Shawn hoped so. She did trust Rhett, though she still had a niggling concern in the back of her mind that she was going to regret this marriage, their relationship, the sex. That when all was said and done, she was going to get hurt. But she couldn’t stop it. There was no way she could live in the same house with him, pretending to be his wife in public, and not want as much as she could have. His green eyes were so intense, so serious, so committed, that she knew she couldn’t spend night after night with him down the hall in the guest room while she yearned for another immersion into the pleasure he had shown her.

It wasn’t logical. Nor was it smart. But it was what she wanted.

“I know,” she told him, and it was true. She had asked him to enter into a marriage of convenience with her days after they had met. She could have found herself in a disastrous situation with a guy who would manipulate and use her need for secrecy to his advantage. She could have wound up with a slob or a mooch who expected her to be his housekeeper. She could have found herself having to ditch the whole insane idea, losing the track, and facing public humiliation.

So yes, she trusted Rhett.

It seemed stupidly obvious now to her.

Her fear of regrets didn’t stem from concern that he would in some way make things difficult for her, it was that he wouldn’t. Her fear was that she would fall for him, and that in the end, it would hurt to let him go. That if she allowed him to be a part of her life, it would be lonely when he left.

But it was too late to worry about any of that. She was in and, much like him, once in, she was all in.

Nolan and Eve reappeared for the box spring. “Seriously?” Eve complained. “You two are doing nothing but making moony eyes at each other. I’m starting to get pissed.”

“My wife is very romantic,” Nolan told them.

“Sorry,” Shawn muttered. “We were just making some plans.”

“That don’t include the two of you,” Rhett said. “So we would like to thank you very much for helping out, but I know you’re both busy, so you can head home now.”

Well, that was a little obvious. Shawn followed Rhett down the hallway, wondering if he was going to give that same speech to his sister and her husband. Though truth be told, there wasn’t really anything left in the apartment, aside from a lonely vacuum, which Jeannie was using on the worn carpet, and a random floor lamp.

“I should be offended, but I’m just grateful,” Eve said. “I want to get a run in before I collapse for the night.” But then she added, “Shawn, can I talk to you for a second before I leave?”

“Sure.” Shawn looked at her expectantly, no idea what Eve would want to say, but suspecting it wasn’t anything particularly positive.

“Alone,” Eve said bluntly.

Wonderful. “Sure,” she said, less enthusiastic. She turned and went down the hallway, figuring they could use the now-empty bedroom.

Once inside, she rounded on Eve, arms crossed, unable to prevent her defensiveness.

“Whoa, tiger, pull back your claws. I come in peace.” Eve held up her hands. “I just want to ask you if, you know, everything is okay. If you’re happy.” Then without waiting for a response, she winced. “God, that sounded so asinine. Sorry. I just want you to know that if you regret your impulsive decision to marry Rhett, we can get you out of it. This isn’t like the tattoos we had done when we were trying to best each other with our obnoxiousness. We don’t need laser removal, a physician, and a few grand to get you out of this. A hundred bucks on the Internet and we can have you divorced.”

Shawn almost laughed. Almost. Because she was still annoyed about the tattoo ten years after the fact, she didn’t. “It’s your fault we have such bad ink, you know. I’m never going to admit otherwise.”

“It’s your fault, too!” Eve protested. “You started it by egging me on about coming in last at the fair when I entered a shooting contest and slipped on a discarded onion ring and shot the light out.”

“Yeah, then you told me that the only way I was going to get a guy between my thighs was if I tattooed one there. And that Stoney White, who you know I had a massive crush on, had called me lanky and had mimicked a pelican walking. That was bullshit.”

“I did you a favor. Stoney White was a loser. His name was Stoney, for Chrissake. Plus I didn’t make you take that car bomb. Or the second. You were bound and determined to prove to Stoney that you could do a shot of whiskey in thirty seconds.”

Huh. Perhaps she hadn’t matured as much as she thought in the last decade. It seemed her seduction techniques had not improved. “Well, I could. It wasn’t just bragging. I still can, you know.”

“And I still have a tattoo on my inner thigh that says ‘Open 24 hours.’ ”

Shawn grinned. “That was a beautiful night, wasn’t it? We were such idiots, but damn, we always had fun.” She wondered why Rhett hadn’t said anything about her tattoo. He had certainly been down between her thighs, so he had to have seen it. Most men burst out laughing the first time they got a glimpse of it.

Eve laughed. “Maybe a little too much fun.”

“Nah. Truth is, we let too much fun slip away from us. We grew up and both became workaholics.”

“I’ve been working on a better balance myself. Nolan helps. How about you? Seriously, not to sound like your mother—or rather like anyone’s mother but yours—how is it going? You still haven’t answered that question.”

“It’s intense,” she admitted, much preferring to be as honest as she could without having to lie to her best friend. “It’s hot, it’s sexy, it’s new, it’s an adjustment. But it’s good. For real. No worrying about me.” She would worry about herself a shit ton, so no need for someone else to get in on the action and stress themselves out.

Eve studied her for a minute. “Okay. Cool. I won’t get in your business anymore. You know you can talk to me about anything, and it won’t matter that Rhett is Nolan’s brother. I’m a steel trap.”

“Unless we’re going head-to-head. Then you’ll spill every secret I have if it will throw me off my game.”

“That is not true,” Eve protested. Then she grinned. “Much. But you know I’ll only tell embarrassing secrets, not painful ones.”

“Thanks for the distinction. But I can’t exactly bitch you out, because I’m the same way. It’s ultimately why we get along.”

“Alright, let’s go get laid.” Eve fist-bumped her. “To the power of the V. And whiskey. And shitty tattoos.”

“To finishing first. And friendship. To the Brothers Ford.”

“Amen, sister.”

That was as warm and fuzzy as she and Eve were ever going to get. They were essentially guys with vaginas. But they had both come to terms with who they were years ago.

“I think this was our middle school fantasy, you know, to marry brothers,” Eve said with a laugh as she headed back down the hall.

Unfortunately, it was still a fantasy.

Shawn fought the urge to sigh.

“So I have to ask . . . is he kinky?” Eve said, looking both super curious and super horrified. “Does he have . . . contraptions?”

“I am not talking to you about that other than to say there are no contraptions.” Good Lord. She didn’t even want to consider what Eve was envisioning.

“So he’s kinky.” Her eyes sparkled and she gave a choking laugh. “Shawn, if only Stoney White had known you have a penchant for kink, he could have been all yours. In all his idiotic meathead glory.”

“Shut up, Eve,” was her opinion on that.

Eve just laughed harder.

* * *

“I can keep my clothes and stuff in the guest room,” Rhett said as he surveyed the space, or lack thereof, in Shawn’s bedroom. She wasn’t a housekeeper to his mother’s standards, that was for sure, and she had odd things propped in the corners of her bedroom, like a large stuffed gorilla and a hunting rifle, which didn’t contain bullets. He’d checked when she was in the bathroom.

“No, it’s okay. I can clear some space in the closet for you,” she said. Which she promptly did by shoving her clothes to the right until hangers were jammed out at awkward angles and her sweaters looked like they were choking one another. Then she ripped a black-and-white dress off the hanger and balled it up and tossed it on the floor of the closet. “I hate that dress. It makes my ass look big.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” he said wryly as he pulled clothes out of his box and hung them up in the three point five inches of space she’d given him. He was no neat freak himself, so he couldn’t say the chaos of her closet and bedroom bothered him. He just wasn’t sure he was ever going to find a clean shirt again.

“So I have a question for you.” It was something he hadn’t wanted to ask in the intimacy of bed, because he had a feeling it was going to embarrass her or make her laugh.

“Yeah? What?”

“Why do you have the face of a little boy with curly hair tattooed on your inner thigh?” He had to admit, it had given him a start the other night, but he had managed to ignore it. Now it was generating a lot of curiosity. He couldn’t figure out what crazy story was behind it, and he knew there had to be one.

Shawn made a face. “It’s not a little boy! It’s Justin Timberlake, back in the day when his hair looked like a chia pet.”

“Really? Okay, so why would you tattoo a portrait of him diving into your vagina? Any particular reason?”

“It was a bet, and no, I’m not going to tell you the full story. Let’s just say that Eve didn’t fare any better than I did.”

Rhett raised his eyebrows. He didn’t even want to consider what was between his sister-in-law’s thighs.