Rafe reached out and took her hand. He looked down at it. Her hand was small in his, her skin fair against his olive tone. Her nails weren’t as long as she used to keep them, but they were still manicured and painted a pretty pink. “Come on and dance with me. We came all this way. We’ve looked for so long. Can’t you spare a moment of your time? Your fiancé is otherwise occupied, and I promise to behave.” He wouldn’t behave. He had no intention of not reminding her of everything they’d had, but he wasn’t going to announce it.

Her eyes strayed to where Wolf Meyer seemed to be having an argument with a small woman with steel-gray hair. She was giving the big man hell, and Rafe was glad to see it.

“Fine.” She pushed off of the picnic table she’d been leaning against. “One dance and that’s all.”

“With both of us,” Cam added quickly, pushing the advantage.

“It’s only fair. Otherwise, we’ll both dance with you here and now.”

There it was. Rafe’s heart soared. Her eyes had flared momentarily, and it wasn’t with disgust. When they had checked into the odd motel at the edge of town, they had decided it would be best to come at her together. She’d been turned on by sex with both of them. They needed to remind her of what they had to offer. “I’ll spare the world that sight. One dance, with both of you, and then you’ll go?”

She was going to be difficult to the end. Rafe decided to press his second advantage. It wasn’t really an advantage, but Rafe knew she wouldn’t be able to say no to them. “You know we can’t do that. We need to talk. It’s important, bella. De Sade is working again. He’s been quiet for years, but he’s back. I would do anything to spare you…”

She held up a hand, her face taking on a blank professional stare.

“How many?”

“One that we’ve found so far.” Rafe wasn’t so certain that the victim they had found was the only one. One thing was certain, De Sade was back in DC and on the hunt.

Her expression remained blank, but Rafe could see the way her pulse jumped in the vein in her neck. Her heart was pounding. Rafe had to stop himself from hauling her into his arms and promising her that it would be all right. “I didn’t see his face, Rafe. I went over all of this in the hospital with Joseph. De Sade wore a mask the whole time.

I would have given you a description if I’d just seen his face.” Cam’s hands fisted at his side. Rafe was pretty sure he was resisting the urge to touch her, too. “We don’t want to go over what happened to you again, baby. We want to go over your profile.” She shivered slightly. “I don’t have it anymore. I left everything behind.”

Rafe knew that well. He’d spent days going through everything in her apartment, trying to figure out if she’d left anything behind that would point to where she’d gone. He and Cam had sifted through her belongings, and finally, after a year of making sure her rent was paid and her place kept the same, they had been the ones to box her things up. Rafe was still paying for the storage shed where he kept her belongings and her furniture. He kept her very personal items in his own house, her pictures and keepsakes. He hadn’t been able to put them in the shed.

“We can talk about this later. In the morning, perhaps. This party isn’t the place to discuss it.”

Cam relaxed, his face opening up a bit. He hopped onto the picnic table. “What is this party anyway? Do ya’ll do this kind of thing often?”

Laura looked over the crowded fairgrounds with a fond smile.

“It’s a rite of summer around here. It’s called the Big Game Dinner.

When the rangers have to put down an animal, we process it and freeze the meat. Some of the locals hunt, too. It’s considered wrong around here if you just hunt for sport. We eat what we kill, whether it’s a bear or an elk or a deer or a squirrel.”

“Squirrel?” Rafe asked. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to try squirrel.

“Now, don’t you go talking bad about squirrel. My momma used to cook up some squirrel and rabbit, too.” Cam’s southern accent was suddenly thick.

Laura slid Cam a look as a laugh escaped her lips. “I bet you paired beer with squirrel.”

“Only Milwaukee’s finest goes with squirrel, baby.” Rafe felt a deep gratitude to his partner. Cam had gotten her laughing. “Come on, let’s dance while Cam walks around trying odd meats.”

He took her hand and started to lead her toward the dance floor.

“It’s all right, bella,” he said in what he hoped was his most soothing voice.

She was skittish about this. Laura walked beside him, but he could feel her reluctance. It wasn’t surprising after everything she had gone through. He pulled her into his arms just as someone changed the song. Before it had been a two-stepping country song, but now the music slid to something slow and sexy.

“Busybodies,” she said under her breath as she allowed him to put his arms around her. Her hands wound almost reluctantly around his neck.

He let it go. There was a lot he didn’t understand about this little town and Laura’s place in it. “Cam and I have been talking. We mishandled everything on the day you turned in your profile. We’re sorry.”

Her face was stony even as she swayed to the music. “I don’t know how to take that. Should I forgive and forget when it cost me my career?”

It had cost her much more. That little truth lay between them like a brick wall keeping them apart.

“No one wanted to believe that it could be one of us,” he said, wishing he had never opened the subject.

“I didn’t want to believe it, either.” He pulled her closer, loving the feel of her body against his. “I don’t want to fight. Can we have one night where I’m just happy to see you?”

She moved stiffly in his arms. “Tell me why you’re happy to see me and maybe we can talk.”

Rafe felt his eyebrows creep up his face. “What do you mean?” She stared at someplace past his shoulder. “I mean I want to know why you’ve been looking for me.”

Was she high? Had the altitude affected her brain? “Because that’s what people in love do, bella. They look for their loved ones when they disappear. Cam gave up his job to look full-time. We’ve done nothing but think about you and search for you.”

“You weren’t even in bed with me the morning after we had sex.” Relief flooded his system. That he could address. “We woke up early. We weren’t exactly sure how to handle it. It’s odd waking up in bed with a naked man.”

“It didn’t seem odd to me.”

At least there was a hint of a smile on her face. “Well, the way I was raised, it is definitely odd. My culture isn’t big on sharing.”

“I don’t think any culture is.”

“This town doesn’t seem to mind.”

“Ah, met Max and Rye, huh?” Her movements became more graceful as the music seemed to take over.

“And the sheriff, if I’m not mistaken. Tell me something, I can almost understand the twins. I’ve heard twins have deep connections.

But what about the sheriff? He seemed so normal to me.”

“That’s because you don’t know him. No one’s normal, Rafe.

Haven’t you figured that out yet? Here in Bliss, we don’t even try to be. We fit together because no one tries to fit in.” He doubted that seriously. Even in odd communities, there was a certain amount of fitting in. He couldn’t believe that Bliss was so different. But discussing Bliss with her seemed like a bad idea. He concentrated on his previous line of questioning. “So the sheriff is bisexual?”

Laura stopped in the middle of the dance floor and laughed.

Rafe felt himself flush. “No, then? Well, how am I supposed to know?”

She put her arms back around him. “I guess you aren’t. No, Nathan Wright isn’t bi. He’s totally hetero, just a little kinky. He and his partner, Zane, have been best friends since they were kids. When they fell in love with the same woman, they decided to share her. The sheriff says it’s the best of both worlds. He gets to hang with his best friend all the time, and he gets his girl. It works nicely for them, and here, no one blinks an eye.”

It sounded nice. Rafe just wasn’t sure if it would work.

“So that morning after we had sex…”

“Made love,” he corrected her. He wasn’t about to allow her to cheapen it.

Her blonde hair shook. “Whatever. That morning, the two of you couldn’t figure out how to share, so you left?” It had been so much more complex than that. “We went to breakfast to talk. It seemed like something we should do.” He and Cam had ordered breakfast, but neither had eaten it. They had stared at each other over the tabletop.

“And it never occurred to you that I should be in on that conversation?”

It hadn’t. It still didn’t. “It was between me and Cam.” He and Cam had sat in a little diner a block from her place and really talked. It had been an odd and stilted conversation that ended in a fight. Neither one had been willing to give her up, and neither one had really been willing to share. The entire idea had been foreign. It was fine for one hot night, but they had both wanted a lifetime with her. They had argued over how to proceed. Neither could stand the idea of the other winning. All of that had changed when she was taken. When she had been taken by the Marquis de Sade, Rafe and Cam had been inseparable. They had almost clung to each other.

Over time, they had begun to see less and less of each other as though their guilt had become a wall neither wanted to climb. He wondered what would become of the sheriff and his partner if something happened to their wife. Or to the brothers. He strangely doubted they would fall apart the way he and Cam had.

He’d missed Cam. He’d missed Cam as much as he’d missed Laura. The idea kicked him squarely in the balls. He didn’t have sexual feelings for Cam, but he did have feelings. Serious feelings.