Three Men and a Woman: Evangeline (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (13 page)

Like they didn’t know he was rolling his eyes behind their backs. Like they cared. Free beer, man.

Their driveway was a long one, about a half mile down to the road and the bus stop, but Evangeline always insisted they walk it. Rain or snow didn’t change that—they lived on a vineyard, she repeated often, in response to Maisy’s objection. Weather mattered to the growers and farmers in the area. Folks who lived on the land should be aware of it.

Plus, the exercise was good for both of them. Evangeline’s work was ever so sedentary—she spent all of her day at a desk on the phone or computer. And Maisy was her mother’s—and, maybe, her father’s—daughter. She would spend all her days inside books, too, if given the choice. Evangeline had to push her into activities. She was a bit too timid for team sports, which is why they’d settled on a parent-child yoga class.

On days like this, the walk was a glorious one. As she climbed back up the mountain, with Maisy safely on her way to school, she could turn and catch glimpses of the lake and the fields between, with cows grazing and meadows yellow now with wildflowers. The sky was a lovely blue with cotton candy clouds.

She was a happy woman, with a job she loved and a daughter who was her world. It was unusual that she second-guessed herself, that she wondered if she’d made the right decisions.

The unusual was what she’d been living with for a little more than a week now, ever since she’d seen the guys. Been with them.

Chase, Briggs, and Giovanni. All of them incredibly dear to her heart.

And one of them was Maisy’s father.

She considered it an irony of fate that her daughter shared a standout physical characteristic with each of them. Chase’s sweet curls, Briggs’s remarkable green eyes, Giovanni’s adorable dimples.

Often, she thought the biological father must be Briggs. That, somehow, his love for words and stories had passed to Maisy—a double dose of it, given Evvie’s own predilections. But then she’d see a flash of Chase’s basic brilliance or Gio’s fiery temper, and she’d be back to that thing about fate.

It didn’t matter the least to her. She loved them all, considered them kind of a unit. She’d been happy to think of Maisy as their child, born of the love she had for all of them. But mainly, Maisy was
her
child.

Until this last week.

The men were all single. None of them had children.

Before last weekend, Evvie had imagined that they’d all be living their lives while she had something apart, she and Maisy. They were thirty now. They should be married, having, or, at least, starting their own families. It had never occurred to her that, among them, Maisy would be the only child.

Maisy’s lack of a father didn’t concern her. Victory Farms was run now by three brothers and their wives. Each couple had a house on the land, close enough that soon Maisy would be old enough to bike to them. They also each had three or four children clustered around Maisy’s age. Every Saturday night the kids were shuffled to one home or another for sleepovers. Evvie had gathered that the Victory men enjoyed nights home alone with their wives.

Evvie and Maisy had been welcomed as family from the very beginning, when Miss Victory had taken her in, pregnant and otherwise alone. They were included in family celebrations and winery festivities. From the age of three, Maisy had been invited to the sleepovers. Some of them—every fourth—even took place at the farmhouse, wild, exhausting nights of manic laughter and nearly a dozen children tucked into sleeping bags wherever they fell.

So Maisy had a lot of exposure to extended family and to men who acted as a father to her. She experienced a full family life.

Not so for Chase and Briggs and Giovanni.

Evvie had always believed that managing her pregnancy and then Maisy’s rearing on her own had been a decision that protected the guys. She’d considered Maisy a gift from them, a thing of her own.

It just hadn’t occurred to her that she was keeping something from them, something that they might want, might be missing.

Until now.

She was helpless to imagine what she could do differently at this point. She could hardly go to them and offer Maisy up as their token child, could she?

And now she’d complicated things—
way
complicated them—by falling into bed with them. All three of them. She didn’t regret it, oh no. With each one of them, it had been wonderful. Moving and sweet and incredibly hot. She felt like in one weekend she’d gone from a sexual novice to a bodacious sex goddess, a freaking siren.

Could she go back to the way she’d been living, not as a sexual beast but as a sexual monk? Would she choose it? And would the guys let her have a choice?

Could she see them again—any of them—and still keep Maisy to herself?

She thought about it every day now as she made this walk alone back up to her home. Then, without finding an answer, she sat down at her desk and did her work.

Only this day, an hour later, her work was interrupted by a knock at the door.

* * * *

On the drive down, Briggs got stuck in the backseat of Chase’s SUV, by virtue of Gio calling shotgun before they were even out the back door. That had happened just after Gio had tried and failed to wrench the keys from Chase’s fist. Chase had known to be prepared for that.

But he was in the lead when they stepped up onto Evvie’s wraparound porch, and it was his hand that rapped on her door.

He hadn’t asked, and neither Chase nor Gio had objected. They’d all been close, really close, but Briggs had spent the most time with Evvie when she was a girl. They’d have their noses together in a book, or he’d be working out a story to his audience of one during any free time they had.

So he felt it was by rights that he should stand there and be the one Evvie saw first when she opened her door.

She paled when it happened and even more when he stepped aside a little so she could see that Gio and Chase were with him. They all stood in silence for a long moment.

His words caused her to startle, though he wasn’t loud or aggressive.

“We need to talk, Evvie.”

She took a few seconds trying to read his face. Then she lifted a hand, making a gesture toward a grouping of wicker chairs on the wide porch.

He guessed her living room contained photos of Maisy that she wouldn’t want them to see. And that they
would
want to see, would
insist
on seeing.

“No,” he said. “We want to come in.”

She stood still, clearly searching for an excuse to deny them entrance.

“We know about Maisy, Evvie.”

That was Gio, who, as ever, had no patience for subtlety. Or, really, just no patience.

Evvie’s gaze had gone to Gio when he spoke, and she paled even further. Then she looked at Chase and finally back at Briggs. She moved back from the door and wordlessly motioned them in.

Briggs stepped in and touched her back, setting her ahead of him. The front door opened to a large, welcoming living room. Hardwood floors glistened, warmed by large area rugs in bright colors. The furniture was mostly leather, deeply upholstered, and large enough that the three men who now filled the room would be almost comfortable in it. The couch and both chairs had pillows and a blanket each, and books—on the seat itself, or a nearby table. Kids’ books, like for a seven-year-old. And others, like a mother would read, to herself or to her child. A lot of books. A couple of them were authored by Briggs Henriksen, he happened to notice.

Gio pushed through and went to the photos Briggs had known would be there. On walls, tabletops, and mantle—to either side of the crystal Benny—pictures documented Maisy’s life from babyhood. Chase had stayed by the door. Briggs stuck close by Evvie in the center of the room, though she had moved away from his touch.

“You don’t know which of us she belongs to, do you, Evvie?”

Evvie looked back. “She belongs to me, Chase. Beyond that, I think of her as coming from all of you. And from Shepherd, too.”

Briggs could see what she meant. The thing that had driven all three of them to her that night was the loss of Shep. “Evvie,” he said. “We don’t intend to take her from you. But we should know who the father is. We should have done better by you.”

“It doesn’t matter to me who fathered her. I see all of you in her, including Shepherd. And I have done fine by myself.
We
have done fine.”

Gio spoke next. “We should have been there for you, Ev. One of us should have been. You should have told us.”

Evvie wrapped her arms around herself, looking forlorn. Gio had always been the gentlest with her, despite his temper. Getting chastised by him obviously hurt. Then she rallied. “Told you what, Giovanni? That the trailer park whore’s daughter had sex with three men in one night and doesn’t know who her baby’s father is?”

Gio’s temper flared back. “It wasn’t like that, Ev, and you know it.”

Briggs put an arm around Evvie’s shoulder and pulled her in a little. He touched his lips to her temple. “No. It wasn’t like that. We loved you.”

She kept her head turned down, away. “Did you plan it? The way you came, all three of you alone, that night?”

“No,” Briggs reassured. “We each came to you out of need, on our own, independently. None of us knew until just now that the others had done the same thing.

“We also each came to see you last Saturday, Ev, after what happened a week ago. Each of us wanted to see you again, and we all saw you with Maisy.

“Every one of us thought we were fathers, Ev, and that you’d kept our daughter from us.”

“I’m sorry,” Evvie said. “I didn’t mean to keep anything from you. You were all gone. Shepherd was gone. I just thought of Maisy as something of mine, like a gift from you all. She was what I had. All that I had.”

“We’re ashamed, Evvie, that we left you alone. Not one of us was responsible enough to check on you, to make sure there hadn’t been a problem.”

“There wasn’t a problem, Briggs. There was a baby. And she was mine.
Is
mine.”

Briggs nodded, understanding even though it didn’t relieve her of guilt. Or him, either. “She was all you had. But you should have had one of us, too.”

“I had Miss Victory. She watched Maisy while I went to school. I got my degree, and then I got a job. I’ve had all that I needed.”

“Evvie,” Chase spoke sternly. “We’ll get testing done. Then one of us is going to marry you.

“No!”

Briggs and Evvie spoke together, and Chase raised a brow at them both.

He spoke to Evvie first. “Yes. One of us is that girl’s father, and none of us ever would have meant to have a child raised by a single mother. We might have behaved carelessly the night of Shep’s funeral, but we each would have stood up to our actions.”

Then he turned his attention to Briggs. “And yes, if you’re Maisy’s father, you’ll do the right thing. I promise you will.”

Briggs waved away Chase’s threat. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t care which of us is the father. What I meant is that I’d like to—” What? Marry Evvie?

Maybe, Briggs thought. He let the idea settle and didn’t find wild, panicky objections banging around in his brain. But he hadn’t seen her for eight years. It seemed a little unreasonable to be talking marriage.

“Evvie, would you—? I’d like to—”

“Wait.” Gio put down the photo he was holding and walked closer to Evvie and Briggs. “I’d like to, also.”

“Also what?” Chase walked closer, too. They pretty much had Evvie surrounded. “What are you guys suggesting?”

Briggs stepped over the cliff. He took Evvie’s hand and held it gently. “Evvie, you know I’ve always loved you. I’d like to see more of you. If things work out between us, I’d like to be Maisy’s father. I’d like to be your husband.”

Gio took her other hand. “I’d like the same thing, Ev.”

“Shit.” Chase tugged his hand through his hair and walked to a window.

“It doesn’t matter if Maisy is yours, Chase. If Evvie agrees, I’ll take her as my own.” Briggs was entirely sincere, sure of the truth of it.

Chase turned around. “That’s not what
I
meant. I meant, shit, I want the same thing.”

“She’ll need to choose.”

* * * *

At Giovanni’s words, all eyes turned to Evangeline.

Somehow, she’d lost control of what was happening in her own house. She supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. It had always been the four of them, with Shepherd—a bit older than she, a unit, in careless kindness taking into their group poor little Evvie. Learn to read? Yes, of course. Brush her hair before she got on the bus? Okay, sure. She’d been so grateful, she’d never objected to their presumptions about what she should want, what was good for her.

No more. She would not allow the three of them to stand in her home and decide her future.

Choose.
She loved them all and had ever since that first day they’d met. Why did they think she’d let every one of them make love to her the night of Shepherd’s funeral? Why would she have behaved like the loosest of women, like her
own mother
, having wild sex with each of them in the course of three days?