Carnal Compromise

by Robin L. Rotham

  “Go on,” Tim said. “You look tired as hell.”

  “But I was going to stay with you,” she protested.

  “I’ll be fine. I only asked you to stay because Brent called in the middle of the night and told me if I saw you, to keep you here.”

  She made a face at him. “Way to make me feel wanted.”

  Tim looked at Brent and Joe and then gave her a shit-eating grin. “Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt you’re wanted, AJ. Now go on. Let them take care of you.”

  She took her coat and leaned down to give him a hug, then made her way with some trepidation toward the two scowling men waiting for her at the door.

  Brent took her elbow in a steely grip and pulled her down the hall.

  “It’s not nice to leave him here by himself,” she told them in an annoyed tone.

  “He knows we’re in town and he’ll call when there’s any news,” Brent said severely. “You know, we almost called the police on you.”

  “The police! Why?”

  “Well, what were we supposed to think? You took off with Seth and Tim’s pickup in the middle of the night. For all we knew, you were stealing it.”

  She stopped short. “Stealing it! That’s bullshit. You know I’d never steal.”

  “I didn’t think so, but then I didn’t think you’d be coward enough to run off in the middle of the night and leave me short-handed, either.”

  She flushed. “Well, I’m sorry, but I just…had to get out of there. It was an emergency.”

  He gave her a look that said she was full of shit and then started towing her down the hall again. In the elevator, he tapped her coat and she put it on without a word.

  Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of a suite hotel. They’d put her in the back seat with her stuff and hadn’t said a word on the way over. When the three of them walked through the lobby, the clerk gave them a look of speculation that made her blush.

  Once inside the darkened third-floor suite, AJ slipped off her coat and waited ’til they’d hung theirs in the small closet beside the bathroom before she did the same. She took her time, wondering what the hell she was going to say to them. Actually, wondering why the hell they’d bothered coming after her in the first place. Usually when employees left without notice, employers just sucked it up and hired someone new instead of chasing after them.

  Brent slid his hands over her shoulders and turned her, half-marching her over to the sofa. After he urged her to the seat, he switched on the lamp and crouched in front of her, laying his hands on her knees. Even with the heater running in the next room, the silence was deafening.

  “Now what was this big emergency?” he finally asked.

  Meeting his penetrating gaze had never been harder, and once she did, she found herself unable to speak.

  “Cat got your tongue, little girl?” Joe sank down on the cushion beside her and rested his arm along the back of the sofa. “Come on, tell us what kind of emergency made you run off in the night.”

  God, how could she admit the truth to them? It sounded so pathetic and sad. After a moment, she simply said, “You didn’t need me anymore.”

  “You don’t think we need you when Seth just lost a leg and Tim is looking after him?” Joe demanded.

  She bit her lip and let her head hang down as tears suddenly spilled from her eyes. When she tried to cover her face with her hands, Brent trapped them between his on her lap.

  “Ariel, how could you possibly think we don’t need you?” he asked softly.

  “I mean you two don’t need me as a buffer between you.” She wiped her face on her shoulder. “You worked out what was keeping you apart, and now you’re together.”

  “We’re together?” Joe repeated incredulously.

  “You’re in love with each other, and you always have been,” AJ said flatly. “Don’t try to deny it, Joe, because it just won’t wash. You belong together. Period. I’m sorry about running out on you, I really am, but I just can’t handle being the third wheel.”

  Brent watched her intently. “On a tricycle, the third wheel is just as important as the other two, Ariel.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not talking about trikes, are we?” she shot back. Tugging her hands free, she kneed him aside and stood up. Once she had some distance between them, she took a deep breath and faced them with her fingers jammed into the back pockets of her jeans. “You know, my whole life, I felt like I was never enough for anyone. I was never son enough for my father, or daughter enough for my mother, or woman enough for my husband.

  “But I’m done with being the consolation prize.” She shrugged. “I want more, and for once, I think I’m worth more.”

  “Ariel, you belong with us,” Brent said flatly.

  “I don’t want to be the extra!” she practically shouted.

  Brent jumped to his feet and got in her face. “So the fact that I’m crazy in love with you means nothing, huh?”

  She blinked at him. “You are?”

  “Hell yes! Ariel Jane, how could you be so observant about my feelings for Joe and yet so blind to my feelings for you?” He heaved a big sigh and scratched his head. “I’m sorry, but you two are driving me crazy trying to pawn me off on each other. Joe thinks he can leave me because I’ve got you, and you think you can leave me because I’ve got Joe. Don’t either of you love me enough to stay?”

  AJ’s eyes filled again and her lips trembled. “Of course I do,” she whispered. “But—”

  “Thank God.” He pulled her against him, kissing her damp eyelashes and then her lips. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. You took ten years off my life last night.”

  “But it’s not that simple,” she insisted, trying to pull back.

  Brent’s grip on her tightened. “Why not?”

  “Well, because…” She swallowed. “You and Joe loved each other long before you ever met me.”

  “We were attracted to each other,” he corrected. “But did you see us doing anything about it?” Before she could answer, he continued. “No. And if it was up to me, we never would have because I knew if I took him on his terms, I’d lose him. I couldn’t risk that.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Having a part of him was better than nothing.”

  “Exactly. But loving you was easy, Ariel Jane. Maybe too damn easy.” He lowered his head and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Loving you took away a lot of my fear and made me realize what I might be missing out on by keeping the only man I’d ever love at arm’s length. Without you, I was afraid to take the risk. With you, I was afraid not to.”

  “Oh Brent,” she whispered as the tears spilled over again. He couldn’t have paid her a higher compliment if he’d tried. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck. “I do love you. I love you both.”

  “Well, I thought you did, and since you seem to read my mind most of the time, I figured you knew how I felt. Sorry, sweetheart—guess I shouldn’t have taken that for granted.”

  He pulled back and looked at her, his brown eyes earnest. “It may have crossed my mind to use you as a buffer, Ariel, but that plan went out the window our very first night together. We did need you—not as a buffer but as a bridge. I would never have had the courage to go after Joe if I hadn’t had you to catch me if I fell. You’re the strongest of all of us, honey. You’re the big wheel on this tricycle, and Joe and I are just the two little ones who go where you go.”

  AJ smiled wryly through her tears. “You know, you had me right up until the big wheel bit.”

  “A little over the top?” He grinned. “You’re the one who loves analogies.”

  “Okay, fine—the trike analogy gets a pass, but which of us is the big wheel is still up for debate.” She bit her lip. “Do you really think three of us can make it work?”

  “Of course we can. Hell, we’ve already proved we can work together and live together, haven’t we? Why couldn’t we make it work?” Then he dropped one more quick kiss on her lips and turned to face Joe. “What about you, Jos
iah? Are you going to let go of all that guilt and grief, quit trying to save the world one stupid young farmer at a time and just let us love you? Are you staying on this tricycle with us?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Joe looked back and forth between Brent and AJ, wanting desperately to say yes. Holy hell, there was nothing he’d like more than to spend the rest of his life with the two of them.

  “I’m still afraid,” he said starkly.

  “You think I’m not?” Brent demanded. “Well, let me tell you, hell yes, I’m afraid. My parents fell in love, and they got married and had me, happily ever after and all that crap—and then my mom fell out of love and divorced my dad. He gave her his heart forever, and she had no use for it. Forty years later, he’s still waiting for her to come back.”

  AJ frowned up at him. “How sad.”

  “I always thought it was damn pathetic, and I swore I’d never be like him.” He raised a brow. “How do I know one or both of you won’t wake up in a year or two thinking the grass might be greener someplace else?”

  When neither of them offered an answer, he went on. “I don’t, do I? There are no guarantees for any of us. But you know what, Joe? I’ve never met two people more worth taking that chance on than you and Ariel.”

  Joe swallowed. “I just don’t know if I can do it.”

  “Yes you can!” AJ sat down next to him and hugged his chest. “We’ll help you.”

  He hugged her in return, burying his nose in her hair. The warm, sweet length of her soaked into his skin, into his very soul, and the sweetness felt way too close to pain as every barrier inside him was demolished by emotion.

  And it hurt. Jesus, how it hurt. Like the circulation returning to a limb after it had been asleep for hours, love was pumping through his heart again in thick, prickling surges, and he wanted to steel himself, to shut it back down and run away before the pain got too intense to bear.

  Making himself look Brent in the eye, he said in a gravelly voice, “Christ, I can’t even begin to tell you what you mean to me. You’re everything. I love both of you more than you’ll ever know.”

  He squeezed AJ and kissed her hair. “But every time I close my eyes, I see Travis crushed by that truck, and Seth lying there all torn up by the header, and I think, ‘That could have been Brent. It could have been AJ.’ And it scares me so damn bad, I feel like I could start screaming and never stop. I wish to hell I was strong and unbreakable, but I’m not. I nearly lost my mind when Travis died. I know if I lost one of you, I’d go around the bend and never make it back.”

  “I don’t want to lose either of you,” Brent said, dropping to his knees in front of them. “Ever. But if I do, if I ever have to suffer through that kind of pain, it’ll be worth it. I don’t care if I’m like my dad—hell, I’m lucky to be like him if I’ve found not just one but two people who are so worth loving that I’ll risk any amount of pain.”

  “Oh, Joe,” AJ sighed, sliding a hand up to cup his jaw as she kissed the side of his neck. “I love you, both of you, and I’m scared, too. Hell, you guys have quite a few years on me—you’ll probably both kick the bucket and leave me all alone someday. But will I be any less alone if I run away from you now?”

  Joe swallowed against her palm. “You don’t know what it’s like…”

  “You think I don’t?” She pinned him with a stare. “At least you got to know your son, Josiah. Mine was stillborn.”

  Joe flinched. “Aw, Christ, AJ.”

  Her blue eyes clouded. “I named him Micah Ray because I knew then that I’d never have another chance to name a son after my father. I was twenty-five and I’d already had three miscarriages because of a birth defect in my uterus. Rob and I tried not to get our hopes up too high at first, but when I made it to six months, we relaxed and started making plans.” She bit her lips and then shook her head. “Neither of us could take any more disappointment so I had my tubes tied, and afterward, Rob and I just couldn’t seem to connect anymore. We were divorced a few months later, and he remarried and had three kids the last I heard. I moved back home and started working with Dad again, and you know the rest.”

  “I’m sorry,” Brent said, kissing the back of her hand.

  “Well, as much as I’d like to place all the blame for that at his door, I think it was probably just as much my fault as Rob’s. I was just too eaten up with guilt to know how to act with him.”

  Frowning, Joe asked, “Guilt about what?”

  “About everything. Being a defective wife—”

  “You’re not defective,” Joe growled, hugging her fiercely.

  “Thank you,” she said with a half-smile when he loosened his grip. “But I felt that way, and really, I was defective in a physical sense. When Rob lost interest in me sexually, it only reinforced my already well-developed sense of inadequacy. And I felt so much guilt about losing my babies I could hardly look him or anyone in the eye for a long time.”

  “Jesus, AJ, that wasn’t your fault,” he protested.

  She raised her brows. “How do you know? Statistically speaking, my chances of delivering healthy babies were excellent, and yet I couldn’t carry even one of them to term. What if it was something I did, or something I didn’t do? What if I ate the wrong—”

  Joe cut her off with a stern look. “Ariel, stop. You can’t do that to yourself. You can’t spend the rest of your life picking it apart and wondering how you…”

  Blindsided by irony, he lost his train of thought and sat there blinking at her, his heart thudding, his tongue thick in his mouth.

  “How I might have done things differently?” she finished with a penetrating look.

  He nodded slowly, feeling trapped…and just a little bit foolish.

  “Is that the voice of experience speaking?”

  “Possibly,” he admitted reluctantly.

  Sliding her arm around his waist, she said, “I’m pretty sure all parents who lose a child do that, Joe. It’s like if you can just think about it hard enough and pinpoint exactly where you went wrong, then maybe you can make it so it never happened and everything will turn out the way it was supposed to. But it never does.”

  He swallowed hard. “You felt that way?”

  “I did. And sometimes when I’m feeling down about other things in my life, it’ll creep back up on me for a little while. But you know what, Joe?” She looked up at him with shining eyes.

  “What?” he said gruffly.

  “In moments like this one, I can’t help but believe that everything is turning out the way it’s supposed to.”

  Joe stilled, the truth of her words resonating not just in his head but in his heart. This was the way his life was supposed to turn out. Everything he’d done and everything he’d been through had brought him to this moment, to these lovers.

  He looked at Brent. “Okay, you win. I guess we do belong together.”

  Brent grinned. “Halleluiah.”

  Sighing deeply, Joe kissed AJ’s forehead. “How did you get to be so wise, little girl?”

  Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Like we all do, I guess—trial and error.”

  He drew back and stared at her. Holy shit, maybe she was the freaking Dalai Lama. “You’re starting to make me feel like an emotional midget.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him with a wry smile. “I’ve still got plenty of hang-ups. For instance, I might have come to terms with not having kids, but it has kept me from getting…close to anyone.” When they both looked at her blankly, she added, “Men tend to want sons to carry on the family name. Rob did.”

  “Not this man,” Brent said firmly. “I’m not your ex or your dad, Ariel, and I’ve never particularly wanted sons or daughters. If my brothers decide there should be more Andersens, they can damn well get married and manufacture some themselves.”

  “Not this man either,” Joe agreed. “I had my son.”

  “Speaking of which…” Brent pushed off AJ’s knees and stood up, obviously a little stiff from kneeling for so lon
g. “Don’t you think it’s time you told us about Travis?”

  Joe glanced at the big empty king bed through the French doors. “He was a great kid so it’ll take awhile. Why don’t we get comfortable first?”

  Once they’d kicked off their boots, taken off their belts and emptied their pockets on the dresser, they all stretched out on the bed together, with Joe in the middle.

  Joe lay on his back, his arms folded behind his head, looking at the two people he loved most in the world and wondering what in the hell they saw in him. But it didn’t really matter. They wanted him and that was all he needed to know.

  “My son’s name was Travis Josiah Remke,” he began, “and the only thing he ever wanted to be was a farmer…”

  They were lying there talking when the phone rang more than an hour later. It was Tim calling to let them know that Seth had come through surgery just fine and his prognosis was excellent.

  AJ nearly wept with relief, and not just for Seth’s sake. Joe already looked younger somehow, and lighter—certainly happier than she had ever seen him—and Brent literally glowed with contentment. Selfishly, she wanted that to continue, for the three of them to embark on this new phase of their lives wrapped in a mantle of joy, not huddled together under a cloud of grief.

  “Thank God,” Joe said. After a long pause, he added, “But I’m still going to kick his ass when he gets back on his…foot.”

  Brent tried unsuccessfully to smother a laugh. “That’ll give him some incentive to find a good prosthesis and learn to run.”

  Joe grinned. “You got that right.”

  “So where do we go from here?” Brent asked, rolling to his side and laying his hand on Joe’s stomach. “Not that I’m in any hurry to climb off this nice big bed. I could really get used to this kind of space.”

  “Back to work tomorrow,” AJ said firmly.