Page 20 of The Handy Men
"Dare."
"Seriously?" Paige rolled her eyes. "Fine. I dare you to answer my question."
"I think that's cheating."
It probably was, but the only other dare she could come up with was "I dare you to French me," which was a little too high school for her taste. "I dare you to tell me about Stephanie. It's all in the wording of the question. Like Jeopardy…” Paige trailed off when she saw his expression. "Look, forget about it. It's stupid. I shouldn't have been listening to gossip."
"No, that's all right." Dean rubbed his hand over his face. "I just wasn't expecting that. What do you want to know?"
"Do you or Jack have a child with her?"
Dean went slack jawed. "Uh no. Why do you ask?"
Paige sighed. "You know Caillie Berns, the potter, right?"
"Oh her." Dean's lips tightened.
"She said that you guys were swingers and got her pregnant."
Jack barked out a laugh from the doorway. "Stephanie wasn't pregnant, and we're not swingers. I got the stain out and hung your blouse over a chair to dry."
"I'm so embarrassed." Paige put her hands over her cheeks. "I should never have believed Caillie."
"Stephanie was our girlfriend," Dean said.
"You both went out with her?" Paige asked.
"At the same time." Jack sat down next to her.
"Did you know about each other?"
It was Dean's turn to laugh. "Yeah, we were a threesome."
"Oh.” There went her blush again.
"But she was worried about what her parents would think. At the time, I lived down the road from her parents on Dune Road. We met while I was jogging. I was dating Jack at the time, but he lived on the mainland. We hit it off, so I introduced her to Jack."
"We hit it off also." Jack grinned.
"So we all dated for a bit. All three of us."
"At the same time," Jack added again.
"I get it," she said, rolling her eyes.
"One thing led to another, and eventually we spent every night either at my house or Jack's. She decided that my place was too close to her parents, so we were going to move into Jack's house, and I put mine up for rent."
"But she got cold feet," Jack said. "She was worried what people would say about her living with two men.”
"Then her family started issuing invitations. They wanted to meet her boyfriend. She didn't want to tell them we both were. Then her best friend, Allie, got married."
Jack groaned.
"She asked Jack to stay home so she could introduce me around as her man."
"The tattoos again." Jack nudged her.
Paige nudged him back. "I love them."
