Chapter 18: Chapter 18

Per usual, it seemed, the Hargreaves showed up on her doorstep that evening, sans their eldest and arguably sexiest brother. He was, no doubt, off somewhere licking his wounds.

As Sabrina had found to be true many times over the years, men of their caliber often had fragile egos that demanded constant worship. She’d bruised his today and she doubted she’d be hearing from him again for a long time. Well, at least not until he realized he wasn’t returning to the States on the company dime.

If only she could bar him from returning at all, but she didn’t wield the proper authority for that.

“What are you doing here?” Sabrina was in no mood for confrontation. Hence the reason she held the door in an iron grip with her other hand propped on her jutted-out hip. She didn’t want to give Oliver or William any illusions that she was happy to see them.

Although, she wasn’t being too successful when it came to herself. Inside, she was a bubbling mess of emotion, both wanting to slam the door shut in their faces and pull them inside for an impromptu make out session that would lead to some heavy petting and possibly hardcore penetration.

If they had it their way, that’s probably exactly what would happen, but Sabrina was a woman of strong will, and she wasn’t about to give in to her desires just because they happened to look delicious in their jeans and T-shirts that perfectly matched their stormy eye color.

Stormy because they weren’t any happier than she was at the moment.

“What’s this about you sending Conner off to the UK?” William brushed her aside like a flea and entered her apartment without invitation, as if he owned the place. With their financial struggles, though, they definitely didn’t.

“Yes, please, come in.” Sabrina was laying on the sarcasm, making no bones about how she felt. If he was going to lay it out, then so was she. She raised her eyebrows in expectation at Oliver, who at least had the decency to wait for her to let him in.

See? That’s why a part of her still liked him. He was courteous. He didn’t stomp all over her rights like his brothers.

But she had to remember that he was still a Hargreaves and couldn’t be trusted.

She locked the door and stood in place, waiting for the inevitable fight to start so she could put them in their place. William wanted to barge into her home and assert himself? Then he was going to have to go toe-to-toe with a master.

“We have business there, and he was the man for the job.”

William scolded her with just a look. “Come on, ‘Brina, we both know you could have sent anyone else. Hell, you could have shot off an email! The whole thing is so simple, even a monkey could do it. It’s a waste of corporate dollars.”

“I don’t see it that way.” He was right, of course. Anyone with half a brain and comatose could seal the deal. All it really needed was a quick read through the fine lines of the agreement and a signature. Shawna had handled them many times for her. “I prefer to make a personal impression. To show our partners that we’re in it to win it. We’re family.”

It was obvious by his stance—arms folded over his chest, legs wide, scowl firmly rooted in place—that he didn’t believe a word she said. “That could be accomplished with a phone call. This is just a waste of money. Money better spent elsewhere. If this is how you do business, then you’ll run it into the ground in no time.”

“You would know all about that,” she sneered.

William’s arms dropped to his sides, fists balled. His lips pressed together so tight the skin around them blanched, and he had the devil in his eye, giving her a tremor of awareness that she might…possibly…most definitely have touched on a sensitive subject.

“Low blow,” he ground out. “Every business sees its share of struggle. It doesn’t make them weak or ignorant. It makes them typical.”

“And here I thought you were all so exceptional as to be gods. Lord knows your father sure has sold himself that way for years.”

“He has a big ego. So what,” William argued. “It takes ego and cajones to make it in this field. Hell, in this world.”

“And I’m sure next you’ll tell me that I don’t have what it takes. That I’m just a little fish swimming in an ocean surrounded by big fish in danger of getting devoured.” She’d heard it all before. No one took the woman at the head of the table seriously. She’d proved them all wrong, and she would continue doing so until the day she passed the company down to her daughter. Which she probably needed to get on with having before her eggs all dried up. It was the one thing she needed a man for, however, and right now, she didn’t really like her options.

“You carry around so much attitude,” William accused. “Don’t you think if that’s how we felt we would have made it clear by now?”

“Isn’t that what you’re here to do?” She looked from him to Oliver and back again, waiting for something chauvinist to leave his mouth so she could feel warranted in upping her level of anger and kick them out with a good riddance and a “Don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya” farewell.

William stopped his rebuttal and just stared at her, studying her for a moment too long, before his features softened. Sabrina didn’t know what he’d seen or what conclusion he’d reached, but it was disconcerting because for some strange reason, she felt disarmed. As if, with just a look, he had that kind of power over her.

“What ever made you think something like that? We like you, ‘Brina. We care about you.” He approached slowly.

Sabrina’s gaze flickered to Oliver, who so far had chosen to take to the sidelines and let his brother do all the talking.

“It’s always difficult getting to know someone, to merge personalities and lives, and I can imagine it’s even harder for you—three times as hard, in fact—when you have all three of us nipping at your heels, but I can assure you, our interest is in you, not the company. Has been since the first day we walked into that boardroom and you put us all in our place with class and grace and a ferocity that has yet to be matched in any woman we’ve ever known.”

He was standing directly in front of her now, and he dared to reach out and touch her, smoothing her hair back from her face with light fingertips. “You’re the most incredible woman we’ve ever known. That’s why we’re so attracted to you, why we want you so badly that none of us could bow out gracefully but had to agree to share you so we didn’t end up killing each other.”

Sabrina couldn’t look away, so drawn in by the earnestness in his eyes that she felt completely encapsulated in warmth and love. She’d never felt that way with anyone before, and down deep inside, she was aware that she could get lost in that feeling if she allowed it.

William sighed, as if to impart a huge secret. “I realize now that you think we’ve stormed into your life and are trying to somehow take it over, to push you to our agenda, but the only agenda we have right now is figuring out how to keep you, to convince you that you want us, all of us, for the long haul. All we want to do is love you, Sabrina.”

She blinked several times, the fog in her mind thick and dense. She wasn’t even sure she had heard him right, let alone confident in her decision-making skills. Had she read them all wrong? Had she convicted them without due process, without giving them the chance to explain? Yes, she had done those things, and she’d been righteous in her belief that she was making the right choice, but now…she wasn’t so sure.

Stepping back, she placed much needed distance between them in an attempt to unmuddy her thoughts. “I thought…I talked to my dad and he said…” She frowned, revisiting their conversation. Had she somehow gotten it all wrong? Emotions had been running high. It was possible she’d jumped to the worst possible conclusions and saw warning flags where none existed.

“What did your dad say?” Oliver’s voice was soft, calm, unlike Sabrina’s tumultuous emotions. She wanted to run into his arms and let him hold her until she didn’t feel any of those things anymore.

Scrubbing two fingers between her brows to relieve the tension that had settled there, she said, “Someone knows about us. That we were…together.”

“What? How?” William sounded angry again, disbelieving. Then, he grew insistent. “Sabrina, we never said anything. We wouldn’t do that. That’s a decision for all of us to make…together.”

“We know how unconventional all of this is,” Oliver added, sounding more assertive than she’d ever heard him. “And we know how this would impact you if it got out. We wouldn’t do that to you.”

“Ever.”

The ferocity of their claims was the second step in her undoing, dialing down Sabrina’s indignation and sowing more seeds of self-doubt. She felt as if she were losing her mind, unable to remember a time when she’d ever miscalculated anything as poorly as she had this.

“I…I don’t know what to say.” Or feel. Sabrina was filled with confusion. She hadn’t wanted to believe they would betray her, but once she had reached that conclusion, it was hard to let it go. What if they were lying? What if this was a deflection from the truth? She would be a fool to believe them, if that were the case. But if she didn’t believe them, she could be throwing away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at the ultimate form of happiness.

In that moment, all Sabrina could think was, “WWJD?” Translation: What would Janet do? They’d often served as each other’s compass, especially when life got tough. It was always easier for an outside party to see what wasn’t obvious to the person closest to the problem. In this case, Sabrina needed to know if she should throw out her suppositions that had, so far, zero proof to back them up, or if she should hold strong and kick their asses to the curb.

“Say that you believe us,” Oliver said, eyes pleading.

Sabrina’s heart clenched, and if it possessed arms, she imagined it would have reached out to embrace him. But when was a heart ever smart? She had to use her head in this matter, even if it went against her every instinct to take their word at face value.

“‘Brina—”

Sabrina’s hand shot up, palm out, to stop William. She couldn’t think with the two of them standing in front of her, influencing her position. She needed distance, a moment of quiet just to think.

“I need to make a call. Excuse me.”

She didn’t hang around to wait for or listen to their questions or comments. Sabrina brushed past William and swiped her cell phone off the kitchen counter, then she beat a path to the bathroom where there was a lock on the door and an exhaust fan to dampen her conversation.

Sitting on the closed toilet lid, she dialed the number she knew by heart. “Please be home. Please be home. Please be—”

“Hey, ‘Brina—”

“Jan! Thank God.” The sound of her friend’s voice was a balm to her frazzled nerves. “I need advice.”

“Twice in one week? Man, I must be good.”

“At this rate, you may need to start charging for your services.”

“I’m thinking twenty an hour to start.”

Sabrina wanted to laugh, but she was too high-strung for such levity. “I have a problem.”

She went on to explain the whole situation—what her father told her, the plane trip, the guys showing up and their explanation. By the time she’d laid it all bare, her jumbled feelings included, she felt like a weight had been lifted, even though nothing had been sorted out yet.

“Wow, well…what a mess, for starters.” Jan, ever the helpful one, stated plainly. “I can certainly see why you’re discombobulated. And even though I’ve been admiring your life’s direction up to this point, I do not envy the position you’re in now.”

“Any advice?” Sabrina was hopeful, even though Janet’s dialogue wasn’t offering much to go on.

“This is a real head-scratcher…I guess I’d say…what does your heart tell you?”

“That’s the problem,” Sabrina lamented. “It wants to believe them, but logically, I know they could easily be feeding me lies just to keep up the ruse long enough to finish enacting their plan. I can’t afford to be stupid about this. There’s too much on the line.”

“I don’t see how you can get around it. You have to make a choice, and when it comes to matters of the heart, like it or not, sometimes you have to take a calculated risk.”

“This might be more risk than I’m willing to take.”

“Let me ask you this. Are you struggling with it because you truly are torn on what to believe, or are you running from your feelings?”

That was a good question, and one that caught Sabrina off-guard. What were her true, underlying motivations? She certainly hadn’t been expecting them to show up in her life, nor had she expected to be so thoroughly attracted to them, or hopeful for more to come out of their arrangement. It was plainly obvious to her, the more she considered the depth of her feelings, that she was growing attached to all three of them, and if she continued seeing them, if she chose to move past this day, she was in danger of falling in love.

That was premature thinking, she knew, but she also knew herself. Sabrina never had sex with anyone casually. It wasn’t in her nature. What she did, she did deliberately, with purpose. Her initial purpose had been to satisfy her cravings for them, for their bodies, but now she wanted them to have more of that connection she felt whenever they looked at her in that way they did, as if she were the only woman in the room, the only woman they had eyes for. They made her feel special, as if they saw something in her that no one else did.

Sabrina had been hunting for that elusive connection her whole life. Personally and professionally. All she’d ever wanted was for someone to see the real her, to recognize her worth, and to appreciate her.

The Hargreaves appeared to fit the bill. They said they did. More importantly, she felt it. Having sex with them had only bound them to one another, or at least bound her to them. Was it even possible to give that up, to turn her back and walk away from it all?

They weren’t too far in yet. They hadn’t merged lives or anything important yet, so yes, theoretically, she could cut ties, move them all to opposite corners of the world, and put the whole experience behind her. In reality, she knew it was much more complicated than that.

“Your silence speaks volumes, sista.” Janet’s voice brought Sabrina back to the moment, sitting in that bathroom, the fan whirling loudly overhead, and her two guys outside the room, waiting on her to emerge and issue her verdict.

“In case you’re still looking for an answer,” Janet spoke again, “I think you need to stop second-guessing everything and looking for problems where none may exist. I think you need to go out there and choose them, choose to believe them, and choose to be just a little bit selfish for once and take what you know you want and deserve, which is three gorgeous men who want to make you happy.”

“So I should just forget what my father said?”

“Did I say that? I don’t remember saying that.” Janet’s tone grew firm. “Look, you go do everything I told you to do, but don’t forget shit. You keep that little nugget in the back of your mind, watch their behaviors, their actions, and your ass. If something seems off, dig deeper. It doesn’t pay to be stupid. So be smart and play this out with both eyes wide open. Now that you’ve been warned, you can take steps to cover your ass while they…ahem, cover your ass.”

This time, Sabrina snickered a little, amused with her friend’s knack for lightening any moment, no matter how serious. “I see your point. I’m going to do that. Thank you, Jan. You’re always here when I need you.”

“What are sisters from another mister for?”

“’Kay, they’re waiting for me. I’ll let you go.”

“Get out there and knock ‘em dead! But not literally. With kindness. And tits and ass wouldn’t hurt either. And—”

“Bye, Janet,” Sabrina singsonged as she pulled the phone away from her ear and ended the call with a huge smile on her face. She loved that woman to the moon and back. Didn’t know what she would do without her.

She rose to her feet and sighed as she stared at the closed and locked door, preparing herself mentally to go back out there and clue William and Oliver in on her decision.

“Here goes nothing…”