Free Coming Clean by Inez Kelley Page A

and Grant had watched porn together, he had responded to the buxom women, not the well-hung men. No, men didn’t turn him on.
    Cade turned him on.
    It didn’t diminish Grant’s masculinity in her eyes. If anything, it deepened her respect and admiration for him. He was still virile and strong, hard-cut and foul-mouthed at times. Every drop of his blood screamed man . But it also yearned for something she could never give him.
    Light from the garage bounced off her engagement ring, and she was thrust backward in time, to a memory she’d all but forgotten. The first year she and Grant dated, the three of them had been inseparable, going everywhere, doing everything as one, but there was no way she was going to a baseball game in July. Her redhead’s pale skin got pink at the mere thought of high summer sun. She gladly wished the men well and planned a girly spa day for herself.
    She got a blistering case of food poisoning instead.
    Praying for death and hugging a trashcan, she was shocked when Grant showed up with ginger ale and crackers.
    “You’re supposed to be at the game.”
    Grant wiped her forehead with a cool washcloth and shook his head. “Screw the game, you need me here.”
    “But what about Cade?”
    A soft smile curved his mouth. “Babe, he’s a big boy. He’ll be fine on his own. Someone has to take care of you.”
    “Go to the ballgame, Grant.” A wave of nausea hit her and she groaned.
    His warm hands massaged her shoulders, pushing her back onto the bed. “Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
    He was. His low voice, soft as a jazz lullaby, pulled her from her weakened slumber. She cracked her eyes and found him whispering into the phone.
    “She’s sleeping. If I could get some more fluids in her, I’d feel better…Don’t know, I just hate seeing her hurt. Damn, Cade, this being-in-love shit makes you crazy. I want to track down that fucking hot dog vendor and beat his ass for doing this to her…I know, I got it bad…feels pretty good though.”
    Despite her rolling stomach, a smile had warmed her. Grant had been so excited over the third baseline tickets but he’d dropped everything and come running to her. He’d ditched the game and his best friend for her and never once complained. That was how things had always been. Cade was a major part of Grant’s life, a virtually inseparable part, but so was she. They all had a role and hers was just as important as Cade’s.
    They had always been a threesome, just without the sex.
    Music, and life in general, seemed based on a concept of three, not two. The number of performers in a trio. There were three notes in a triad, the most important and basic form of any music chord. The tritone was the only interval that, when inverted, remained unaffected functionally and harmonically. The clearest musical chime came from the simplest but strongest form—and the only perfect geometric figure—the triangle.
    Cade, Grant and Vivian were a triangle. Three sides of equal strength, joined together.
    That thought soothed her nerves and calmed her jitters. She climbed from the car and started across the lawn, shaking her head and snorting at her own silly misgivings. Nothing ever had or ever would come between Grant and her. Their marriage was based on more than gold bands and shared property. It stood on a solid foundation of love.
    The roar of a recorded crowd greeted her when she walked in the back door. She saw the bourbon bottle on the counter and groaned. Grant was going to be a bear to wake at four-thirty if he had more than a couple shots. She dropped her keys on the marble island, shrugged her purse onto a chair and wandered into the den.
    The guys were engrossed in some game she couldn’t identify and didn’t try. Both had damp hair and were in clean jersey shorts and T-shirts, clearly ready for bed. Obviously there was no planned encounter tonight. Maybe at the lake, away from home base.
    Her skin itched with dried soap from the laundry