“Just listen to us,” Hank half pleaded. “If after we’ve had our say you don’t like what you’ve heard, then you can kick us to the curb.”
To be honest, she was interested in why they’d provided a unified front. “Fine. I’m listening.”
After Hank noticed Kyle hadn’t released her hand, he grabbed her other hand, throwing Kyle a pointed you’re-touching-her look—which Kyle completely ignored.
Kyle’s eyes searched her face. “We never talked about an exclusive relationship, Mel—er, I mean, Lainie. Damn, I gotta get used to calling you that.” He sent her a soft smile. “You’re an attractive woman. I didn’t imagine you were sitting at home or in a hotel on the road, pining for me when we weren’t together.”
She opened her mouth to speak but Kyle shook his head.
“But I woulda been hard-pressed to guess you were whilin’ away the hours with my buddy Hank,” Kyle added.
“Same goes for me,” Hank said. “Although I am sure I mentioned my friend Gilly a time or two.”
“You did. But I didn’t relate ‘Gilly’ with Kyle. No one else on the EBS circuit calls him that.”
“Point taken.” Hank kissed her knuckles.
Her belly fluttered at the sensation of his warm lips lingering on her skin.
“Why do you go by Mel on the EBS circuit anyway?” he asked.
“It was Dusty’s idea of a joke. Bryson Westfield prefers male med techs, but Dusty was shorthanded when he assigned me to the EBS. So he listed me as Mel instead of Lainie so Bryson wouldn’t bitch.”
“Anyone who mistakes you for a man is obviously blind.”
“Amen,” Kyle said.
Flustered, she let silence fill the uncomfortable void.
“Look, Lainie, we don’t want to say anything that’ll make you run out again, but the bottom line is, we both still wanna be with you.”
Her entire body froze. “You do?”
“Uh-huh. We understand part of the reason you were upset, besides the surprise factor of Hank and me bein’ good buddies, is that you didn’t want to choose between us.”
“I don’t. I won’t. So it’ll be easier if I—”
Kyle put his finger over her lips. “Do you want to walk away from this? From both of us?”
She didn’t need time to consider her answer. She shook her head.
The guys breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“Good. Very good.” Hank smiled. “ ’Cause neither of us wants that either.”
“So what do you propose we do?”
“Share you,” Kyle said.
“Share me?” Her gazed flicked between them. “I am not a hammer to be passed back and forth when you want to nail me!”
“That’s not what we meant.”
“Then what do you mean? How can you share me? You can’t saw me in half. And I know it’d drive a wedge in your friendship if I was switching off weeks between you guys, even with Kyle in the EBS and you in the CRA. Both of you are too . . . alpha and headstrong to take a backseat to the other for very long.”
“True. Which is why this sharing situation would work,” Hank said.
“I don’t see how.”
Hank looked at Kyle with a hint of exasperation. “You have a better way to explain this?”
“Maybe I oughta point out that I fell in the standings from number fifty-eight to number seventy-nine and the EBS kicked my ass off the tour four weeks ago. Yeah, I know it’s standard procedure, and there are lots of younger bull riders eager to take those top sixty spots. I’ve been off my game and I need to get it back. Nothin’ changed when I hit the secondary circuits, so tonight I’m starting in the CRA,” Kyle said. “That’ll give me a chance to compete a whole bunch during Cowboy Christmas.”
Lainie knew the annual ritual known as Cowboy Christmas was a three-week period when professional cowboys drove thousands of miles all across the country in sleep-deprived pursuit of prize money awarded in a string of rodeos leading up to—and directly following—the Fourth of July. “Why?”
“There’s potential for me to earn cash and rack up points. I won’t make it to American Finals Rodeo, but it’ll allow me to ride lots of bulls, figure out why my buck-off rate is so high, and position me for the new season next year.”
“Then we’ll all be on the same circuit,” she said inanely.
“Ain’t that great? See why this’ll work?”
“No!” Lainie stepped back. Way back. “How can you think that’ll be better? That’s worse. What do you think people will say if they see me with both of you? We’ll be at sponsors’ events together. I can’t be with one of you one week and then the other the next week.”
The guys swapped an indecipherable look.
Kyle crowded her first. “We ain’t talking about you switching off. We’re talking about you bein’ with both of us at the same time.”
Lainie let that sink in.
“The night in Chula Vista? You admitted interest in a threesome with two guys. You swore if given the chance, you’d grab it with both hands.” Kyle grinned. “Well, darlin’, Hank and I are here and ready to be grabbed.”
She gaped at him. She remembered that night clearly, stretched out on the bed at the cheap motel, trash-talking while watching p**n . Kyle confessed being at the mercy of two women did it for him; Lainie retorted that it’d be hot with two men catering to her. She never imagined that comment would come back to bite her in the ass.