was forced to drink. Cool, sweet juice filled her mouth. She swallowed it down before pushing his hand away. “We need to talk, Aidan. I’ve done something terrible.”
He frowned. “What was all that shit about you costing us the ranch?”
If only it was a joke. “The city council is going to take our ranch.”
“Baby, that’s not going to happen.” He smoothed back her hair. God, it felt so good to be in his arms. How long had it been since she’d just relaxed in their arms, lazing away the hours while they talked and made love?
She was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to hold her after she told him what she’d done. “You have to listen to me. I’ve got a plan to save us.”
“Lexi, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s just gossip. It’s nothing for you to worry about.”
She had to make him listen. She turned to him, staring into his eyes, willing him to believe her. “The city council is planning on rezoning key parts of the county.”
“Yes, I know, sweetheart. It’s already been taken care of.”
“You don’t understand. I pissed Karen off.”
“Karen Wilcox?”
“She’s Karen Carter now. You know, like Mayor Carter.”
His eyes rolled slightly. “Yes, baby, I know she managed to get the mayor to marry her. I don’t know what she has to do with this.”
Because he wasn’t thinking. “Right after Chelsea was born, I went to a brunch at the Deer Run Women’s Committee. I was going to head up the auction to raise funds for the new school. Well, Karen had me kicked off because she said there was no place for whores in her town.”
“She said what?” Aidan’s voice had gone dangerously low.
There was a reason she’d tried to take care of it herself in the first place. “She always calls me a whore, Aidan. But she usually does it behind my back. I got a little mad.”
His eyes narrowed. “What exactly did you do?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I might have dumped a punch bowl over her head and told her to take her fake boobs and get out of my house. We own the building the meeting was taking place in. Needless to say, they moved their meetings to somewhere else. But Karen was mad. Everyone laughed at her. She deserved it. But then she walked up to me at Patty Cakes and we had a little discussion.”
“You should have had a discussion with me.”
“Aidan, you shouldn’t have to deal with mean-girl name calling. But she took it further.” Tears threatened, but she bit them back. “Aidan, she’s going to have her husband take a thousand acres in the east field. He’s going to take our water access and he’s going to use eminent domain to take it. He claims he’s going to build an outlet mall.”
Aidan’s eyes closed, and he took a long breath. “Oh, baby, that wasn’t about a shopping mall. That was a land grab plain and simple. The east pasture is sitting on what might be a ton of natural gas. I turned down a contract with the gas company to drill because I don’t trust them. The mayor wants that money so he came up with the idea of taking the land.”
“You knew about it?” All this time she’d worried sick and he’d known?
“The mayor doesn’t want the land anymore.” Lucas was standing in the doorway, a plate in his hand. “I explained that I could keep him tied up in court for a very long time.”
That didn’t sound like Lucas. “Is that all you did?”
“I might also have had Chase dig up dirt on the bastard’s tax practices. He might owe the IRS a ton of money and he has undocumented workers working in his family’s estate. I might have presented him with evidence and he might have crapped his pants and backed down. But the official reason is we’re being completely unreasonable and threatening to tie the county up in court. I think he told everyone Aidan was an environmentalist.”
“Yeah, they think that’s worse than being gay, which is the other thing they call me.” He took her hands in his. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to fight about the gas rights. Baby, the company that’s offering is known for being sloppy and, honestly, I don’t want to take the chance that we could make a quick million but lose the land in the end. Ranching is our future.”
“But all this time I thought I was going to cost us the land.”
“Baby, the mayor might enjoy screwing Karen, but he’s not about to let her make decisions like that. He didn’t marry her for her brain. He married her because she’s thirty years younger than him. She was always a mean bitch. She probably heard what he was planning and decided to make herself look like she had some power. How long has this been going on?”
“That bitch.” She felt so stupid. “Months, Aidan.”
“Months? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Why didn’t you talk to me?” She threw back at him.
“Because you’re both impossibly stubborn and obnoxious.” Lucas sat the plate in front of her. “And you’re both going to change or we’re going to fall apart. Lexi, what was your plan to save the ranch and how did it involve being on the phone twenty-four seven?”
He knew her really well. “I was going to up my writing so we would have the money to fight this or I could buy us new land.”
Aidan shook his head. “Baby, do you know how much new land would cost? I know you make a lot of money, but you don’t make millions and that’s what it would take. Lexi, I don’t know what you were thinking.”
“I was thinking I didn’t want you to know how stupid I was. I was thinking I would try to save us. But you and Lucas had already done it and not even bothered to tell me something was wrong.”
“That sounds a whole lot like the pot calling the kettle black,” Aidan shot back. “You’ve kept us at arm’s length for months because you weren’t willing to talk about what had happened. I might not have been totally truthful with you, but I didn’t push you away.”
“Really?” Lucas asked, passing the plate to her. “Eat, Lexi. If you don’t, I’ll pull you over my knee. I haven’t topped you in almost a year. Between the pregnancy and this episode, I haven’t gotten what I needed in a very long time, so I wouldn’t test me now.”
Her heart ached a little. She’d known that Lucas was hurting and she’d still held him away. She took the sandwich he’d made her and had a bite.
“As to you, Aidan, you can’t say you haven’t held yourself apart from me. How long did it take you to ask me for advice? How many weeks went by?”
Lexi looked back at Aidan. “You didn’t talk to Lucas?”
They always talked. She couldn’t stand the thought of Aidan feeling so alone—the way she’d felt for months.
“I thought I could handle it.” Aidan took a long breath.
The same way she had thought she could handle it.
“I’m tired of both of you,” Lucas
said. “I’m tired of being ignored. When I have a problem, I come to you. I’ve asked your opinion on everything from what car to buy to how to handle the human resources problems at the Dallas office. I didn’t do that because I thought the two of you knew everything. I did it because I trust you and love you and I need you to know what’s happening in my life. Neither one of you feels the same about me.”
“Or we’re just very stupid,” Lexi tried.
Lucas shrugged a little. “Either way, it has to change. I’m not saying I’ll leave. I can’t. We have two children who depend on me. But I will change my expectations of what our relationship means. I’ll hold myself apart. I don’t want that. I want what was promised to me. I want my family. Make your decisions. I’m going to go and think for a while.”
“Lucas,” Aidan called out as he turned to go.
Lucas didn’t turn around. “No. If you want me, you’ll know where to find me. Don’t come looking if you can’t be my Master.”
He walked out the door, his boots ringing against the hardwood floors.
“He doesn’t mean that.” She couldn’t let Aidan get mad at Lucas.
Aidan sat back against the bed. “Yes, he does. He has every right to be mad, Lexi. We failed him.”
The “we” gave her a little hope. Something had settled deep in her chest. Something that had been tight and nasty had loosened up. “I didn’t fuck everything up?”
Aidan chuckled a little. “Oh, I think we fucked up plenty. Lexi, why didn’t you talk to me?”
He pulled her back into his arms. Those big biceps surrounded her, and just for a moment, she felt safe. He’d heard the truth and he wasn’t pushing her away. “She has power over us. She can make life difficult for us and I still got pissed off.”
“You should have clocked the bitch,” Aidan replied.
She shook her head. “I can’t get us kicked out.”
Oh, god. She’d never really thought about it that way. She’d had her daughter and then she’d done something that could have cost them the ranch and her whole childhood had played out in some weird place in the back of her brain.
She’d always felt it. She’d felt the fact that she was the reason her mother had lost her home. She’d been the reason they had struggled and her mother had to fight for their existence. She’d been the reason her mother had married a man she liked but didn’t love.
She couldn’t be the reason her daughter got kicked out. She couldn’t be the reason her son lost his home.
“Oh god, Aidan. What was I thinking?”
His arms tightened. “Baby, baby, I know what’s going on in that head of yours, but it’s wrong.”
“I can’t be the reason we fail.” Tears pierced through her.
“Baby, we’re not failing.”
“I can’t lose our home. I can’t get us kicked out. I can’t do it again.”
Aidan sighed, pulling her so close she could barely breathe. “Lexi, that’s not going to happen. Baby, we’re going to be fine. No one can throw us off our land. I won’t allow it. Your momma was all alone. She didn’t have anyone to help her. You can’t think it was your fault.”
“She got kicked out because of me. What if I do the same thing to Chelsea? To baby Jack?”
Aidan forced her to turn around. “How do you feel about your mother, Lexi? Are you angry with her?”
Lexi shook her head. “Of course not. She’s the strongest woman I know.”
“Why? Why is she so strong? And don’t bullshit me, because I can get her over here in a heartbeat.”
Lexi let her tears flow. “She’s strong because she loved me.”
Her mother hadn’t faltered. She’d been seventeen years old, barely out of high school, and pregnant and alone. She’d managed to pull herself up and put herself through school. She’d taken care of them both. She’d educated herself.
Because she’d loved Lexi.
“I can’t be as strong as my momma.”
“You don’t have to be.” Aidan kissed her brow. “Baby, she doesn’t have to be anymore and I bet your mother would say she’s thrilled about that. You and I have been giving into our childhoods. You’re trying to be your momma and I’m trying to make up for everything my father didn’t give me. Lucas is the only one who’s fighting it.”
Because Lucas had been ignored. He’d been marginalized and he was standing up to the people he loved because he wouldn’t be that way again. He wouldn’t walk away because that man would never leave his children, but he would stand up for himself.
“I don’t want to live like this. I don’t want to hide things from you. I was stupid, Aidan.”
“No. Like I said, you should have clocked her. I have plans for her. Maybe it’s time to really unleash Lucas’s inner bastard and let him take that bitch down. Let Lucas be the man he wants to be.”
She smiled a little. “But he wants to be Jack.”
Her stepfather was known for being a man no one wanted to cross.
“Exactly. I’m not as smart as Lucas. I tend to fight my way through life when he can finesse it, and sometimes revenge requires finesse. I love you, Lexi. You’re not capable of finesse. You’re capable of tossing a bowl of punch over someone’s head. I’m capable of punching someone. Lucas is capable of taking apart someone’s life in such a way that no one even knows he did it.”
That summed up her dad. “I love you all so much. I don’t want to fail you.”
“Lexi, baby, you can’t fail us. We’re your family. The only way you fail is by walking away. Don’t walk away.” Her Master had tears in his eyes. He stared down at her like she was precious and she was. When he looked at her like that, she knew she was loved. Only a few humans in the world ever looked at her like that. Her husbands. Her mother. Her children.
Her family.
She couldn’t fail them. Like her mother couldn’t fail her. She’d been righteously strong, and she’d gained that strength from loving her child. Even though she didn’t need to be strong now, her love for Jack and Sam made her that way.
The only way Lexi had failed was in not talking to her men. “I want to slow down.”
Aidan’s mouth curled up. “Oh, my darling baby, you will slow down. I’ve been seriously lacking as a Dom. You aren’t going to the conference in Denver. You’re coming home with your family.”
The whole idea of going to the Denver conference had made her tired. Luckily it hadn’t been publicized that she would be there. She could get out of it. It was time to stop. She just said yes to everything and everyone, no matter what it cost her. She wanted to be home, cuddling with her babies. There would be time for conferences later when her men could be with her. “All right.”
Aidan was taking control. She wanted it. Needed it.
“I’m never going to tell you how to write or how much to write. The writing part is a piece of your soul, but the business part is different. I think Lucas should take control. You don’t like making all of these decisions. You just want to write. Tell me if I’m wrong.”
He wasn’t. “I’m not saying I won’t have ideas. I’m not a doormat, but at the end of the day, I just want to write my stories. I want to be successful, but I would rather someone else handled the money part. I just want to do the fun part.”
“And Lucas wants to help you. And I need you both to help me.” Aidan rubbed their cheeks together. “I need you to support me. I know you and Lucas are smarter, but the ranch is important.”
“We’re not smarter, just different.” But the whole idea of helping him filled a void inside her.
“Well, I need you both. You and Lucas have so much experience that I don’t have. I’m done with this whole feeling like shit thing. I’m necessary in this marriage. I love this family. Maybe I didn’t bring as much money into it, but damn it, I’m valuable.”
He thought he wasn’t? Her heart softened. “Oh, babe, of course you are.”
His lips touched hers, a fire sparking across her flesh. He only needed to kiss her to ma
ke her go up in flames. His arms wound around her. He pulled her close. Everything in Lexi responded to him. This was what she needed.
“I haven’t been valuable lately.” He said the words against her lips. “But I will be, Lexi. I can be what you need again. I will be. Eat that damn sandwich because you’re serving two Masters tonight.”
Her whole body clenched in anticipation.
She ate her food because she would need her strength.
* * * *
Aidan led Lexi to the playroom. The doors were open, but he stopped them just outside. His heart softened as he saw Lucas sitting in the middle of the room, his gorgeous, lean body in a sitting position. Cobbler Pose. His feet were together, his hands behind his back.
When they had first gotten together, Lucas had wanted to join him in his daily yoga. Aidan needed it to feel flexible. His muscles tended to seize up after all the surgeries he’d required to fix the damage he’d taken in Iraq. So he and Lucas had gotten up with the dawn and moved through a series of yoga poses, starting with Sun Salutation and ending with Relaxation Pose.
He missed that. He would reinstate those mornings with his guy. Lexi and Lucas liked to sit together in the mornings and have their coffee. Aidan couldn’t stand the shit, but he could have his yoga time. And in the evenings he would shower with Lexi. She needed a shower before she could sleep. It could be their special time together.
They had to fight for it. Every day. Every hour.
They made the choice to be together.
All three of them. They needed time—each of them together, but they definitely needed time for the three of them to come together. “We need to join Lucas. Are you strong enough, baby?”
“I am. I need to be with you.” Tears filled her eyes. “I’ve missed you both so much.”
And he’d missed her. He and Lucas had been together, but not with the tenderness they had needed. They’d lived a half-life without her.
“Then come back to us. Come and complete us. We’ve been lost without you.” Aidan reached out, holding a hand to her. “We need you, baby. We don’t get what we need without you, but you have to decide to come with us. I won’t order you to do it.”