“Teak, that whole fucking
state
hates Chicago. And apparently the feeling’s mutual,” I chuckled, shaking my head as I cleaned up breakfast, almost sad my mom was gone purely because she made the best breakfast ever.
“Can we keep your mom too? I’ve never had such an awesome breakfast,” Aspen mumbled, staring longingly at the leftovers. “I want to keep eating but there’s no more room.”
“I was thinking the same thing. But no. I love my mother, but it’s better she just visits.” Teak was pouting, so I kissed him on the cheek. “Look, it’s from an older generation mostly like my dad’s age or even my grandparents. Oh god, you should have heard people talk when I was younger even. I really thought everyone in Texas rode their damn horses to school like they were back in another time. They thought we were all crooked mobsters. It’s a thing.
“Look, Texans don’t like Yankees but they
really
don’t like Chicagoans. And we don’t like them I think mostly because they don’t like us. Chicagoans and New Yorkers play fight, like a rivalry, but in the end, we’re big city pains in the asses who get along just fine.” Still he stared at me blankly. “Don’t pick fucking Texas ever, Teak.”
“But
why
?”
I groaned as I set down the plates in the sink and then rubbed my temples. “You just
don’t
. You’re in the Midwest. Texas is a button you don’t push. It’s volatile topic here. Pick Kansas. No one notices Kansas. You want to not draw attention, pick Kansas.”
“But you have friend from Texas. I know you do,” he argued.
“Because they know that state is
crazy
.” I shrugged. “They have some really weird laws, and I’d be scared to live there as a damn Chicagoan with the way they feel about us. You want to blend here in the Midwest?
Don’t fucking pick Texas again
.”
“Okay, Cara.”
Some things a person just couldn’t explain. Hell, I didn’t even understand a stupid rivalry that went back
way
before I was born. All I knew was, when I’d traveled to Texas, there were people who wouldn’t shake my hand when they’d heard I was from Chicago like I had a disease instead of a place of birth. Personally, I didn’t really care about the whole thing and thought it was stupid, I just avoided it, but
they
wanted to keep under the radar and that meant not drawing attention.
Texas drew attention. It was as simple as that.
The next few weeks we cleaned up the mess they’d made and worked through our issues, namely I learned to trust them again. Forgiving them was one thing, but trust was a different ball of wax.
Teak helped me write several books with his crazy powers which he became even more accurate with. He got
so
excited with the plot developments, being able to see what we were putting down on “paper” that I swear he was more wound up and ready to work than I was. All the while we were turning books in and acting as if they were mostly finished before I’d gotten sick but hadn’t been able to be completed because of the toll everything had taken on me and now they could.
Hey, whatever worked, right?
Aspen handled everything with the PR chick and was one
hell
of a business finagler. He ended up being my business manager, and it was a role I
gladly
gave over. There was only one
slight
issue when I finally met the PR chick. I’d blown off all the meetings, hating that crap and Aspen handling everything really well. Until I saw him duded up in a suit to go meet her, smiling, and jogging out the door. Then I shared a look with Cypress and Teak before the three of us practically
dove
to my computer to look her up.
She was
hot
.
Next thing I knew, I was getting ready to attend that meeting. Sure enough the bitch was flirting with
my
man when I walked into the restaurant.
“Hi, we haven’t met,” I purred as I joined them and held out my hand to her. “I’m Cara, Cara Quinn, the author paying you to promote me and apparently grope my lover like a cheap whore. So remove your hand and don’t touch him again or I’ll fuck up your face so bad you’ll have to change your profession. Savvy?”
“Fuck, you’re hot when you’re jealous,” Aspen hissed, staring at me with wide eyes.
It seemed he
really
liked my inner bitch, because we went at it in the parking lot like rabbits. Turned out he didn’t like the PR chick, he just enjoyed the business game and marketing. He liked marketing
me
because he believed in me. My bad. I groveled for a week for that mistake, and to be honest, I never had so much fun making up for a misunderstanding.
Even if most of the time I was on my hands and knees.
Cypress turned out to be a computer
whiz
. I mean total genius. He ate up code like some people did books and redesigned my websites, could do graphics, cleaned up my hard drives,
anything
I needed, including backing up servers and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t understand.
I smiled and nodded as he tried to explain it to me one day, weeks after he’d taken over the role and long since he’d started fiddling with it right after my parents’ had left, simply curious as to how he could help. When he was done, he rolled his eyes. “How much of that did you actually catch?”
“Not much, but you sounded
great
saying it all,” I chuckled, pushing back the chair at the adjoining desk to mine. I slid my leg over his lap and sat down. “Do it again, but slower. I love when you talk HTML and system whatever to me.”
“You’re teasing me.”
“No, no, I’m not, babe,” I assured him as I cupped his face. “I adore how excited you get and your eyes light up with that fire. I’m proud of you. You learned all of this with no training, no schooling, and no
help
. People go to expensive colleges and don’t learn a fraction of this, Cypress. Not bad for a servant’s son, don’t you think?”
“The way you believe in me astounds me,” he whispered against me lips as he pulled me down to him.
“I could say the same.” I kissed him, hoping he understood what his support meant to me as well. We ended up in the next room,
our
bedroom—all of ours—moments later making love. While most of the time it was all of us together, Cypress and I ended up having some form of alone time at least once a day.
It didn’t mean we loved each other more than we did the rest. I loved all of them equally. I wasn’t sure I knew how to explain it without sounding like that wasn’t true. We couldn’t survive without the other, if that made sense. But that didn’t mean I loved Teak or Aspen any less than Cypress. Cypress and I simply saw each other in a world where it was too easy to go unnoticed.
And that was something no one else understood. It was a certain level of bond that couldn’t be explained.
I did get the rest of that story from Teak too. About a month after my fake surgery and all was calm with work, we were sitting down to decide what to do about the two houses now that they pretty much lived at mine.
“We keep it,” Aspen said matter-of-factly. “This is the quiet house where work is done for Cara and whoever’s helping her. The other house is for phone calls, shouting at computers, blowing off steam, or playing around.”
“Meaning you’re not giving up your tricked out bachelor pad,” I chuckled. They had tricked it out to be sure, and I hadn’t been that far off in my first assessment about a small frat moving in when I’d first seen them. There was a foosball and pool table in one room. Huge entertainment center with multiple TVs and gaming system in another. Skateboard and scooter ramps Aspen had rigged somehow over all those small staircases.
There was even a damn beer tap thing in the big Jacuzzi tub off the main floor. I mean the house was
tricked
out. Aspen had mad skills and magic as a builder.
He simply shrugged, unwilling to deny it. “Fine, but I want some of that shit here too because this house needs some love as well.”
“Oh gods
yes
,” he groaned. “And an outdoor whirlpool. This deck is just screaming for one.”
“Yeah,
twist
my arm on that,” I drawled, rolling my eyes. We went out back with some drinks, and while Cypress and Aspen built a fire in my fixed fire pit as opposed to the messed up one I’d had help building that had been sliding down the hill, I snuggled up against Teak. “We never finished the story. There always seems to be something going on.”
“We’ve finished a bunch of stories, Cara,” he chuckled, rubbing his hands over my arms when I shivered.
“No,
the
story.”
“
Oh
!” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Well the three boys grew up into men.”
“Manly men who carry wood and build fires!” Aspen called out, grunting as he threw a few
huge
logs into the roaring fire pit.
“God, your guys’ hearing,” I snickered.
“Yes, very
manly
men,” Teak drawled. “The King was going to step down in a decade and let the Prince’s father take over rule, but before he did, he was determined to see all of his grandchildren married into suitable matches that benefited the kingdom. This upset the Prince, and he shot down every match for one reason or another, angering the King over and over again and worrying his kind parents about the fallout of his decision.
“But there was a rule that every royal must marry by their seventy-fifth birthday or they lose their place in the line of succession.”
“
Seventy-five
? Fuck, that’s old,” I balked, sitting up and staring at him as Cypress and Aspen joined us. “Most rulers step down around then. Who wants someone stepping up
then
?”
They glanced at each other before Teak opened his mouth, and I thought nothing of it, taking a sip of my hard cider. “When the Prince turned
seventy
—”
I spit my drink all over the three of them. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Cara, I’m seventy-five,” Teak chuckled, mopping off his face.
“Seventy-six,” Cypress added.
“Seventy-eight,” Aspen finished.
“Holy fucking shit on a stick,” I breathed, glancing between the three of them. “I thought
I
was the cradle robber here. You guys are old farts!” Then I had a whole other slew of questions. “Wait, you
look
late twenties. Do you die?”
“We die, we just age incredibly slowly,” Teak answered with a shrug. “My grandfather is several hundred years old. It’s our magic. We heal every toxin or stress. You’ll age like that too now.”
Spots formed before my eyes as I grabbed onto the edge of the bench we were sitting on. “I thought no more secrets, guys?”
Cypress winced. “We weren’t keeping it a secret so much as I guess we hadn’t gotten to that yet. You okay?”
“Give me a minute.” I took a few deep breaths and nodded. “Might take me a few days, but if I have any more questions, I’ll ask.” I turned around again and stared out at the fire. “So the Prince turned seventy…”
“Yes, and at his party, his older sister’s intended met with an accident that would have killed him,” Teak continued. “And the Prince liked the guy, but he loved his sister very, very much.”
“We all do. Willow is a wonderful woman,” Aspen agreed firmly.
“Thank you.” I saw Teak reach and take his hand. “She’s the only person who knew about us and helped keep our secret. Anyways, while most marriages in the royal family were arranged by the parents or King of the time for beneficial matches and hopefully love happened later, Princess Willow fell in love with her intended, and he treasured the Princess. It destroyed the Prince that his sister could lose the man she loved.”
“So he saved the man.”
“He did,” Teak admitted. “He wasn’t thinking of the cost to himself or the men he loved, but he couldn’t not do anything. The men he loved were angry with him for risking the Prince’s safety but understood he had to do it. Luckily no one had been around but the man and the Princess, but their mother had already been told that the Princess’s intended had been injured. Unsure what to do, the Prince trusted his sister and allowed her to tell their mother the truth.
“They knew and understood what the Prince’s gift would mean for his life if people ever found out and were scared for him. And together the four of them hatched a plan to help the Prince escape life at court with the men he loved after he confessed what he truly wanted. It took
years
of planning and hiding of funds, but luckily the Princess’s betrothed came from a very wealthy elf family who was good at such things and knew that once the Prince disappeared everyone would search for
him
.”
“But not a servant and a mason’s son,” Cypress chuckled, shaking his head. “Everything is in our names. There’s no trace of Prince Teak, and that’s the way it has to stay. We led them toward Asia and ran this way once everything was finally ready and we had an opportunity when the King was distracted and traveling.”