Chapter 11
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE EVIL
Margot
Aside from Rhys’s occasional little murmurs or pauses or looks at opportune times to remind me that he could destroy me at any point if he decides he no longer wants my endorsement, this evening is everything I’ve wanted.
Needed, if I’m being honest.
Laughing with my half brothers? Being let behind the curtain with their cursed dating lives and Jack’s bad luck with rock paper scissors and the new direction Decker’s going with his novels?
Snaggletooth Creek, Colorado, will never be home for me. My heart belongs in New York.
But the thirsty part of my heart is taking a long, deep gulp of cool water after living in a love-parched desert.
“If someone handed you a million dollars tomorrow and told you that you could do whatever you want with it, what would it be?” Lucky asks as we sip our drinks and eat the Chex Mix beside the assorted appetizers that they ordered from the bar.
Rhys clears his throat across from me.
All three of my half brothers shift a look at him.
He pounds himself on the chest. “Swallowed a little wrong.”
Once again, I’m torn between wanting to throttle him and respecting his courage.
Lucky looks back at me. “No thinking. Gut answer.”
“I’d donate it to a cause to help save the polar bears,” I say.
That’s been Daphne’s mission since she learned in elementary school that the polar ice caps are melting. So I can confidently speak to the importance of my biggest cause, even if it’s technically not mine.
“Dude, did you hear that there’s a new kind of bear?” Jack says. “A polar bear mated with a grizzly bear. Isn’t that terrifying?”
Lucky grins. “Evolution in action. It’s a beautiful thing.”
“Until you stumble across one on the trail.”
“Polar bears aren’t this far south,” Decker says. “Pretty sure you’re fine unless you’re going somewhere way far north for a trip you’re not talking about.”
“Or unless they migrate south,” Rhys says.
All three of the triplets gape at him.
He sucks in a grin as they each start protesting, and once again, he’s both irritating and intriguing.
Who was he before his ex shredded his heart?
And don’t tell me she didn’t.
You can hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes when he talks about it.
“You ever see a polar bear in the wild, Margie?” he asks me over the triplets’ continued insistence that polar bears aren’t migrating this far south.
“I have not,” I reply, because Margie Johnson most definitely hasn’t left the lower forty-eight to go far enough north to see a polar bear in the wild.
We’re not talking about the things Margot Merriweather-Brown has done.
Especially since Daphne doesn’t know about that one trip I took to the northern parts of Alaska and would basically die if she knew I’d seen a polar bear in the wild when she hasn’t.
“Huh,” Rhys says.
Like he knows I’m lying.
I hold his gaze for a moment, getting an innocent stare right back.
“When would she have seen a polar bear?” Lucky says to him. “Dude. You really so insecure about her getting the better of you when you met that you’re acting like she’d lie about that?”
Rhys breaks eye contact with me and shrugs at Lucky. “Never would’ve guessed by my history that I’ve been to all seven continents, but I have. So you never know.”
“All seven?” Jack says, and they’re off again, demanding to know how and when and which continent is Rhys’s favorite.
It’s fun watching them interact.
The triplets, I mean.
Studying their relationship with each other. Spotting the places they have inside jokes and shared stories, and the places where they’ve done their own things.
Daphne and I have more stories of doing our own things, especially the past decade or so, than we have together.
But she’s still my favorite person.
Just like you can tell the triplets are each other’s favorite people.
The evening passes too quickly, with me liking my brothers more and more with each passing minute, and before long, Decker’s asking for the bill.
I reach for my wallet in my back pocket—for cash, of course—but he gives me the annoyed look of a man who doesn’t want to have to tell me he’s got it for me to know I need to put my wallet away.
And that makes me suck in a smile.
Not because I can afford to pay for dinner and drinks tonight, but because I swear that’s likely how I look every time Daphne has offered to pay for lunch out or the bill at her favorite cheese shop in Athena’s Rest when I’ve gone to visit her.
“Thank you,” I murmur instead of any of the number of other things I’d like to say.
Like no, really, it would be an honor to get this tonight.
Or I’d like to pay rent for your cabin.
Or can we do this again every night?
“No rock paper scissors for the bill?” Rhys asks.
“We let Mr. Big Bucks handle it and pay him back in other ways,” Jack replies.
Lucky grins. “Like being on call when he has a hypochondriac moment.”
“Which is all the time,” Jack mutters.
Decker flips him off. “Is not.”
“Lucky, look at my big toenail. Is it a different color from my other toenails?” Lucky replies, falsetto, sounding nothing at all like Decker.
“I dropped a kettlebell on it,” Decker shoots back.
“How do you pay him back?” I ask Jack, who’s rolling his eyes at the other two.
“Research assistant when he gets super geeky in his novels, sometimes indulge his never-gonna-happen plans about accidentally shooting a firecracker at the neighbor’s house.”
“So… I should offer to clean his house?” I ask.
“Only if you want to learn more than you ever wanted to know this fast,” Lucky replies.
Jack nods vehemently. “On top of the wall of fan mail that’s honestly embarrassing, he has some weird collections that you don’t want to stumble upon without actually liking him for who he is and also hearing the backstory, which he won’t share until you pass like seventeen more tests.”
“Thanks, guys,” Decker says. “Appreciate knowing who I’m sacrificing dating for.”
Jack and Lucky both grimace.
I glance at Rhys, who’s glancing at me, a little bit of yeah, they’re sometimes a little far gone in his expression, which makes me swallow another smile of my own.
“If you want me to talk to her—” I start, but all three jump in with instant nos.
“You’d have to admit why it mattered,” Lucky says to me.
“And she won’t believe someone as hot as you would be asking because you wanted to date one of us,” Jack adds.
Decker pulls a face. “Seriously? I just ate.”
“We only just found out we’re related,” Jack says.
“How many times have you passed an attractive woman on the street and thought, oh, she’s pretty, and then wondered if you thought that because she looks kinda like you, which, duh, is attractive because we’re hot ourselves, but not knowing who our dad is means that maybe we would’ve been related? ”
“Don’t ever say any of that out loud again,” Decker says.
Jack grins at me like he’s irritating Decker on purpose, which makes me once again suck in a smile.
Daphne will love these three.
Lucky looks at Rhys. “As someone who’s not related to her and someone who probably has reason to actively dislike her, would you say Margie’s hot?”
Thoughts of my sister flee my brain as my stomach dips and my heart goes for a run without permission.
I lock eyes with Rhys again.
He makes a show of looking me up and down, getting a shove from Jack and a glare from Decker and a soft growl from Lucky.
“You asked,” Rhys says to Lucky.
“I didn’t mean mentally strip her while we sit here, asshole.”
Rhys shrugs. “She’s all right.” He tilts his head at me. “Maybe if I picture her as a blonde…”
Jack shoves him again while I stifle a twitch at one more of Rhys’s little pokes at knowing who I really am, then all four men go still and silent.
A second later, the server pops into our little curtained area with a point-of-sale machine. Decker hands her his credit card without looking at the total, then signs the machine and takes his card back.
“Whatever you’re up to, make sure it’s memorable,” she says to the group of us as she departs with a grin.
“Sometimes I hate living in a small town,” Decker mutters.
“Dude. Sometimes you hate everything,” Jack replies.
“If too many people figure it out—”
“Your dad has no idea, does he?” I ask softly.
All three of them, plus Rhys, look at me.
“Why would you think that?” Jack says.
“He took a DNA test himself, didn’t he? Why would he do that if he knew it would make a record for you to link with—or not link with—later?”
The amount of silent communication going on between the triplets is telling.
“We got it for him for his birthday,” Lucky tells me.
“I did the log-in. He doesn’t have it,” Jack adds.
“Hates computers,” Decker says.
“Hates computers,” Lucky agrees.
“He mostly wanted to know where his ancestors came from,” Jack says.
“Your mom didn’t object?” I ask.
All three of them shake their heads.
“We don’t think she knows it can be used to find other people you’re related to,” Decker says.
“Both of our parents—they mostly use computers to play Frenemy Crush or pay their bills or look up what the neighbors’ houses are selling for.
And even if they hear their friends talking about MatchDNA, they don’t know we took the test.”
Maybe it’s the margarita, or maybe it’s feeling like they’re letting me into a closer inner circle, but I don’t school my face fast enough, and all three of them give me matching embarrassed smiles.
“It was mostly a joke,” Lucky says. “Us taking the test. One of my patients kept telling me I should make sure we were related—”
Jack picks up the story. “And then we got tipsy on eggnog while we were talking about it—”
“And a few weeks later, our entire world got turned upside down,” Decker finishes.
Lucky shakes his head. “All because of eggnog and a joke.”
I swallow.
Then swallow again.
“For what it’s worth,” I say quietly, “I’m sorry it turned your world upside down, but I’m not sorry we had an opportunity to meet.”
Lucky smiles at me.
Jack does too.
Even Decker softens.
“And I still won’t tell anyone,” I add. “Any of it.”
Rhys eyes me.
I ignore him.
I won’t tell anyone else. Daphne deserves to know, but she can keep the secret.
She and I both know what my father would do if he found out about the triplets.
But I also know what I’d do if he found out.
And I’m glad I have an attorney on retainer who has no loyalty to or business with my father. If the triplets—if my brothers—ever need her, they’ll have her.
When I tell them my full truth, when they understand why it matters, when they agree to help me, then I’ll have her already in their corner, ready for whatever my father might try to retaliate with.
He’ll have to go through me and every ounce of firepower I can summon to get to them.
“Never know what life’s gonna bring,” Lucky says. “Curses aside, always tends to be a little good with the bad.”
“Not always,” Decker says.
“Pessimist to the end.” Jack rolls his eyes. “You need someone to walk you to your car, Margie? Bandit and I would be happy to help.”
“I’ve got her,” Rhys says.
All three of them look at him again.
“What?” he says. “Can’t let her get there first and booby-trap the place again.”
Lucky grins at me. “Never let it be said nature doesn’t rule over nurture.”
And there I go, getting misty-eyed once more.
If I had to pick surprise brothers, I’d pick these three.
But I don’t have to pick.
I just get them.
And hopefully, they’ll still pick me back when they know who I am.