Worse, though, was a niggling fear in the back of his mind. His heart. What if she preferred Dylan over him?

Opening up to Laura would be a whole other mess. “Hi, Laura. My partner, Dylan, found you on that dating website and figured you might be open to a long-term threesome. And, by the way, we’re billionaires. So…can we keep dating?” The deception was already over the top, strung out too long. A week, though, really – how could a week create such joy and do so much damage? How could their lives change so abruptly, so deeply, in such a short period of time?

There was no choice here. Whatever Laura decided was final. He couldn’t read her – just knew she liked him. A lot. Had she liked Dylan this much, too? If not, why? What had driven her away from him and into Mike’s arms?

The only way out was through. Through his heart, and hers. And Dylan’s. He would have to come clean to him, and soon, before this spiraled out of control.

It wasn’t fear that made him keep his mouth shut. It was exhilaration. Excitement. The secret of mine. Mine. Laura was his, for now. Only his. While he knew that wouldn’t sustain him in the long run, just as Dylan’s dating her, alone, wouldn’t do it for him, either, there was a heady confidence that came from scooping Dylan. He could never have imagined, never dreamed that Laura would spurn Dylan and turn to Mike, but here they were. This was how it had turned out, and now the only concern he had was that Laura would hate him once she knew that they knew each other.

Wait, Mike, he told himself. Savor this. After eighteen months of loneliness and pain, it was good to wake up in the morning with a smile on his face.

Even better, though, would be to wake up to two other smiles in his bed. God, the thought made him hard. Rock hard.

And so he found himself counting – 879, 880, 881, 882 – counting, counting, counting. And then he looked down and saw the tent on the top sheet. Ah, shit. There’s only one way to deal with this. A run.

He left the bedroom and nearly slammed into Dylan, who was coming out of the shower. “Hey, hey man, how was that date last night?”

Mike felt his expression shift to complete shock and he tried to cover up his feelings.”Oh, oh yeah, uh, yeah it was good.”

“Great,” Dylan clapped him on the back, staring down at Mike’s erection. “Yeah, thinking about her?”

“Thinking about a lot of things,” Mike answered, still stammering on the inside. Fuck – what if Dylan guessed what was going on before Mike could confess it? This was just too much. He spent most of his life trying to craft as simple a life as possible, and now he’d created a huge romantic clusterfuck. Way to go!

Dylan said, “Yeah, I have been too. But, well, anyhow…” He shook his head as if willing away something that was bothering him.

Mike knew he should ask, Mike knew that he should inquire, that this was Dylan’s way of reaching out, of being emotionally open, and yet he couldn’t. He just couldn’t muster the energy to deal with anyone else’s emotional struggles right now. Hell, he couldn’t even deal with his own. “Yeah, well, I’m gonna go for a run. I’ll see ya.”

“Alright, bye.”

They were just so articulate when it came to expressing their feelings. He could hear Jill’s words echoing in his head: “You two are about as good at talking about your feelings as I am at shaving my own balls.”

If he could get his feet pounding on the pavement, pounding on the trail, running in the dirt, the trees flying by, the buses groaning – whatever, wherever, whenever. Air in, air out, muscles up, muscles down. If he could reach that place within where everything disappeared and nothing was all – Mike knew he could figure out how on earth he was gonna tell Dylan that he had just stolen his girlfriend.

Dylan threw on a pair of shorts and some t-shirt from – he looked at the front – middle school? Yeah, middle school. He still had it. In fact, he never let go of any of his t-shirts; he probably had hundreds of them in various states floating around his apartment, everything from the Monsters of Rock t-shirt that he got when he was a kid from his older brother, down to the latest cheesy Daily Show shirt.

He opened up his laptop and he tried one more time. Clicking on Laura’s profile, he typed in the chat window, “Hey, Laura, are you there?” She had completely shut him out. He knew it had been a day, one day, that was it. Just a single day since she left his bed. But she didn’t answer his texts, didn’t answer his phone calls, didn’t respond to his chat window – nothing – and she had slunk out of his house in the middle of the night.

Now he was certainly used to one night stands and having women sneak out – or being the one who sneaks out on a woman – but he had felt such a connection with her that this mystified him. And now, the great silence. What was that about? Why was she doing this?

He knew how to find her address. He knew where she worked. He even knew the floor; she had told him. But he didn’t want to be a stalker. He didn’t want to be that guy.

And he wasn’t that guy. It wasn’t his style; he never did that kind of thing to a woman. This one, though? Oh, he could actually feel himself drooling, imaging her body, conjuring her touch, the way she shifted her hips, the way that she leaned against him, the way that her hair hung in his face, the way that her lips seemed to –

Oh, man.

He and Mike were a matching pair of tented shorts now.

What in the hell was up with Mike? He was acting awfully squirrelly. Not that that was anything new, but Dylan was going to all this trouble to find them another person. Not that anybody could replace Jill, but he wanted that closeness, he wanted that sense of family that only three could give him and Mike. And now, now he felt unmoored. Lost.

So he typed again. “Well, Laura, if you’re there, please, I’m trying to reach you. Give me a call, text me, something. I just wanted to talk. I really enjoyed the other night and let’s touch base”. And with that, he shut down, he logged out, set aside his computer and went to join Mike on that run.

As he started to put on his running shoes he remembered, Oh shit, I forgot to email my mom. His mom’s seventieth birthday party was coming up and he needed to give his dad some answer about some detail. His computer was already off. Oh, wait a minute, maybe I could just use Mike’s, he thought.

So he went into Mike’s room and yes, the laptop was open. This would be easy. He clicked on the browser and up popped the same online dating website where he met Laura. That’s funny, he thought, maybe that’s how Mike found his date last night. You would think he would have told me.

Blink, blink. Dylan wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but a dull, creeping dread began to fill his veins. As he stared at the computer screen and read the chat windows, the account information, the all-too-familiar picture, and scanned over every detail on the screen, it slowly dawned on him that Mike was logged into his account and having a lovely conversation about his most recent date.

With Laura.

To be continued in Her Two Billionaires – the story of how Laura, Dylan and Mike become one.

A sample:

Bang bang bang. Fireworks exploded above her, the dazzling pastels blooming before her eyes in a furious cascade of sparks. As the hot coals showered down like burning rain, Laura jumped when one touched

her.

Bang bang bang! they exploded, the little pieces hitting her face, her legs, suddenly soft and caressing her like –

“Laura!” Bang bang bang. “If I hadn’t lost your key I would come in!”

Josie. Wha? Laura opened her eyes and fumbled for her phone. 7:22 a.m. She sat upright in horror.

“Hang on!” she shouted, stumbling to the door, unchaining and unlocking it. Josie stood there, petite and jaunty, peering around Laura.

“So is he still here?” she asked breathlessly. “Is that why you didn’t answer?”

“Is who still here?” Laura yawned and stood on tiptoe, her muscles desperate for oxygen, blood rushing into her extremities and nearly giving her a calf cramp as she slowly went down to flat feet, rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck.

“Whatever hot, eligible bachelor contacted you last night, because you are on a roll, Baby! One a day, right?” She punched Laura lightly in the shoulder and stormed past her, banging and shuffling things as Laura stared at the back of her front door.

For the briefest of seconds she ran a frantic mental check – had she gone out last night? – and then cursed herself. This was getting out of hand. No, last night she had stayed home and finished up some quarterly reports, watched a few episodes of Mad Men, and gone to bed early. Apparently, she’d needed the sleep. And, apparently, she had forgotten to set her alarm. Now she would be late for work, though she knew her boss wouldn’t mind. Last night she had clocked an extra three hours; flex time and a salaried position made it easier to go in a bit late this morning.

Josie didn’t have that luxury. As a geriatric nurse, she needed to be on shift on time, every time. At least she only worked three shifts a week, though. Soon her rotation would take her to midnight shifts, which Josie hated. So did Laura; it was hard to get together when her best friend kept a schedule better suited for vampires.

“I took a break from my busy fuckbuddy schedule,” Laura yawned, stretching again. Her belly felt cold as her shirt hiked up, and when she looked down her braless breasts hung lower, and off to the sides, like small,

smooth animals with the metabolism of a sloth. Josie had a chest like a boy’s, if a boy had tight little breasts you could fit in a headphone cover. Mostly, they envied each others’ figures, though Laura could never understand why Josie would want these boobs. At this rate, she’d need a wheelbarrow by the age of fifty. Or to marry a

good plastic surgeon.

A quick thought of Mike, then a more surprising flash of Dylan, hit her. She couldn’t get over Dylan – didn’t want to, really. Mike had called her last night. Asked her out again. This time to his cabin up on the mountain. Maybe they could make love without a million uninvited, biting guests. That would be a step up, Laura thought, as she absent-mindedly scratched her ass over her flannel pajamas. She needed some Arnica for the bites and kept forgetting to buy some.

“Quit scratching yourself and come have some coffee!” Josie called.

How did she knew she was scratching? The woman was part psychic. Or heard the scrit scrit scrit of fabric as she scratched. Or watched her reflection in the hallway mirror. Ah – that was it. She looked and

saw Josie’s cheesy, overstretched grin as she held up a mug and took a sip.

“Ahhhhh. Coffee tastes so much better at your house, Laura.”

“That’s because it’s free.”

Josie sputtered and laughed. “OK, you got me there.”

Laura poured a cup of coffee and sat at her little kitchen table, taking deep breaths. “What am I going to do, Josie? Mike asked me out on a date tonight.”

“What did you say?”

“Yes, of course. I really like him.” She took a sip. “More than I want to.”

“What does that mean?”