Kincade grinned. “Now I owe you two apologies. For that and for the fact that you have to share a room with the Annas.”
“The what?”
“The Annas. That’s what I call them, since they’re Hanna and Savanna.”
“Oh. I call them the evil stepcousins.”
Kincade cracked up again, and then he slung an arm around me. “I told you this week is going to be fun. You’re a little spitfire.”
“Is that a good thing?” I tried to make my voice sound casual, but it was a little hard with Kincade so close. Plus, he’d called me little. That certainly didn’t happen often.
“Very good,” Jessie said. “And even better if you really were jealous when the—what was it?—evil stepcousins were putting the moves on me.”
“Maybe,” I said, drawing out the word. Truth be told, I had been a bit jealous to see the way they were touching him, but it seemed strange to tell one man I’d felt possessive of him while another man had his arm around me and a third one listened in. Then again, these guys seemed very close. They’d been friends since high school, and they seemed to know each other like brothers. “I can’t believe you all live in different parts of the US.”
“Why?” Brock asked.
“You just seem so close. Like you hang out together every day.”
“We used to,” Jessie said. “For many years.”
Kincade leaned back in his chair, his arm dropping from my shoulder. “From kindergarten straight through to the end of high school.”
“Doug too?”
“Yeah,” Brock said. “His parents really wanted him to go to a public high school, not a prep school like we did. For a while, it looked like he was going to have to leave.”
“What happened?”
The guys started laughing again. The sound was so infectious that it almost had me laughing. Finally, Kincade continued the story. “Doug told his parents that he really couldn’t bear the thought of being without us.”
“And that convinced them?” It didn’t sound very convincing to me.
Jessie grinned. “What he means is, Doug made it sound like he was madly in love with one of us.”
“And his parents weren’t okay with that?” His mom and dad didn’t seem like the type who would be upset to have a gay son.
“Are you kidding? They were thrilled that their darling boy had met someone special,” Kincade said. “So much so that they re-enrolled him right away.”
The story had me laughing, too. I wondered how long it had taken his parents to figure out that he’d tricked them. “Which one of you was he supposedly in love with?”
“He never said, but obviously, it was me.” Brock flexed his arm, making his bicep swell until it practically ripped the seam.
“Nah, I’m more his type,” Jessie said.
“Don’t look at me,” Kincade said. “We’re first cousins. We don’t do that sort of thing, although I don’t know about you folks from Tennessee.”
I rolled my eyes and gave him a good-natured shove.
Kincade recoiled as if I’d physically harmed him. “You wound me, milady. I’m going to take my leave now,” he stood up, “because I’m fucking starving,” he concluded in a normal voice. “Anyone else hungry?”
“Yes,” Jessie and I said at the same time.
“Just bring a bunch of stuff back,” Brock said. He stood up, too. “I’ll get drinks. More champagne?” he asked me.
I knew I should probably stop drinking—especially since I had to climb up that stupid ladder later on. But I was having far too much fun to quit for the night. “I’d love a margarita.”
Once the other two were gone, Jessie turned to me. “Are you having a nice time?”
“God yes. It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
“And a beautiful place,” he said, looking straight at me. Had I imagined it, or had he paused before saying the last word? Like he’d been about to say something else?
I stretched my arms as I looked over the pool. “Very beautiful.”
Jessie’s eyes were on me as I raised my arms over my head, twisting from side to side at my waist. A bit self-consciously, I brough them back down.
“Are you cold?” he asked suddenly.
My automatic response was to say no, but then I thought about it. The temperature had dropped a few degrees. It was still a very moderate night, however. “Maybe a little, but it feels really good out here.”
Without a word, Jessie took off his suit jacket. Then he stood and moved around Kincade’s chair. I stood, too and held my arms out. It was nice, the way he carefully settled it around my shoulders. He even swept back my hair so it wouldn’t be trapped under the collar. Then his hand lingered as I smoothed the front of the jacket in place.
I froze when his fingers tightened around my curls, as if testing their strength. Then his hand disappeared. “Sorry,” he said, his voice very close to my ear. “I’ve just been watching the way your hair moves all night. It’s like a loaded spring.”