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  "How does the son of a contractor land at the SSFD as an EMT? Wait, let me guess. Someone in the family needed medical knowledge for when Cody drops the hammer on his toe."

  Cory chuckled. "Something like that." He tipped his chin at the coffee. "Do you want your own cup?"

  "Please. No sugar and a little less cream." She slid the omelet onto a plate and divided it in three, then added strips of sausage to the side.

  "Picky woman," Cory grumbled but his lips twitched as he got out another cup and poured in the cream. "The EMT training comes in handy when one of them decides to take a dive off a roof or something."

  "You mean like the last time your father slipped on a shingle tack and played Superman off the two-story house? I'll take some of that."

  Rayne gasped, both in surprise that Ford had snuck his way into the kitchen as well as the conversation, and in horror that Cory's father had had such a horrid accident. "Oh, my God, was he hurt?" Stupid question, of course he'd been injured. A quick calculation and a bit of common sense deduced that Cory's father had to be in his mid-fifties or older. And the man had fallen off the roof of a two story house, for crying out loud!

  "Knocked the wind out of him," Cory answered and snagged another cup from a nearby cabinet for Ford, "and got one hell of a ride."

  "But that's terrible!" Yet, Cory was so blasé about it all. Knocked the wind out of the man? Surely a fall like that had done more damage.

  "It could have been." Cory looked at her, smiling. "Would you believe where he fell just happened to be above a trampoline?"

  Rayne blinked. "You can't be serious! He landed on a trampoline?"

  "Luckiest son of a bitch on the planet," Ford chimed in. "Shit like that only happens in fucking cartoons."

  "And to my dad," Cory agreed with a laugh. "You want cream?" he asked Ford.

  Ford snarled. "Not that kind." His gaze flicked to Rayne's and the suggestive swirl in his whisky eyes had her insides doing the Macarena even as her brain went all wonky.

  Cory shot her a quick glance, too, and then poured Ford's coffee straight and black. "Shouldn't have slept so late, Romeo."

  "I prefer my breakfast in bed, anyway." Ford took the cup, blowing into it to cool a sip as he continued to gaze at her over the rim.

  Rayne checked the burners of the stove. Everything was off. "Then I guess you don't want any of this." She picked up one of the plates and passed it down the countertop to Cory.

  "Think again, sweetheart. I'm starved." Ford moved past Cory into the kitchen.

  The men were both large. No way could they pass in the narrow space without touching. The fact that Ford put his hands on Cory as he squeezed by him was no surprise. The way he touched the other man, however, nearly had Rayne gaping. Ford put one hand on Cory's bare shoulder, the other on the other man's waist and slid, his front to Cory's back, behind him. His fingers actually danced along the small of Cory's bare back before falling away.

  It seemed such an odd contact between two men. Still, it appeared to be an absent gesture. She saw that from both their expressions. Neither of them thought twice about the touch. And yet, there was something shockingly intimate behind the exchange that her mind boarded the Tilt-A-Whirl.

  "This kind of breakfast, I'll take anywhere." Ford took the second plate from her frozen hands. She didn't even remember picking it up. "Although I'll take the other kind just about anywhere, too. Good morning, sweetheart." He dipped his head and brushed a kiss to her lips that left her tingling to her toes.

  It was enough to snap her out of her daze, but not so much to stop her mind from the spinning ride it had leapt on. He would take the other kind just about anywhere, too, the other kind, meaning sex. Would he take it from just about anyone, too? Anyone such as, oh, say, his best friend, Cory?

  Rayne let her attention skim down Ford's front as he opened a drawer near his hip and pulled out three forks. He passed one to Cory behind him, put another on her as yet untouched plate by the stove, and dug into his own plate with the third. His hair was charmingly mussed. He'd obviously finger combed it as he'd crawled out of bed. He wore a dark pullover shirt tucked into navy slacks. Disappointment reared its ugly head at the clothes. She would've liked to see him naked again this morning.

  "Wow! This is delicious, babe." He shoveled a bit of the omelet into his mouth and spoke around it. "But really, you didn't have to cook for us."

  "I did it as much for myself as the two of you." She gave her head a slight brain settling shake and picked up her plate and fork. The omelet was good, she thought as she treated herself to a bite and gave herself a mental kudos of a job well done. "I wanted breakfast and I've been told that the one who cooks around here gets out of wash."

  Ford groaned and backed against the sink opposite where Cory now leaned against the counter eating. "You had to tell her, didn't you?"

  "It was only fair." Cory shrugged.

  Ford laughed and stuck out a foot, playfully kicking Cory's shin. "And how many minutes did you spend trying to convince her to let you help so that I'd be left doing the cleaning alone?"

  Rayne bit back a snicker and reached for her coffee, only a dab of cream and completely sugar free. Perfect.

  Cory's green eyes twinkled. "About five. She refused to relent, though."

  "More’s the pity for you, bro," Ford quipped.

  Rayne watched the exchange between the two men with more curiosity building by the second. She thought back to last night, ran through every move, every word, every touch she could remember, and found herself getting horny rather than answering any of the stacking questions in her head.

  "Are you two lovers?" Okay, she hadn't exactly meant to voice that question aloud, but now that she had, well, what was it Cory had said last night about putting all their cards on the table? Let's play poker, boys.

  Either they both possessed master poker faces or her blurted question didn't bother them in the least. They didn't choke on their breakfast or glare at one another in sheer revulsion or holler ‘yuck’ at the top of their repulsed lungs and run out of the kitchen. Of course, neither of them moved to the other one’s side to put his arms around the other man and give him an affectionate kiss, either.

  No, both of them froze for about a half a second, glanced at her, looked at each other, and then Ford went back to eating while Cory answered her.

  "No." His response couldn't have been simpler or more confidently said. It was a denial of the most casual, conversational sort. As if she'd asked them if they used Dial soap or Red Zone deodorant.

  "Why do you ask?" Ford polished off his omelet and sausage and all but licked his plate clean before turning to place it in the dishwasher to the right of the sink.

  Rayne looked down at the plate in her hand. Somehow, she'd managed to eat over half her own food without noticing. She picked up the last half of her sausage and bit off a chunk, turning at the waist to dump the remaining bits of her omelet in the trashcan behind her before passing her plate to Ford. She didn't answer but instead asked another question of her own. "Would the two of you tell me if you were?"

  "Absolutely." Cory didn't hesitate even a tenth of a second. Their gazes met, locked, and she knew that he knew what she was thinking before the thought even materialized enough to make it to the forefront of her mind.

  They'd had sex without a condom. Yeah, his being involved with another man would put her at higher risk for STDs. But she trusted Cory implicitly. Forget that as far as time was concerned, she'd just met the man. Forget that in the grand scheme of things, she truly didn't know him that well. Hell, when she thought of it in that context, she didn't know either of them that well. But she trusted them, both of them, as much as she could trust anyone.

  Her instincts weren't always on the money when it came to men. Or maybe they were more often than not. She simply didn't listen to them as she should. Whatever the case, her instincts and female intuition and every damned thing else inside her told her beyond a shadow of a doubt that she could and shou
ld trust these men.

  Gaze still fastened to Cory's, she nodded. Trying to sound and appear as casual and nonchalant as the men, she leaned over and picked up her cup. "Ever thought about it, come close, touched?" She already knew they touched. She'd just witnessed that first hand. But that idle contact wasn't exactly what she meant and she figured they knew it.

  Ford and Cory exchanged a glance. It, too, was a completely comfortable look. Neither man seemed bothered in the least by her probing questions. How many non-gay men would react unfazed by all but being accused of being gay? Most men, especially those who practically spurted testosterone from every pore like these guys would have dived head first into denial by now. Head meaning both the one on their shoulders and the one in their pants.

  Ford shrugged. "It's almost impossible to share a woman and not touch in some way. Yeah, we've touched."

  Rayne studied him, waiting for him to answer the first two parts of her question. He didn't and she didn't push. Instead, she brought her cup to her lips and wondered what the woman would have to do to explore the possibilities with these men. Surprisingly, the idea of Ford and Cory in more intimate contact with each other as well as her was one hell of a turn-on.

  * * * *

  Kyle Shannon could've been the poster boy for ordinary. Ordinary brown hair cut in an ordinary style topped a head with ordinary blue eyes, ordinary features, and a body of muscular but still somehow ordinary physique. Rayne flipped through the images on the computer screen she'd snapped of the firefighter that afternoon outside the location of a nearly demolished popular restaurant in town and became convinced it was his ordinariness that made him so freaking handsome. Yeah, no doubt about them apples, the guy would sell an unordinary amount of calendars all on his own.

  Even better, she decided as her finger struck the right side arrow key, was the fact that Kyle's birthday is in February. She'd discovered the captain's is in January. It was the perfect idea to start the calendar with the leader of the B shift crew. She pulled up a mental picture of the finished product in her mind as she punched the key again. Start the year with a smoking hot image of Captain Dean Wolcott, flip on to sweetheart February with Kyle Shannon's handsome of the ordinary, and then, "Oh, yeah." She breathed as she stroked the key once more. This time, one of the pictures she'd taken of Cory the day before filled the monitor's screen. On to the extraordinary.

  "While that's very much the breathy response a guy likes to hear in his bedroom, coming from his sister's lips doesn't quite have the full turn-me-on effect."

  Rayne glanced from the screen to the door where Max stood in the open doorway. He leaned back against the frame, arms crossed at his chest, and feet crossed at the ankles. The pose reminded her of Ford and her stomach exploded in a fury of fluttering butterflies.

  "Oh," she said, startled. "I didn't hear you." Then his words sunk in and she wrinkled her face. "Eew, Max, that's just gross!"

  Max doubled over laughing. "I kind of thought so, too, sis. No offense," he managed between fits of hysteria. He even uncrossed his arms and bent at the waist to put his hands on his thighs as he attempted to catch his breath.

  She was glad she could amuse him. Not! "None taken. This isn't your bedroom, anyway," she pointed out, returning her attention to the computer monitor. Knowing she could get sucked in, deliciously, to staring at Cory's picture for hours, she focused on setting the image for printing. A few feet away, the printer whirred to life with a low hum and a barely audible positioning of the cartridge. "For now and apparently as long as I need it, this is my room. Remember?"

  She’d taken it over completely. An hour squeezed between meetings and photo shoots had landed her enough time to do some rearranging. Boxes still lined the walls on two sides, but the bed was clear and she’d piled everything so that Max’s desk and all his high-end computer equipment was at easy access and disposal.

  "I do." Max straightened and moved farther into the room. He wore a pair of cut-off jogging pants and a dulled SSFD T-shirt with the sleeves cut off at the seams and a V sliced out of the neckline. White crew socks and grungy tennis shoes were on his feet. Clearly, he'd just returned from a run. He opened his mouth, but whatever he intended to say got lost in a series of high pitched yips as Sunshine barreled into the room. The dog pounced onto Rayne's lap, narrowly missing clocking her head on the keyboard tray.

  "Hey there, sweetheart." Rayne caught the dog's face in her hands and kissed the tip of her wet nose, getting a wet nose of her own as prize when Sunshine returned the kiss with a swipe of her tongue. "Did you go for a run with Uncle Max."

  "Uncle Max," he muttered under his breath. "We figured you were the one who forgot you had a room here given you didn't use it last night."

  "I didn't need it last night." One hand idly scratching Sunshine behind the ear, she put her other hand on the computer mouse, and flipped to the next image. She wasn't worried. He knew where she'd gone last night. Though he hadn't been home when she'd gone across the hall, she'd talked to him on the phone, told him of her evening plans. Okay, those plans hadn't included spending the night and certainly not in bed with, somebody save me, both Cory and Ford. Still, she hadn't exactly vanished for close to twelve hours, for crying out loud.

  "We noticed." His voice ran with a light amusement. "You could've called. Maybe we were worried."

  Guilt swamped her for about a half a second. Had she mistaken the amusement in his tone for concern? He was teasing her, giving her a hard time because he did know exactly where she'd been and it was every big brother's job to give his little sister hell. Maybe she should find a hammer and chase him around the apartment. An image of Cory running balls-out away from his brother wielding a hammer made her smile. Because the idea did hold some appeal for her too, she put it on the back burner in her mind to percolate.

  She tipped her head back and gave Max a look complete with pouty lips and batting eyes. "Did I break curfew, Daddy?"

  His lips twitched. "Shattered it to bits, daughter. What ya working on?" He stepped closer, moving behind her to peer over her shoulder at the monitor screen.

  "Some of the pics for the calendar. Here, check this out." She back clicked to the first photo of Cory taken at the damaged hospital site. "I think I like this one best." It was the one with the ladder for a prop, the rope slung over his broad shoulder, half his body already poised to climb. "Or maybe this one." She pulled up another picture, this one with both the demolished remains and the city park beyond in the background. "I'm thinking the second might be better. It shows both the mess and the attraction of our once beautiful city. What do you think?"

  "I'd go with that one. It's Cory you're seeing, right? Not Ford. He's the reason you spent last night across the hall." Max snagged a chair that once belonged to a now nonexistent dining table, pulled it next to her, and took a seat.

  Rayne contemplated her answer and then decided if she couldn't talk to her brother about her men, who could she tell? "Yeah, well, oh! You won't believe this. Remember that ticket I got last week? Ford is the officer that gave it to me."

  "No shit!" Max snickered. "But you didn't know him then, did you?"

  "I didn't even know Cory then. Remember, I met Cory that night. As it turns out, I met both men the same day. I just didn't know they were roommates, or, hell, even knew one another until last night."

  "Small world. Which one of them are you seeing?"

  "I saw them both last night."

  "Yeah, I got that, wiseass." Max playfully swiped the back of her head.

  "Umm," Rayne chewed her bottom lip. Just spill it, girl. "I think I'm, well, as it turns out I'm, umm, actually seeing both of them." She didn't look away from the computer screen, couldn't bring herself to. What would she see on Max's face? Surprise? Horror? Derision?

  "You think you're seeing both of them?" he repeated with absolutely no inflection in his voice. "We are using the word seeing as a euphemism for dating here, right? Sleeping with, having sex with, involved with?"

  "Th
e first three, yes." Not the fourth. At least not in the way he meant. She was not involved with either of them. That was the whole point of having them both, to keep any involvement of that sort out of the picture.

  Max remained silent for so long, she couldn't stand it. She had to look at him. But she couldn't. Her heart pounded like a jungle drum in her chest. Her hand gripping the computer mouse actually shook. Only when Sunshine shifted in her lap and jerked her head into Rayne's palm, giving it a soft but warning nip, did she realize she'd even been petting her dog too hard.

  For Pete's sake. What was wrong with her? She had no reason to be embarrassed or ashamed by what she'd done, by what she intended to do again. Why should she care what anyone thought of her? She didn't care. She'd never cared what anyone thought or said about her in the past. Except for Max, with Max, she did care.

  She looked at him. He was staring at her, his expression blanker than any she'd ever seen on his chiseled face. She swallowed. "You aren't saying anything."

  "That's because I'm trying to wrap my mind around what you're telling me, Rayne. You slept with both of them, had sex with both of them. You're dating both of them. At the same time?"

  She nodded.

  Max sighed and raked a hand down his face. "Okay. Wow! But okay. That's a new one. Want to tell me how this came about?"

  She told him about running into Ford at the mall, about having the picnic lunch with Cory in the park, about showing up at Cory's apartment last night to find both men inside. "Might I remind you it's your fault Cory advanced on me in the first place," she pointed out when she was finished.

  "Yeah, I thought he would be good for you. He's a nice guy, a good firefighter and an even better EMT. Ford is a great guy, too. I haven't known him as long as Cory, but what I do know of him is respectable. He's a bit more of a player than Cory, but what guy isn't a player now and then."

  "From the way you're talking, bro, it sounds as though you approve of both guys." It was almost ludicrous how badly she wanted Max's approval.