Eric put a hand over his phone. “Belle, baby, did you get the latest numbers from the EPA on the Hanover case?”

She’d put them on his desk last week. Unfortunately, his desk was in Chicago. “This is my kitchen. There are no latest numbers on the Hanover case here.”

Kellan reached over her toaster and pulled some paperwork off what appeared to be a damn fax machine. “Here you go. I had Sequoia fax them. What a surprise. He sent a note protesting the use of fax machines and said to pass that on to you, too. Apparently we shouldn’t use hard copies because it’s bad for the environment.” He turned back to her with a sigh. “Give me one good reason I can’t fire him.”

Belle half heard Kell. What had these crazy men done? Instead of using their heads and realizing they couldn’t possibly run a practice from her house, they’d bought every piece of office equipment known to man and set it up in her kitchen. She was fairly certain she glimpsed a copy machine in the butler’s pantry. “Given his connections, you know you can’t. Don’t forget, you have a very nice office in Chicago. Then Sequoia wouldn’t have to fax you anything. Much comfier chairs there as well. This doesn’t make a good office.”

Eric covered his phone and murmured, “But you’re here.”

Belle didn’t want to, but she melted a bit.

“See that you do, you piece of crap,” Tate yelled into his phone, then paused. “Sure. Yeah, tell your mom hi for me.” Another pause. “I doubt Wednesday will work. It looks like I’ll be here for a while and the Internet sucks, but I’ll see what I can do. Good luck on the raid.” He frowned as he hung up the phone. “Sorry, that was Phil from Greene and Associates. He’s such an ass, but he’s in my guild. We’re supposed to raid Jondor on Wednesday.”

Most lawyers made deals on the golf course. Not the new geek. Instead, they made contacts in role-playing games online.

“There’s something deeply wrong with you.” Belle shook her head, trying not to smile.

Eric grinned, and before she could stop herself, her heart skipped a beat. “Hey, you should be glad you weren’t around for his LARPing days. You think online games are weird, try a hundred geeks dressed in medieval wear, throwing little bags at each other and calling them spells.”

Tate flushed. “I was trying to sleep with a girl. At least LARPing was more fun than those foreign films Belle made me see.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t make you do anything. You showed up at that festival and said you were a huge fan of Siberian cinema.”

Tate groaned. “Babe, not even Siberians watch that shit. Seriously. It made me want to open a vein and bleed out.” The sexiest smile heated his face, taking him from boyish to such a man. Then his voice dropped to an intimate growl. “But I was trying to sleep with a girl then, too.”

Just like that her pussy clenched. Oh, they couldn’t stay—or she’d do something she would regret. “You’re going back to Chicago today, right?”

“Of course not.” Eric frowned. “We need to put the HVAC unit on the list of items to have serviced. It seems to be malfunctioning. You look awfully cold.” His glance lingered on her, and Belle had no idea what he was hinting at. “I’ve also felt icy spots in the house.”

Belle wasn’t worried about being chilly now, not when she was getting hot just being near them. “It’s on my list. I’ll take care of it.”

She wasn’t about to fess up that her room had gotten so cold the night before that she’d seen her breath. Surely, that had been a freak occurrence.

Fighting a smile, Kellan’s stare caressed her chest before taking a slow path back to her face. “I believe Eric is referring to your nipples, Belle. They’re very hard right now. If you’re not cold, then you must have been having some juicy dreams.”

She gasped and folded her arms over her chest. “The state of my nipples are none of your concern.”

“I could warm them up for you,” Tate offered. “Hands or mouth? Your choice.”

She ignored him. “What am I supposed to do with all this stuff when you leave? You are flying back to your jobs and responsibilities soon, right?”

“Nope,” Eric replied. “Like we said, you’re here, so we’re opening a practice in New Orleans. Unless you’re ready to go home with us.”

She held out a hand. “You were serious? No! You can’t do that. This is my home now. Yours is in Chicago. And have your forgotten than you’re not licensed to practice law in this state?”

“We’re not trying cases here.” Eric shrugged. “We’re telecommuting until our office manager is ready to return to the office with us. When you won’t come to the office, the office will come to you. We had a meeting last night after you went to bed and worked it all out. That’s part of our new protocols.”

Surely they didn’t need her assistance around the firm that badly. “Guys, I resigned.”

“We didn’t accept your resignation,” Tate replied cheerfully. He held up a stack of papers. “In fact, I had Sequoia fax me your employment contract. It’s for two years, so you should probably pull up a chair and get busy.”

“What?” She thought back, vaguely remembering something about guaranteed work. “That language was in there for my protection, not yours. You couldn’t fire me for any reason other than gross incompetence for two years without penalties. I made you put that in because your last three office managers lasted a total of two weeks. You always found something you didn’t like about them. If I recall, you fired one because he brought you the wrong soda.”

Eric shook his head. “No, baby, we really fired that guy because of his outrageous body odor. Tate’s got a very sensitive nose, and I’m pretty sure that guy thought he was allergic to deodorant.”

“You smell like happiness,” Tate supplied.

She almost laughed at his sappy grin, then she remembered they were trying to screw her over. “You can’t use that contract against me.”

“We totally can,” Tate shot back.

He acted like a five-year-old sometimes—but he was a man with a spectacularly square jaw and amazing pectorals she could see all too well through his tight T-shirt. She turned to Kellan, who would surely be the reasonable one. “Explain to him that it won’t hold up in court. That contract states you three can’t fire me, not that I can’t quit.”

Kellan poured a cup of coffee and handed it to her. “As his lawyer in this matter, I really can’t comment.”

It took all her self-control not to scream. They were closing ranks to show her a united front.

“You can’t hold me with that contract.” She grabbed the document and shook it in her fist.

“We’ll use whatever we have to in order to hold you,” Eric replied solemnly. “Belle, where you go, we go. If you decide to stay in New Orleans, we’ll just take the Louisiana bar.”

“I’m excellent at taking tests,” Tate said. “I’ll look forward to it. I might even enter into criminal law down here since the cases are so interesting. I’ve been watching this madam murder case all morning.”

Of all the conversations she’d imagined having with them now, this possibility had never crossed her mind. They had rejected her, so why had they come here and insisted on staying? God knew it shouldn’t be that hard to hire another competent assistant. But Eric and Tate didn’t act as if their interest was purely professional. Kell…she wasn’t sure where he was coming from and she was too afraid to ask.

Belle set the coffee mug down and walked through the house, then let herself outside, determined to get some fresh air and figure out what the hell was going on.

The courtyard was blissfully quiet with the single exception of Sir yipping as he chased an insect and the gently trickling fountain. One of the men had let him out and turned on the peaceful water feature. Their thoughtfulness did strange things to her heart. They were so concentrated when they worked. They got involved in a case and rarely did anything penetrate their cone of concentration, but one of them had stopped to let her dog out and make her world a little more tranquil.

What was she doing out here? There were three amazingly hot men inside her kitchen with varying degrees of interest in her, and she stood alone, mooning. Had they overreacted to that night in the suite? Had she? God, she wasn’t sure what to think, what to do. All Belle knew for sure was that she could still feel their hands on her, their mouths seizing her own, claiming her down to her soul. After they’d arrived last night, she hadn’t dreamed of dead girls hanging from the rafters, but of sharing a bed with them. Obviously, she’d felt safe with them in the house, so her mind had wandered—right back into their arms.

In her dreams, they’d surrounded her. Their arms had been the sweetest cocoon. Not only had they protected her, but they’d held her, pleasured her, loved her. She’d opened herself to all of them in turn, consuming the sustenance she needed from each: Tate’s goodness. Eric’s strength. Kellan’s dominance. She’d surrendered, giving over her problems in favor of their affection.

The trouble was, in her dream, they had worked in tandem to complete her, body and soul. No one had thrown a damn punch.

“Hey.” A dark voice skated over her skin, and Belle turned.

Kellan stood in the doorway. Instantly, she knew from the tight set of his lips that he had something on his mind. He wasn’t going to just leave her in peace.

Belle steeled herself because it looked like the fight had just found her.


* * * *


Kellan looked at Annabelle and tried like hell to keep the longing off his face. In the early morning, her skin glowed a warm, golden brown that had always fascinated him. Her hesitant expression and wounded chocolate eyes made him wish so badly that he was a better man. Why couldn’t he have met her before his marriage and the resulting disaster of his divorce? If he’d known her when he’d been a dumbass kid who thought the world was fair and wanted to make sure it stayed that way, he would have claimed Belle and never let her go. The cynic standing before her today wanted more than anything to believe in love and faithfulness, until death-do-us-part. But now, he couldn’t just forget the lessons from his trip down the aisle with Lila. How would his life have changed if Belle had been the woman on his arm that day so long ago?