All three laughing, with Tyler on her arms and Thomas on her legs, they carried her to their bedroom and playfully swung her onto the bed where she landed with a bounce. The men pounced, and an hour later they drifted to sleep with Nevvie snuggled happy and content between them.
Chapter 26
“Bloody hell!”
“Yell a little louder, Ty, I don’t think the neighbors heard you,” Nevvie snarked as she walked into his office. “What’s wrong?”
Storm clouds brewed in his blue eyes, as deep and threatening as any in the June skies outside.
Time literally flew, it seemed. Life was heaven with her two boys. She rarely had nightmares, and her individual relationship with each man had deepened to the point she didn’t care where she ended and they began. She and Tyler could finish each other’s sentences. He wouldn’t send anything to his agent unless she’d sat down with it for editing first. Nevvie was now a senior manager at Thomas’ office, overseeing several project managers in addition to being Thomas’ personal assistant. It was a juggling act with her time, but she loved every second of it.
“I’ve lost one of my files. Apparently I didn’t name it what I thought, and I cannot find the blasted thing.”
“What is it?”
“Notes for a character for the novel I’m working on. I wrote a whole character outline when I was working on the last book and meant to use it now, but I can’t find it.”
She leaned in the doorway. Considering he didn’t even look at her and she was wearing one of his chambray shirts, unbuttoned, and nothing else, he was definitely distracted.
“What about your back-up CDs?”
He scowled. “Perhaps.” Then he had a thought. “Oh, bloody hell! I might have worked on that on the desktop in Thomas’ office when my laptop was out for repairs.”
“Want me to look?”
He glanced at her and did a double-take. He crooked his finger and motioned her to him, kissing her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to ignore you.”
She sat in his lap and put her arms around his neck. “‘Bout time you noticed,” she pretended to pout. “I was starting to think you’d gone totally gay on me.”
He laughed, hugging her and patting her thigh. “No chance of that with you around. Yes, I would appreciate if you’d take a look for me while I start on my back-ups. I think it’s called ‘character london’ or something. It’s a man named London Baxter.”
In Tom’s office, she powered up his desktop. Thomas was outside mowing and taking care of a few items on Tyler’s honey-do list. She started her search, finding a multi-level directory Tyler had created in the documents area. It looked like a full back-up of Tyler’s laptop documents file section and would take a while to go through. Most of the folders and files were dated at least six months prior, with one eight months old. That one, a top-level file titled halloween-script-nev.doc, caught her attention. She opened it.
Her finger hesitated over the mouse button. She’d been prepared to close out the file when she started reading. The title: “How to Properly Seduce a Love Slave.”
Barely able to breathe, she hit print, and with an unsteady hand took the two single-spaced pages from the printer to read again.
Thomas took a break from his yard work to get a glass of ice water and cool off. He stopped by Tyler’s office. “What’s up?”
Tyler looked up from his laptop at Thomas’ bare chest and snug shorts. “Me, if you and Nevvie keep walking around here mostly naked.”
“It’s ‘nekkid,’ if you want to say it right.” Thomas kissed him. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve got a missing file. Nevvie’s looking on your desktop for me. I’m going through my back-ups—”
A door slamming somewhere in the house startled them.
“What the hell?” Thomas said.
They investigated. Nevvie wasn’t in Tom’s office, and they found their bedroom door locked.
Tyler and Thomas exchanged puzzled looks. Tyler knocked. “Nevvie? Are you all right?”
They pressed their ears to the door and heard dresser drawers opening and slamming, punctuated by the distinctive tone of her sobs.
Thomas knocked. “Nev, sugar, what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
They nearly fell over when she flung the door open. Her face looked white; she’d put on jeans and had most of the buttons done up on the chambray shirt. Her eyes were puffy, nose red. She shoved two pieces of paper at them before slamming the door in their faces again and locking it.
Nevvie’s hands trembled as she dressed, panic taking over. How dare they? The script completely outlined the night of the Halloween party. She would have been willing to sit and talk to them about it, ask for an explanation, until she reached the bottom of the document: Hopefully by the end of the party she’ll be begging for us. The perfect little slave, our mission complete.
How could she have misjudged them so badly? How could she ever trust herself again? She’d fucked up and let Alex control her, he damn near killed her. What did these two have in store for her now? Perfect little slave?
No. Never again.
Then her rage took control. Never again would she let a man hurt her. Fuck them, she didn’t need anyone.
Tyler ended up with the papers and he juggled them, nearly dropping them until he got them in his hand and turned right-side up. He blanched when he read them.
The slave girl script for the Halloween party.
“Oh, no.” He dropped them and frantically knocked. “Nevvie,” he pleaded, “sweetheart, please let me explain.”
“Fuck you, Paulson. Just go fuck yourself, because you’re never getting your dick in me again, that’s for goddamned sure!”
Thomas picked the papers up and read them, closed his eyes and swore. “Jesus fucking Christ, Tyler. I thought you deleted this. You stupid shit. I knew we should have just told her how we felt. You and your fucking games.” He shoved Tyler out of the way. “Nevvie, please, talk to me.”
The door flew open again, Nevvie fully dressed, purse and keys in hand. She shoved past them. “Fuck you too, Kinsey. You’re a couple of goddamned assholes.”
Tyler tried to catch her arm and she pulled away. “Don’t fucking touch me,” she warned, holding her key like a weapon. Her eyes narrowed, the color high in her face. “If either one of you ever fucking touches me again, I’ll castrate you with my bare hands!” She stalked toward the front door.
Both men followed and she turned on them, tears streaming down her face. “I trusted you guys! I thought you really loved me and now I find out you fucking played me. This was all some sort of game to you right from the start, wasn’t it?”
Thomas held his hands out to her, pleading. “No, Nevvie, it wasn’t like that, seriously. We wanted that night to be special.”
“Yeah, it was real special, all right. Some sort of sick fucking game. I love you! You wanted to use me for your sick fantasy. I thought we were playing that for fun, not for real. Is that all I am to you, a fucking slave?”
Tyler wanted to take her hand and knew he’d likely pull back a bloody stump. “Sweetheart, we do love you! We’ve loved you from the moment you first entered our lives. After you were living here, we decided we wanted to make you part of our lives.”
“Oh, so you go ahead and pull some sort of mental shit on me, get me under your spell and make me fall in love with you instead of doing what normal people would do and say, ‘Hey, we think you’re cute and we’re bisexual, would you like to have some fun?’”