Chapter 43

Kendall

I woke up before the lot of them the next morning, thought not to sneak out undetected. Instead, I walked into the massive kitchen, looking at it with fresh eyes. Gas hobs but a fan forced electric oven, shining bench tops, and at least one decent knife in the knife block. Yeah, I could work with that. I started pulling ingredients out of the fridge, remembering what Sunday breakfasts were always like.

Dad, before the doctor put him on cholesterol tablets, used to love a big, cooked breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning. And while we couldn’t spend a long time grazing on bacon and sausages, there were enough ingredients to make something nice. I hadn’t done this for a long time, but… Setting the heat on, preheating the frypans, finding cooking utensils, it all came back to me as easily as breathing, so when they woke up, they did so to a feast.

And so did I.

The three of them came filing in, bare chested and tousle haired and my mouth went dry. Not from the toast I’d been munching on but from the very pretty sight of a bunch of men who worked physically hard for a living putting their very big, very muscular bodies on display.

“Everything OK out here?” Connor asked, surveying the kitchen.

“Damn, bacon? I freaking love bacon!” Van went to grab some off the plate, but I slapped his hand with my spatula. “Fuck, baby!” He pulled his wounded hand back against his chest. “If you wanna spank me, save it for the bedroom.”

“If you want bacon I cooked, you need to sit down,” I shot back.

I was treated to a sharp salute, Van sitting at one of the four place settings still on the dining room table. I’d disposed of the now-stale bread and put the shepherd’s pie in the fridge, but the remains of the dinner still haunted me.

“So what’s all this?” Connor asked with the gentlest smile, but I saw the concern in his eyes. It was easy to detect now, but I had to wonder how many times before he’d shot me the same look.

“Today is yes day,” I replied, turning back to the hot plate and sliding the spatula under the fried eggs before depositing them on a plate. “You want eggs over easy? Yes. You want them scrambled. Yes.” I shot him a sidelong look. “I guess I discovered that a lot of good things can come my way if I start saying yes to things, so yes it is today.”

“Yes to everything?”

Gage loomed behind me, hands going to my hips, his body following mine as I worked.

“Well, please don’t make me say yes to anal with that monster.” I pushed back with my arse and then gave a little wiggle when I felt the anaconda in his pants. “Because I think that will have me ending up in hospital.”

“Fuck yeah!” Van shouted. “In your face. I told you that having a big dick has its drawbacks.”

“That’s exactly what a guy with a small dick would say,” Gage shot back, pulling away.

“My dick is not small,” Van spluttered. “It’s just not freakishly thick like yours is.”

“It’s perfect.” Gage was about to say something else to rile Van up, but I appeared at Van’s shoulder with the frypan. “Now, eggs?”

“Damn straight,” he replied. “Hit me with them. It’s been ages since I’ve eaten your cooking, then maybe afterwards—”

“You could take me to work?” It might be yes day, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t manipulate the situation. Van pretended to frown, but his lips twitched up into a smile pretty quickly.

“Yeah, I can. Now, can I have some crispy bacon?”

Connor and Gage weren’t satisfied with just sitting there, helping me by making toast and then plating up food so that minutes later we all ended up around the table, ready to have breakfast. Right as I grabbed my knife and fork, I looked around at each one of them. Van had already dug into his food with gusto, but Gage was slicing up his sausages much more sedately as Connor watched me.

“I just wanted to say something.” Would they always stop everything that they were doing so they could focus on me like this? It was kind of exciting to know I’d find out. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to dinner last night.”

“It’s fine.” Connor was waving it away without a thought, focussed now entirely on the toast pile.

“It’s not. If I’d known… If I’d thought…” I sucked in a breath and then let it out slowly. “I’d have been here. I thought the other day was just… blowing off steam. I didn’t expect…” My eyes went to my plate, so I didn’t see Connor slide his hand across the table and take mine. I never expected to find comfort in holding his hand, but as I turned to look at him, I saw what we could be rather than what we were. “I didn’t expect you guys to go all out for me, so I figured I’d do something nice in return.”

“You didn’t have to,” Connor told me.

“But I won’t complain if you do.” Van shoved some more bacon into his mouth. “Damn, that’s good…”

“You’re gonna choke.” Gage watched him with the same kind of weird fascination that people used when they saw a boa constrictor dislocate its jaw to fit more food in.

“That’s what she said.”

It took us several seconds to realise what Van said because he’d sprayed bacon over the table as he mumbled the words.

“Oh my god.” I groaned along with the others. “I take it back. This is no day. Absolutely freaking no day.”

“You don’t mean it.” Van had swallowed his bacon, but the grease still stained his chin as he advanced on me.

“No. No.” I got up and held a hand out, but he kept on coming. “Connor!”

He reached out, pulling me behind him, only to step up to Van.

“Oh, so it’s like that now?” Van said, trying to reach past Connor to get to me.

“Yeah, it is.” Gage picked Van up bodily, carrying him squirming over to his chair and then sitting the other man down, resting his elbow on Van’s head when he threatened to get up. “Eat your damn breakfast. Kendall can’t be late for the first day of her apprenticeship.”

“Well, I haven’t signed anything yet—” I started to say.

“We’ll get the lawyers to look over the contract,” Connor said, grabbing his phone and starting to tap out a note to himself.

“But not yet.” Gage set Connor’s phone on the table and then looked across at me. “We woke up to a gift.” His eyes softened the longer he gazed at me. “Let’s just appreciate that right now.”

I flushed bright red, forced to look away as I waited for the teasing to start.

“Damn straight,” Van added, winking when I glanced his way. “And I get to drive Kendall to work.”

“I’m coming with,” Gage said.

“No, you’re not.”

I smiled and shook my head at the bickering before starting in on my own breakfast.

“Kendall!”Chris greeted me with far more enthusiasm than usual as I walked in the door, before my boss looked across at Van. “Nice to see ya, young fella. Now, love, have you had a think about the apprenticeship idea?”

“Yes.” I said the word with some satisfaction. “I’m keen if you are.”

“Good, good! I put an ad in the local classifieds to find someone else to make coffee…” A jingle of the bells tied to the back of the door had all our heads jerking up. “That’s probably one of them now. Did you want to come and meet them? You’d have the best idea as to who’d be a good replacement…”

If Chris was wondering why Van had accompanied me into the shop, his silent question was quickly answered. My… boyfriend-that still felt weird to think about-tugged me close and kissed me so very thoroughly that Chris had to clear his throat uncomfortably to make Van stop. So with a head that was still spinning, I met the first candidate.

“She seemed to know her shit,” Chris said once Olivia, the girl who’d come for an interview, had left. He sipped the coffee she’d made and nodded. “Coffee tastes good. What do you think? Is she up for the job?”

“Yes,” I replied with a smile.

“Well, all right. I’ll give her a call back and let her know the good news, but in the meantime, how about we make some sausage rolls? The recipe I’m about to show you was handed down through my family for generations, but none of my kids were interested in the bakery business. Too many early-morning starts for them…”

I listened to his chatter as we walked into the kitchen but didn’t really hear it. All that gleaming stainless steel, the smell of flour and sugar and savoury herbs, it felt like coming home. I ran my fingers across the clean work bench as he hauled a massive bowl of sausage mince over.

“So, where do we start?”

It was a tricky day. Chris and I usually occupied our own spaces. He ran himself ragged in the kitchen, and I manned the register. Instead we had less work and more. He went out and served customers some of the time, gruffly telling them he didn’t make fancy coffees when they tried to order something with drizzles of syrup, leaving me to make more sausage rolls than I had in my life. When they were in the oven, baking until golden brown, I moved out the front and tried to soothe the ruffled feathers of our regulars. Time just flew by, right up until Barbie bounced into the shop.

“Hey—”

“I hear it’s yes day!” She leaned on the front counter with a grin. “That means you are coming shopping with me.”

“How the hell did you find out about that?”

Her informants walked in the door then, looking like something from a hot tradie guy calendar or something. Some dirt on their knuckles and some sawdust in Van’s hair and I was sold one hundred percent.

“Ahh, so it really is yes day.” Barbie’s smile widened. “Yes to all that dick.” She jerked away, miming some kind of porn scenario that had me never wanting to look at her search history and I told her just that. “Hey, I’ve been doing research for you.” She poked me in the shoulder. “That’s what besties do. We work out all the weird and wonderful ways you can have a gang bang each night.”

“Shut, and I say this with all love, the fuck up,” I told her.

“You need to keep things fresh.” She shifted gear, now sounding like a therapist or something equally insane. “It’s hard enough when it’s one dude. Like I never thought I’d get into Star Wars role play—”

“Oh my god, really?”

I stared at her openly. Alan was a lot of things, but nerdy wasn’t one of them.

“Nah!” She gave me a shove. “But sometimes he does get dressed up in—”

“Barbie.”

One word from Connor and her bullshit stopped, and that was reason enough to couple up, throuple, or whatever the fuck this was with the guys.

“Right, right, so the guys got in touch, and as it’s late-night shopping tonight, we’re going shopping!” She threw her arms up with a squeal. “You never let me spend Alan’s money on you, so now you can spend theirs.”

“Um, no—” I started to say.

“Yes.” Gage settled against the counter behind me before pushing a black credit card my way. “Who else would we spend it on?”

“I don’t need clothes.” I brushed a hand self-consciously over my flour-stained apron but then whipped it off. “I keep telling you, Barbie, I’m happy with the way I dress.”

“Like a hobo.” She nodded. “I get it, but that’s why we’re not going dress shopping.”

“Our home is yours now,” Connor told me. “But we need to get you some of your own stuff to personalise it.”

“Oh.” I blinked, trying to imagine adding knickknacks or picture frames to the glossy interior of the house. “So we’re going to IKEA?”

“God no!” Barbie punched me in the arm. “This relationship is too new for that. You have to work up to the ordeal that is an IKEA trip together. No, we’re going to…”

“A homewares place?”I said as I stumbled out of the van. We’d driven across town to… here. Glossy pans or pastel-painted ones filled the kitchen windows in artful displays. “You brought me to get cookware?”

“I told them that this kind of gift usually gets a guy junk punched, but you’re weird about cookware,” Barbie said. “All ceramic coated this or stainless steel that. I know way, way, way more about Teflon coating than I ever wanted to, so…” She grinned up at me, shoving her elbow out for me to take. “Are you ready to go shopping?”

Yes day was turning out pretty damn good, so I said the only thing I could.

“Fuck yeah.”