Cash’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he frowns, pulling it out to glance at the screen. “Oh, this is the ferrier calling back about the appointment for this month. I’ll be back.” He gets up and steps out into the other room to take the call.
As soon as he’s gone, both of the other men snap their heads to look at me.
I try to focus on my coffee and my toast, knowing if I look at them, I’m done for. But they don’t even wait for me to make eye contact. Everett launches into an interrogation as soon as the coast is clear.
“What happened?” he asks.
“What do you mean?” Maybe if I stall, Cash will come back and they’ll drop it. It’s nice to dream.
“You know what I mean. Something’s going on with you and Cash.”
My face burns so hot I can feel it radiating heat from the force of my fluster. “It’s nothing, really. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lincoln snorts, leaning back in his chair. “Yes, you do. If you were confused, you’d be able to make eye contact with us. What happened, Harper? We know it was something.”
I don’t want to outright lie to their faces. That feels… wrong, after everything they’ve done to help me. It’s just that Cash and I didn’t discuss anything after we did what we did. I wish we’d come up with something to tell his fellow Alphas before now. Before I was alone with them, scrambling for an answer.
I drag in a deep breath and glance across the table at them. “Something did happen,” I admit. “We just, um, got closer last night, that’s all. I had a bad date last night?—”
“Bad how?” Everett demands before I can finish my sentence.
“With who?” Lincoln adds.
“It’s not a big deal. Bad like it was boring and he was self-absorbed. Nothing happened, really.”
They visibly stand down at that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not going to be the last I hear about it, knowing them.
“Anyway,” I rush to continue. “I came home and saw Cash, and… he comforted me. Stuff happened.”
Keeping it vague isn’t helping obviously because both of their gazes darken. There’s hunger there, unmistakable, and something like jealousy underneath it.
I swallow hard, caught off guard by that.
The way they’re looking at me makes my pulse race. It’s like they want to devour me, and I have no idea what to do with that.
Luckily, Cash chooses that moment to come walking back into the kitchen, sliding his phone back in his pocket. “She’ll be out in a couple weeks,” he says as he steps in. “We agreed they can go a little longer this month and—” He stops. Looks around the room at the way Everett and Lincoln are looking at me and probably the deer in headlights look on my face. “What did I miss?”
“I don’t know,” Lincoln says. “Maybe we should be asking you that.”
“What?”
Everett raises an eyebrow and just stares at Cash, and I wonder if that’s the look he uses to intimidate people in his job. It would probably work on me. Cash manages to last an impressive minute or so before he cracks.
“I guess you heard, huh?” he asks, glancing at me.
“We sure did. Should we be congratulating you or asking what happened and where?”
“Harper said you ‘comforted her’,” Lincoln says. “Interesting use of the word comfort there. Seems like it’s doing alotof heavy lifting.”
Cash snorts at their teasing, and none of it seems angry or too intense, but at the same time, the tension in the air cranks up another several notches. There’s something crackling between the three of them now, there in the way they’re holding themselves and the way they keep looking at each other.
It’s territorial instincts through and through, like they’re circling each other to try to declare some kind of dominance. And they keep looking at me with a heated intensity that makes me squirm in my chair.
Before they can say anything else, we hear the sound of little footsteps clattering down the stairs, and I breathe a sigh of relief as Cora comes walking into the kitchen.
The three of them immediately drop their scrutiny and turn smiles to Cora.
“Morning, little star,” Cash says, beaming at her.