Hotter Than Ever

“You can’t do that in there.” She gestured to the townhouse across the street. “I don’t want your friends to think I’m some kind of skank.”

“They would never think that,” Dylan assured her.

“Maybe not, but I still don’t feel comfortable with them knowing about us. The three of us, I mean. So maybe tonight, just one of you can be my date?”

She felt bad asking it, but neither Dylan nor Aidan seemed insulted by the request. They simply glanced at one another, and then Aidan said, “Rock, paper, scissors you for it?”

Dylan shook his head. “No need. The choice is obvious. You’ll be her date.”

Aidan’s dark eyebrows furrowed. “Why is that obvious?”

“Yeah,” Claire said warily. “Why is that obvious?”

Dylan spoke in a gentle tone. “Because they all know you were going to marry my brother. It might seem, I don’t know, weird if you’re suddenly involved with me. It makes more sense that you’d be seeing Aidan.”

She couldn’t argue with that, but his reasoning still made her feel ill at ease. She had to wonder if they’d be having these types of conversations often. Because really, how was it going to work when they were out in public? One day she’d be Aidan’s girl, the next day Dylan’s? Aidan would be her boyfriend when they went out for ice cream, Dylan when they were at the beach?

Her head started spinning, so she forcibly shoved the silly thoughts aside. What was the point in worrying about any of this? In less than a week, she’d be going back to San Francisco. Back to her job. Back to real life.

And real life didn’t include having wild, passionate sex every night with two navy officers.

A pang of sorrow squeezed her heart at the idea of saying goodbye to them, and she had to banish that thought too. It was Christmas Eve, damn it. It was supposed to be a happy night, not a time for feeling sad.

“Okay, I’m seeing Aidan, then,” she agreed.

They got out of the car and crossed the street, heading for the house where Dylan had lived up until a couple months ago. The moment they walked through the door, two dark-haired cyclones burst into the hall and attacked Dylan.

“Dylan!” Their high-pitched shrieks nearly shattered Claire’s eardrums, but she was smiling as she watched Dylan scoop the kids into his arms, which only made them squeal louder.

Sophie and Jason Breslin looked exactly the way she remembered them. When she’d been here in September, she and Dylan had accompanied Seth and the kids to a carnival, where they ended up getting quite a scare after Sophie took off without telling anyone. Luckily, the little girl had been found, and she looked happy as a clam as she chattered away in Dylan’s arms, telling him all about her visit to Santa yesterday.

“And he said I was gonna get a doll!” Sophie’s dark ponytail swung around, her brown eyes shining with excitement. “And a yellow dress and—”

“—a new baseball glove and an X-Box!” Sophie’s twin brother Jason was talking equally fast, waving his hand in front of Dylan’s face in an attempt to claim all the attention.

“Whoa, one at a time, squirts,” Dylan interrupted with a laugh. “You’re making my head spin.”

Holding the two six-year-olds as if they weighed no more than a feather, he strode into the corridor.

Claire and Aidan exchanged an amused look, then trailed after Dylan and the kids. The most delicious smells permeated the house, making Claire’s stomach rumble. She’d had a light breakfast because she’d wanted to save herself for this evening’s turkey dinner, and the aromas in the air made her ravenous for some food.

When they entered the living room, they encountered nearly a dozen people. The only one Claire recognized was Seth, Dylan’s former roommate, and the tall scruffy SEAL wasted no time introducing her to his brand-new bride, Miranda.

Claire had barely finished saying hello to the pretty brunette when she was being introduced to someone else. Cash McCoy, a dark-haired hottie with piercing blue eyes, who quickly called a stunning blonde over and introduced her as his girlfriend, Jen.

Next was Carson Scott, a fair-haired man with a chiseled GQ face, and his wife Holly, a petite pixie of a woman with bright green eyes, apparently Jen’s brother and sister-in-law.

Matt O’Connor was the one with the shaved head, and his girlfriend Savannah had ash-blond hair and laughing gray eyes.

Jackson Ramsey rounded out the group, a lanky man with dark hair, whiskey-brown eyes and a Texas drawl that made Claire melt.

“Nice to meet you, sugar,” he said with a smile, sticking out his hand.

Smiling back, she shook his big, callused hand. He held on a little too long, and the appreciation flaring in his eyes was hard to miss.

Dylan and Aidan didn’t miss it, either, because suddenly she was being ushered toward the couch and told to sit down and take a load off.

She hid a grin, kind of enjoying the possessive way they’d dragged her from the sexy Texan.

Other than Aidan, every man in the room was a SEAL, and every woman was outgoing and talkative. For the next hour, Claire found herself in a million different conversations that were impossible to keep up with, and through it all, Miranda’s twins bounced around the room from person to person, or ran around the eight-foot Douglas fir in delight.

“Sorry about them.” Miranda leaned in from the other couch and shot Claire an apologetic smile. “They’re super excited because this is the first year we’ve had such an enormous tree. Well, that and because they get to spend Christmas with Seth this year.”