Chapter 23
IS IT STILL CALLED brEATHING WHEN IT’S HYPERVENTILATING?
Margot
Sabrina and Grey have a beautiful home nestled into the forest on a mountainside.
It’s newly renovated, with wood and stone touches everywhere, inside and out.
Flagstone patios and rock gardens ring the immediate perimeter, with wildflower gardens scattered beyond.
Inside is classy but cozy, with high-beam ceilings and oversized furniture and local artwork scattered among pictures of the couple, their dogs, and their baby, along with several of Sabrina and her two best friends—sometimes just the women, sometimes the women with their husbands too.
And as the triplets promised, it has an epic kombucha cellar that takes up half the lower level, which is where I am now.
Unlike my father’s wine cellar, which is absurdly large and stores more bottles of wine that he keeps for investment purposes than bottles he intends to drink, the kombucha cellar is a working cellar, where kombucha is actively brewing in five large glass tanks on one wall that has a painting of the mountains behind it.
“Different flavors,” Zen, who was introduced to me as Grey’s close relative and best friend, explains to me when I ask why they’re different colors.
Zen’s tall and lanky with short blond hair and a way of looking at you that promises the sassitude is hanging out just beneath the surface, waiting for an excuse to emerge.
“From different honeys, or different additions?” I ask.
“Some of both.” They gesture to the first tank. “This one’s honey only. Same with this next one. But this one—this one, we added raspberries and lavender. Then mint here. And my personal favorite of the moment, lemon ginger.”
“You run the kombrewchery here in town?” I ask them.
“I run everything here. Some people aren’t smart enough to realize it though.”
I smile.
They smile back, but then narrow their eyes. “You have secrets, don’t you?”
Once again, I find myself liking someone for their suspicion of me.
Probably a sign I need to come clean. And soon. “Everyone has secrets.”
“Don’t let yours be the bad kind.” They bend over, catching a runaway toddler with short dark curls all over his head. “And you—you’re supposed to be upstairs. Margie, meet Henry. Henry, say hello to Margie.”
The little boy sticks a finger in his mouth and looks at me with big green eyes, not saying a word.
“Hello, Henry,” I say.
“Got boogie?” he replies, sticking a finger from his other hand up his nose.
“Uncle Theo’s in trouble,” Zen mutters. “I told him to quit teaching all of you that.” They jerk their head toward the door. “If this one’s here, the others and the dogs will follow. But help yourself to anything you want.”
“I won’t be grabbing the last of anything special?”
“It’s all special, and we’ll keep making more special, so it’s the kind of special meant to be consumed and enjoyed and remembered.”
It’s impossible to not smile at that sentiment.
“This one’s okay?” I snag a beer-size bottle in one of the rows on the wall.
Zen smiles. “Best one. Take it.”
“Would you say that about all of them?”
“Da boogie in da nose,” Henry says.
“Got that right, kid,” Zen says.
“Alcoholic or not?” I ask with a nod toward my bottle.
“If I answer that, I’m breaking the rules of kombucha roulette.”
I laugh. “Got it.” I take a second bottle and trail Zen upstairs.
Rhys is making himself useful at a large island in the kitchen, which opens into the living room, where Decker and Jack are deep in discussion with Theo, who’s once again holding a sleeping baby in his tattooed arms.
I set the bottle beside Rhys’s cutting board. “Workaholic much?” I murmur.
“Best view.”
“You like kombucha?”
“Guess we’ll find out. You?”
“We don’t have kombucha in Iowa.”
He grunts.
I suck in a smile.
Not like I’m going to tell him I drink it when I’m at my beach house, much like he’s probably not going to smile at me like he did last night when we were alone. “But apparently it’s a secret if it’s hard or soft. So consider yourself warned.”
A woman breezes through the back door, freezes when she spots me, and lights up. Her brown hair is tied back at the base of her neck, and her blue eyes are sparkling. “You must be Margie.” She walks closer and extends a hand. “Hi. I’m Laney.”
I shake and smile back at her, feeling suddenly on edge. Well, more on edge. “Nice to meet you. Have you met Rhys? He’s Decker’s friend.”
Rhys nods to her, still slicing tomatoes.
“I think we ran into each other the last time he was in town,” Laney says to me. She tilts her head, studying me.
Rhys takes a subtle half step closer to me.
“Crazy,” she murmurs.
“What?” My heart is starting to pound too hard.
I know who Laney is.
I know people at home who know who Laney is too.
She’s a badass businesswoman in her own right, working for her family’s custom online photo gift company that they founded here. They entered the internet business era at exactly the right time to hit it big.
My father’s talked about them.
And did the triplets—I scan through my memory banks, and yes. Yes, Lucky definitely described Laney in terms of Kingston Photo Gifts when he was telling me about his friends. I can confidently know who she is as Margie Johnson without tipping my hand that I researched her.
“I half thought the triplets were making you up to prank us all, but you have the same nose,” she says. “And your eyes are shaped the same. Oh my god. You have their ears too.”
“They are related,” Rhys murmurs.
“Hearing it from them and seeing it are two different things.”
I keep my smile plastered on while two other women—Sabrina, the shorter redhead from Bee & Nugget, and Emma, the taller blonde who’s married to Jonas Rutherford, both of whom are in pictures all over the house as well—come in through the back door too.
“Oh, she’s here,” Emma squeals.
“I told you she’s real,” Sabrina replies. She greets me with a quick hug. “I’m so glad you could make it. How was your first week of work?”
“Look at her nose,” Laney says to Emma.
Emma stares at my nose. “Oh. That must be why Jonas thought she looked familiar. Because it’s like staring at half of another one of the triplets.”
“Right?”
“It’s so weird how people can be related and not know it.”
Sabrina and Laney both look at her.
“Really?” Laney says the same time Sabrina says, “You can’t imagine how that could happen at all?”
Understandable.
Emma had five minutes of fame as a runaway bride several years back. She and Jonas ended up at the same resort where she was honeymooning solo and he was hiding after a rough divorce.
And Bash, their son, was the result.
But Jonas didn’t know it until about two years ago.
He left the nonprofit I know him from when he finally got the messages Emma had sent him when she found out she was pregnant.
But the triplets didn’t tell me that. I’m positive they haven’t mentioned much about Emma beyond who she’s married to. So I need to pretend I don’t know that either.
Emma grins at her friends. “I mean, yes, that might’ve been Bash one day, but Jonas found us again, so there are officially no more secrets in our group about who’s related to who.”
Rhys coughs.
The three best friends look at him.
I contemplate stepping on his foot. Hard.
“Inhaled dust,” he mutters.
“Don’t do that while you’re handling a knife,” I advise.
“So you two are still sharing the triplets’ cabin?” Sabrina asks us.
“Knock it off, Sabrina,” Jack calls.
“Don’t yell next to the baby,” Theo says.
And then he sneezes so loudly that Rhys and I both jump.
“What—” Rhys starts as the baby shouts, then settles right back against Theo’s shoulder.
“Speaking of the baby, where are the rest of the kids?” Laney asks, like the sneeze was no big deal.
“Uncle Lucky has them,” Rhys tells her while Emma murmurs to me, “He always sneezes that loud. Sorry. Should’ve warned you.”
“Zen’s with the kids too,” Sabrina says. “I got a text. They’re in the playroom.”
“If the triplets ask you to play rock paper scissors to change diapers, don’t do it,” Emma tells me.
“She can hold her own with rock paper scissors,” Rhys says.
I nod. “It’s apparently genetic to beat Jack.”
“That was funny as sh—shitake mushrooms,” Decker says as he ambles in.
“Did you know you have the same nose and eyes and ears?” Emma asks him.
“It makes me feel like I know Margie from somewhere,” Laney adds.
I pop the top on my kombucha bottle and take a sip that I hope would be a normal Margie Johnson-type sip to try something new.
Lemon blueberry.
“This is delicious,” I announce. I shift the other bottle closer to Rhys. “Here. I brought you one to try too.”
He nods, clearly his version of thanks, even though I already told him I gave him a bottle, and he gives me another look.
The same one he’s been giving me since I said I’d come here today.
The one that says you picked playing with fire, you get to deal with the consequences with a side of but I’m here if you need me.
It’s comforting.
At least, until the back door swings open and the last two men at the party walk in the door.
I grab my bottle and take another gulp. Why didn’t I add bangs to my look yet? And colored contacts. I could’ve gone brown-eyed, and then I wouldn’t be avoiding looking at Jonas.
Also—I suddenly understand the large furniture.
Grey Cartwright is as tall as Rhys. Easily.
He’s not as broad—honestly, who is?—but he’s still a very big dude. He has to bend to drop a kiss to Sabrina’s head. “Making our guests do all of the work?”
“I’m an excellent delegator,” she replies.
Grey introduces himself to Rhys and me and tells us both to quit working.
Jonas gives a friendly wave and heads through the kitchen toward the stairs at the far end of the room, between the living room and kitchen. I haven’t been to the upper level, but that’s where Zen headed with Henry, so I assume that’s where all of the kids are.