Three Men and a Woman: Evangeline (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Read Free Page B

handful of children. She’d made it a small point not to know those things, but she hadn’t had to work hard to avoid it, either.
    The fact was, she loved Briggs. She had, from the moment seven-year-old Shepherd Posse had pulled her up into a tree house at the edge of a cornfield in Cartersville, New York. She’d loved him through those years that she’d been part of their little club, innocently resting her head on his belly, as they lay nestled reading his first works. She’d loved him those years in middle school when, without really speaking to her, he used the force of his presence to protect her from the taunting and catty snipes of the bullies and mean girls.
    She’d loved him through her years of high school, even that long senior year during which she’d never seen him. And she’d loved him on that sorrowful day they’d buried Shep, when he’d used her body to find—and give—solace.
    Without touching or even seeing him, she’d loved him every day of the eight years since that night, up to and including this day. Now, when he was a startlingly handsome man, with those amazing green eyes, the blond hair of his Swedish ancestors, and a muscular build that topped out a bit over six feet. Not the boy she’d known, but fully a man, powerful and sexual.
    “Maybe you don’t know.” He spoke quietly, drawing her gaze back to his face. It had wandered, apparently, as she’d considered his question. “I’m not married. I don’t have any kind of relationship in which expectations are involved. So—will you?”
    Evangeline sighed. Well, so. That easy reason to refuse him—a wife, a woman with rights to him—was denied her.
    Though she noted he wasn’t claiming to be a monk. That would have been a hard sell, anyway.
    It turned out that steeling herself to see him hadn’t really prepared her to deal with this particular offer. She’d intended to just avoid him. She thought she’d handled that mishap in the parking lot—when he’d quietly said her name and she couldn’t reasonably pretend she hadn’t heard or seen him—pretty successfully. She’d given him her hand, exchanged a few words, and escaped relatively intact.
    But then her boss had come to her, excitedly relaying that Briggs had requested her company for dinner. Knowing Briggs, knowing herself, she’d made an attempt to have Dennis join them. It was an effort to avoid just this situation—a failed one. If Dennis had hopes that Briggs could be seduced away, he had the sense to know that his own presence would only hamper the process.
    And the truth was, she wasn’t really unhappy to be sitting alone with Briggs, sharing a meal in this lovely, romantic setting.
    No more than she was unhappy, if she were really, truly honest with herself, to be faced with his question.
    She would never say no to him. Almost , there was nothing he could ask that she wouldn’t grant if she could.
    Would she refuse the opportunity to share his bed for a night? To learn something more about the physical act of loving than she’d gleaned during their brief encounter on that grief-filled night?
    She’d made the arrangements she needed to once she’d gotten committed to this dinner, once she knew she wouldn’t be driving home that night. But she hadn’t gone any further. She hadn’t reserved a room for herself. As though she’d already given her consent, this was exactly what she expected to happen. What she wanted to happen.
    Of course she would spend the night with him. She loved him.
    “Yes.”
     
    * * * *
     
    Briggs stifled the urge to stand up and crow while beating his fists against his chest, but it was a near thing.
    Evvie had left him hanging for just a bit too long, waiting for that answer he wanted more desperately than he cared to admit.
    It had taken some effort to absorb, to connect this sexy, bewitching woman with the sweet little Evvie girl he’d known. Looking back, he had to be a little uncomfortable with it. Evvie’s adoration of