Daye, Rainey - An Unconventional Love (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (2 page)

Maggie just laughed. “I’m immune to their many charms.”

“You wish.” Jess laughed and flashed his dimples as he straightened up again, returning the tools to the trunk before attacking the clutter that had come from it and was now littered on the ground behind the car.

“Do you have a service center that you regularly use?” Alex asked Lisa.

“What do you mean?”

“Doughnut tires are only good for 30 miles or so. Usually just far enough for you to get your car into the shop. You’re going to have to get the tire repaired or replaced, and you’ll probably want to call your insurance agency to see if they’ll cover any of it.”

“Oh,” she said. “No, I don’t have a regular mechanic, and I bought my car on the other side of town. Do I have to take it all the way over there?”

“Nah, any service center should do. Jesse and I passed one on our way here. Why don’t you follow us there?”

“Is my car really safe enough to drive with that itty-bitty tire on it?” Lisa wanted to know, biting her lip and projecting an air of helplessness in the hopes that one of them would volunteer to drive it for her, after the five of them had finished putting the junk back into her trunk.

Not taking the hint, though, both men simply nodded in reply as they herded Maggie toward their SUV. “It’s only a couple of miles down the road. You’ll be fine.”

Jess helped Maggie climb into the passenger seat while Alex got behind the wheel.

* * * *

Once on the road, Maggie remarked, “You two really have been off the market for too long. My friends back there were all but throwing themselves at you.”

“We noticed, but like we said, we love, respect, and
fear
our girlfriend too much to ever cheat on her,” Jesse replied easily.

“But I’m still holding you to that blow job later,” Alex added.

“And don’t forget that you promised to kiss my boo-boo. I’m making a mental list of all my aches and pains for you to administer to,” Jesse piped in.

Laughing, Maggie shook her head at them as they pulled into the service center where Lisa and Becky joined them at the bay doors.

“Great,” Lisa groused. “They’re closed. Now what?”

Jesse and Alex exchanged a martyred look before Jesse said, “You remove any valuables from your car and anything else you might need, lock it up, and then drop your keys in the night box. Tomorrow, you call them up, or better yet, leave a message on their voice mail tonight, letting them know you’re the owner of the unknown blue Honda sitting in their lot.”

“You know,” Maggie interrupted, “she’ll probably get a better deal if one of you guys leave the message. For some strange reason,” and she tried to keep her eye rolling to a minimum while she indicated Lisa and her helplessness in spite of her rough edges, “mechanics have a rep for taking advantage of female car owners and trying to talk them into unnecessary repairs.”

“Yeah,” Lisa breathed, appearing relieved. “Besides, I truly am clueless about everything automotive and would feel so much better if one of you left a message for me.”

Sighing, Alex took his cell phone out of his pocket and left a message on the center’s voice mail while Lisa retrieved some items from her car with Becky’s help.

Lisa and Becky rejoined them as Alex hung up. “I gave them my number. If they don’t call by ten tomorrow, I’ll give them another call and get a price quote for your approval. I’ll call Mags with it, and she can give you the info,” he added when it looked as if Lisa was going to offer him her cell number.

“Got everything you need?” Jess asked good-naturedly.

“Yep,” she replied with a grin at his easy-going manner.

“Then lock ’er up, and I’ll show you where to drop your keys.”

When Jesse and Lisa rejoined them at Alex’s SUV, Alex asked if they were hungry. “Because we’re starving. We were going to order Chinese for dinner tonight, but it’s too late now. We did see what looks like an interesting restaurant on our way to the bar, and since it’s on our way back to your office building…”

“Oh, do you mean O’Reilly’s?” Becky piped up. “They’ve got great food there.”

“And it’ll be my treat for bailing us out,” Lisa added.

This time Maggie handed over the front seat to Jess and joined her girlfriends in the back for the ride to O’Reilly’s, where the hostess inquired if they preferred a table or a booth. Both Alex and Jesse opted for a booth but left Becky and Lisa disappointed as the men sandwiched Maggie between them on one side of the oversized booth.

The waitress was there immediately to take their drink order. Both men ordered longneck beers while Maggie and Becky chose iced tea. “We still have to drive home,” Becky explained to their raised eyebrows. “Two drinks are our limit.”

“Not mine tonight,” Lisa said as she ordered a scotch and soda. “My car happens to be in the shop, so one of you is going to have to drive me home. Besides, I really do need this after the night I’ve had, so keep ’em coming,” she told the waitress.

After choosing an appetizer to split and perusing the menu and placing their orders, Becky apparently decided to get to the meat of the mystery of Maggie and her two male roommates.

“So, you three met in college, didn’t you?” Becky began with the questions that Maggie had been waiting for. “How’d you decide to become roommates? Maggie here never told us the details.”

“Well,” Jess answered her question, “Alex and I have been best friends since first grade, and Maggie and I shared the same major, so we had a lot of the same classes together. We were even in the same study group, so that’s how we came to be friends.”

“So, you guys decided to pool your money and get an apartment together or something?” Lisa asked as she sipped on her scotch and soda.

Maggie and Jesse looked at Alex to let him decide how to answer that question. She did give a slight nod of her head to silently convey that she was okay with him revealing things she had previously kept secret from her work friends.

“My aunt owned a house about twenty minutes from campus,” he explained. “All her kids moved out of state when they grew up, so I was always over at her house performing chores and errands for her, and in exchange, she let me swim in her pool. So when she died, she left me her house. That’s where we live.”

“Your cousins didn’t contest her will?” Becky asked, incredulous.

“Nope. She left them hefty cash inheritances instead. It would have been too much trouble for them to stay after the funeral long enough to pack up her house and put it on the market. Besides, the sale of the house, split five ways, still wouldn’t have been as much as they each got individually, so it really wasn’t any skin off their backs, and they were actually relieved that the house would be remaining in the family.”

“Five ways?” Lisa questioned.

“Aunt Ida had five kids, and they each had their own room growing up, so the house was way too big for me by myself, so I asked Jesse if he wanted to move in with me.”

“And how did you come to live with them, Maggie?” Becky asked her.

“Because these two truly are Good Samaritans,” Maggie replied as she bit into an appetizer.

“Mags here had the roommate from hell when she first came to college and got stuck in a dorm.”

“Skank queen,” Alex concurred as he tipped his bottle of beer toward his full and luscious lips and drew deeply, his throat working erotically, Lisa and Becky staring, mesmerized, while Maggie just grinned to herself, well aware of the reaction her roommates had on the opposite sex. “Who was doing their floor monitor, so all of Maggie’s complaints about her fell on deaf ears,” Jess added, breaking into her friends lust-filled fantasies.

“And she would throw these loud, obnoxious parties all throughout the week and provided both pills and pot to the partygoers, so no one would back up my complaints when I tried to take them higher up,” Maggie contributed to the story.

“Not to mention the sex,” Jess added solemnly.

That got Becky and Lisa’s full attention. “What sex?” Lisa breathed, intrigued.

Laughing airily, Maggie said, “Unlike you, who was only forced to watch porn by your ex, I actually lived porn.”

“What?” they practically shrieked in unison.

Maggie shushed them. “I didn’t actually participate, you loons. But the two of them definitely got off on having an audience. When it got so bad that I started sleeping with headphones on so I wouldn’t have to listen to them going at it, they took to leaving the light on next to her bed instead. They refused to turn it off when I asked, and the one time I made the mistake of storming over there and turning it off myself, Josh actually grabbed my arm and tried to pull me onto the bed with them.”

Becky and Lisa stared at her in disbelief while Jesse nodded in commiseration.

“I found her in the library after midnight one night. She was half asleep but refused to let me walk her back to her dorm. It took a bit of prying, but I finally managed to worm the story out of her.”

“Only because I was punch-drunk from sleep deprivation,”

“True enough, sweetheart,” he responded. “I finally talked her into coming back to my place with me, and I’m fairly certain she wouldn’t have if her faculties were fully functioning.”

“You promised you would be a gentleman, and I knew you were a man of your word.” Maggie smiled at him as she patted his arm. “Besides, we had been friends for almost a year by then, and I figured if you were going to make a move on me, you would have already, so I felt safe enough to take you up on your offer.”

“While she slept, I told Alex about her dorm situation, and the next morning, Alex asked her if she would consider moving in with us.”

“We had plenty of room with her choice of bedrooms,” Alex pointed out.

“I was packed and moved into their house by nightfall,” Maggie concluded with a smile.

“And the three of you have been best friends ever since. Wow. I think I’m jealous,” Becky remarked.

“I know
I
am,” Lisa said, “but that’s probably just the booze talking, so just ignore me.”

The others laughed at her comment and then dug into their meals, which arrived at that point.

* * * *

Lisa and Becky watched the three roommates’ easy camaraderie and did indeed feel spikes of jealousy as they watched them easily sharing their meals with each other, even going so far as to hand-feed each other from their forks or fingers and eating off each other’s plates with the ease of long familiarity as they chatted.

The ladies also wondered at the terrific service they were experiencing at O’Reilly’s. Busboys were constantly refilling their water glasses or clearing their plates the moment they pushed them aside, while the waitress kept checking on them to make sure they were satisfied with their meal and to see if they needed anything else while she was there. Because Alex and Jess were so hot, the waitress’s attention was to be expected and didn’t come as a surprise to them. The busboys, on the other hand…Perhaps they were simply hoping that some of that testosterone would rub off on them if they hovered around the men long enough?

When the waitress finally handed Alex the check, Lisa tried to take it from him.

“Hey, I said the meal was on me,” she complained when he refused to relinquish it to her.

“Like hell,” he grated in that deep voice of his. “I’m a man with three beautiful dinner companions, four if you want to include Jess. I’ll be damned if I’m letting you pay.” He all but growled at her.

Maggie laughed. “Just give in,” she advised Lisa. “I’ve yet to win a fight with him over the check, and I’ve been trying for the past six years. You don’t stand a chance against him.”