A Question of Trust (12 page)

Connor inhaled, surreptitiously sniffing the air, searching for Maddie’s lingering scent. The only thing he got was a whiff of Gabe’s spicy aftershave. “Yeah. I considered it, but Melbourne’s my home. Pointless leaving when I’ve made a decent life for myself there.”

Wrong. It was pointless staying in Sydney when Maddie lived here. There was no chance he’d be able to live in the same city and keep his hands off her. And there was no possibility he would share her again. Nope. If Connor ever got his hands on Madeline Jones, it would be with the understanding that he would be the only man ever to touch her intimately again.

Zero chance of that happening since Maddie was Gabe’s girl.

“Mate,” Gabe said, “you told me something was missing. Told me you needed a change. How much of a change are you going to get remaining in your old, stagnant life?”

He shrugged with a nonchalance he did not feel. “So what should I do? Come here and share your life with you? Share your girlfriend?” Connor shook his head. “I’m too old for this shite, Gabe. I can’t do it anymore. I want to find a woman of my own, possibly settle down. I can do that just as easily in Melbourne as I can here.” Except for the tiny fact that the woman he’d pick to be his own was in Sydney—and totally off limits.

“That’s what your midlife crisis has been about? A woman? It’s got nothing to do with your job or the city you live in?”

Connor bristled. “I’m thirty, pal. This is hardly a midlife crisis.”

Gabe grinned at him. “You want to find a wife and make babies, don’t ya?”

He squared his shoulders, ready for a fight. So what if he did? Then he loosened up and relaxed. Gabe was just taking the piss. It was nothing he wouldn’t do if the situation were reversed. “Yeah, so what of it?”

“So nothing of it. That’s cool, mate. I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah?” Connor looked at Gabe, surprised. He’d expected a shiteload of teasing and mockery. He hadn’t got it. “Well, hold back your tears of joy. I don’t even have a woman.”
You have her.

Gabe frowned. “That makes two of us.”

What the fuck? “You have a prime lady upstairs, Carter. You have perfection.”
Easy, Connor. Don’t say another word or he’ll figure out exactly what you think about his lady upstairs.

Gabe sighed. “Perfection walked out on me in the middle of the night.”

“Pardon?” Connor sat up straight.

“She dumped me. On my ass. Said something about not being in love, and about last night being too intense and she left.”

“You’re kidding?” Christ, Maddie had ended things with Gabe. Right after their conversation.

“Wish I was.”

“She’s not in love with you?” Dear God, she didn’t love his friend.

“Nope?”

What about Gabe? How did he feel? “You in love with her?” Connor held his breath.

“Nope. But I like her. A lot. And she’s a goddess in bed.”

Holy crap. Maddie and Gabe were over. Connor let the news sink in. “I’m sorry, mate,” he said at last. “You lost a good one there.” He was sorry, in a fucked up kind of a way. He wanted Maddie and Gabe to be happy—even if he couldn’t be. Yet he couldn’t deny that a selfish part of him sagged in relief.

“Yep, I’m sorry too.” Gabe shrugged. “Shit happens.”

Man, did it ever.

“Carter?”

“Yeah?”

“You ever been in love with one of our women?” Aw, shite. He was heading into no man’s land. He should just shut the hell up.

Gabe regarded him with brooding eyes. “Nah, mate. I’m a possessive guy. I couldn’t share a woman I loved with you. I’d be forced to kill you afterwards.”

Connor chuckled, but called his friend on his answer. “You’re lying.”

Gabe sighed. “Okay. I liked Tina. More than I should have.” He held his hands up in surrender. “But she was yours first. And rules are rules.”

Tina. Connor had dug her. A lot. But he’d never been in love with her. In retrospect, if Gabe had laid sole claim to her, Connor wouldn’t have been overly put out. Sure, his male pride would have taken a beating, but it wouldn’t have been too bad in the long run. Tina and Gabe would have made a good couple.

“Tossing the question back at you, mate,” Gabe said. “Ever fallen for one of our women?”

Connor stared into his mug, contemplating his drink.

“Regan?”

He walked over to the sink and tossed out the dregs of his coffee. What could he say?

“Fuck me! You have, haven’t you?” Gabe asked. “You knew about Tina. How come I don’t know about…?” His voice drifted off. “Who don’t I know about?”

No way out now. He should never have started this conversation. What was he thinking anyway opening his big mouth like that?

“Sally? Megan? Pammy?” Gabe thought loud. “No, no, no.” He ticked each one off. “Tina? We know that one. Justine? Nah. Too quiet for you. Desi? Uh uh. Too thin. You kept trying to force feed her and she kept refusing.”

Then there was silence.

Long, taut silence.

A kitchen chair scraped against the floor. Footsteps. The fridge opened then closed.

The silence stretched out.

Connor stared out the window, thought about Maddie. Thought about Gabe.

“Fuck you, Regan.” Gabe’s voice was frozen.

How could he answer? Gabe had a right to be pissed.

“What did you say to her? What did you do while I slept?”

Connor turned to face his friend, accept his anger. “Nothing you wouldn’t have said or done.” It was true. Sharing a woman did not mean they shared her every time. There were occasions when only one of them was involved. It was okay, a part of their understanding. “She asked questions about us, I answered. Things got a little hot, I cooled her down. Nothing you wouldn’t have done.”

“I didn’t fall in love with her,” Gabe pointed out, his voice still bitter.

“I did,” Connor said with a calm he did not feel, but it was useless denying the truth now that it was out in the open. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. Soon as I realized, I walked away.” He lifted his hands in surrender, like Gabe had done. “Rules are rules, mate. She was yours first so I walked away.”

“So did she. Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Guilt stabbed at Connor’s gut. “I fucked up, mate. I fell for your woman.” He shook his head in defeat. “I’m sorry. You know I never intended for it to happen.”

Gabe didn’t answer, just regarded him with cold eyes.

“There’s a plane at twelve-thirty.” Connor said. “I’ll be on it.”

“You running away from this, you dipshit?”

He nodded and walked to the door. The option was to stay and fight—but that would fuck up their friendship altogether. The way things stood, if Connor got out of Gabe’s way now, they might be able to salvage something. Hell, they’d survived Tina, they could get through Maddie. “Yeah, mate. I’m running away. But you’re not. Go after her. Make it right. You like her, she likes you. Go and set things straight.” Connor walked slowly to his bedroom to pack.

“You know what?” Gabe called after him. “You’re right. It’s about time matters were set straight. I’m going after her, Regan. Deal with it.”

***

The insistent banging on her door did not cease. Hard as Maddie tried to ignore it, whoever was out there did not plan on leaving anytime soon.

She couldn’t face anyone. She looked like hell and she felt worse. Her eyes were all red and swollen and her nose still ran even though the tears had stopped about an hour ago. Besides, she wasn’t exactly in the mood for company. Couldn’t a girl just be by herself? Wallow alone in self pity while she lamented the love that would never be?

Maddie pulled a pillow over her ears, determined to outlast her persistent visitor.

That’s when the doorbell buzzed. And buzzed and buzzed and buzzed.

Damn it. Old Mr. Finton from next door would never let her live it down. He’d already lectured her endlessly about the earsplitting ring. If he was home now he’d probably organize to have her kicked out the building.

She threw off the pillow and climbed reluctantly off her bed. Fine. She’d let whoever it was in, but she wouldn’t be happy about it.

“Okay, already,” she griped at the door. It had to be Julia. No one else had the audacity to ring her bell more than once. “I’m coming. Don’t get your—!
Gabe?
”
The last person on earth she’d expected to see. “Wh…what are you doing here?” Okay, it was rude to ask, but his arrival had knocked her for a six.

“I need to speak to you.” He pushed past her and walked into her flat.

“About what?”

“About us. And Connor.”

Maddie’s heart sank. She was too exhausted and too emotionally fragile to deny him the truth. If Gabe pressed her on their relationship she’d surely blurt out her real reason for calling things off. She’d tell him how, without expecting to, she tumbled and fallen for his friend.

“Don’t do this, Gabe. Please. Don’t do this.” Perhaps if she prevented any kind of conversation from taking place she could avoid hurting him with the truth. “It’s over. It has to be.”

Gabe turned to her. “Connor and I have rules,” he blurted out. “A policy we established years ago, when we realized how tricky threesomes could get.”

Okay. So much for stopping the conversation. Maddie gathered her composure together. She’d handle this like a lady, and not like a complete moron. “I…I know about the rules.” Connor had told her—right after she’d realized she was in love with him.

Gabe gave a sharp nod. “Good. Then you know the rules are simple. Only the man who meets the woman first gets to fall in love with her. She is off limits to the other guy. He is simply there for the ride, for the pleasure. Nothing else.”

Maddie stared at him, confounded. Did he know? Had he guessed how she felt? “Yes. C…Connor told me that bit also.”

“Did he tell you the rules had been broken?”

Oh, Lord. He must know. Why else would he be here? Her head grappled for logic, for reason. Had she broken the rules? Technically, she wasn’t sure. She had fallen for Connor, not the other way around. Weren’t the rules there for the men—and not for the women they slept with?

Did it matter?

Her heart began to pound. “Gabe, please, I didn’t know—”

“It was me. I broke the rules.”

“What?”
She was lost, had no idea what Gabe was talking about.

“Four years ago. Connor introduced me to his lady friend. Tina.” He grimaced. “I broke the rules, Maddie. I fell in love with her. I fell hard, harder than I’d ever fallen for anyone.”

Maddie stared at him, stunned. Of all the things she’d expected Gabe to say, this was not one of them. Her instincts about threesomes, on the other hand, had been spot on. There
was
no way two men could share a woman and not struggle for possession.

“I tried to pretend nothing had changed. God help me, I tried. Even carried on sleeping with her while she slept with Connor. But you know what?” His eyes were dark with memory.

She shook her head, agog.

“I couldn’t do it. Every time Connor touched her I wanted to kill him.” His hand curled into a fist at his side. “I stopped seeing her, stopped joining them. It was either that, or beat the crap out of Connor while he fucked the woman I loved.”

“Gabe,” she breathed. “I had no idea.” But she did have an inkling of his pain. Simply hearing about Connor with another woman had a crushing effect on her ribs.

“Connor figured it out. A couple of days later he stopped seeing her too. Never said a word about it, mind you, just quietly called things off. We never discussed it, never argued about it, we just moved on—without Tina.”

The pain on his face was raw, as if all of this had taken place yesterday. “You still love her, don’t you?” she asked.

“Never stopped,” he answered in a strained voice. “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her.”

Aw, heck. Would a day go by when she did not think about Connor? About what could have been? “Gabe—”

He cut her off before she could tell him how sorry she was. “He loves you.”

“Pardon?” Someone must just have smacked her over the head with a concrete slab. Either that or she was having auditory hallucinations.

“Connor. He loves you. Don’t know when it happened or how, but there you have it.”

“Why…” She swallowed, finding it suddenly impossible to talk. Her heart took up too much space in her mouth. “Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?” Had he honestly just said Connor loved her? Did Connor love her? Did he?

“I lost the woman I love. Doesn’t mean Connor has to endure the same fate.” He sighed. “His flight leaves in just over two hours, Maddie. If you feel the same way he does about you, you’d better get to him, quickly. Coogee is a much shorter drive from your place than Melbourne is.”

Maddie collapsed into the chair behind her, overwhelmed. For now she had to put her thoughts about Connor aside and focus on Gabe. “You know how I feel about him?” She’d tried her best to avoid him finding out, to avoid hurting him. Obviously her best had not been good enough.