Dee's Second Chance Times Two (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Dee’s Second Chance Times Two

  Dee’s considering giving Amos and Andy a second chance, but can she trust them when she believed they had betrayed her? They claimed it was all a misunderstanding because they hadn’t been open with each other about their feelings. Should she give in and talk through their problems or move on with her life?

  Amos and Andy honestly thought Dee had broken up with them a year ago and had made some bad choices that continued to come between them and Dee. If they could only convince her to talk with them, maybe they could work things out.

  Against her better judgment, Dee gives in and agrees to give them a chance to plead their case. Getting over them and moving on hadn’t worked to well for her. Maybe she needed to hear what they had to say and decide then if they had any possibility of a future together. If not, Austin was looking better and better every day.

  Genre: Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre

  Length: 44,584 words

  DEE'S SECOND CHANCE

  TIMES TWO

  Marla Monroe

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  DEE'S SECOND CHANCE TIMES TWO

  Copyright © 2015 by Marla Monroe

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-690-1

  First E-book Publication: August 2015

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  DEE'S SECOND CHANCE

  TIMES TWO

  MARLA MONROE

  Copyright © 2015

  Chapter One

  “Hold up, baby girl!”

  Dee Hancock closed her eyes and stopped mid-stride before setting her expression to one of abject annoyance and turning to face one of her archenemies who she had the miserable luck to be desperately in love with, Andy Ahfield.

  Yeah, my life sucks.

  “Hey, beautiful. Don’t look that way,” Amos, his twin brother, said with a broad smile. “It makes us think you aren’t happy to see us.”

  “Gee. Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe I’m not happy to see you?” she asked as she jabbed both hands on her hips.

  “Really, Dee Dee. You’ve got to give us another chance. We screwed up, but you’ve got to admit, so did you,” Amos said as he stopped less than three feet from where she stood only a dozen yards from her office.

  “No, Am-Ass. I don’t have to give you another chance, and I didn’t screw up. Now leave me the heck alone. I’m tired of finding you lurking around everywhere I go. It’s getting creepy now. I know you’ve heard of stalker laws, now haven’t you?” She spun on her heel and stomped the rest of the way to the door of her building and unlocked it before sweeping inside.

  The nerve of those two thinking they could say they were sorry like it was nothing but a tiny mistake instead of the monumental betrayal it had been to her. They’d slept with her best friend at the same time they’d supposedly been seeing her. Yeah, it had been over a year ago, but she couldn’t just forget about something like that.

  As she walked from the reception area past her secretary’s desk to her office, she reminded herself that she was forty-one-year-old business owner who’d crafted her own little niche in the world as an investment attorney, something unique in itself. She advised people on how to invest their income to maximize profits, reach goals, plan for retirement, and with her law degree, she was able to handle the legal aspects of their businesses as well. She specialized in building businesses from the initial spark of an idea to taking them public if that was what the company wanted to do.

  Her nemeses, the twins, were tax accountants who managed multimillion dollar organizations’ tax liabilities. What were the odds that the three of them had become something both similar and complementary to each other? At first, she’d been a little competitive, inching into some of their territory with her own clients, but when they didn’t appear to be horning in on her business, she stopped branching out and stuck to what she did best and referred any questions concerning tax credits and such their way.

  And that was how they’d ended up reconnecting after over twenty years. They’d asked her to meet them for lunch to talk about business and to thank her for sending new clients their way. One thing had led to another, and suddenly she’d realized they were actually dating and not just socializing around business. It had been a pleasant shock, bu
t that quickly wore off when she caught them in bed with Carol, her then best friend. She’d smashed the rose-colored glasses under her sturdy low heels and refused to buy a new pair.

  I can’t believe I’m still moping over this. It’s been a freaking year!

  It had taken a month of soul-searching and agonizing over every little moment of their time together to find all of the little things she should have noticed earlier—not about them, but about herself. Dee had always been a bit awkward and self-conscious about her looks. She’d never been one of the slim, athletically built girls in high school, having blossomed at the early age of thirteen too suddenly and desperately need a bra. Along with her boobs poking out came an ass that widened in direct proportion.

  Her parents were professors at the nearby college and had paid little attention to anything other than Dee’s intellectual needs, making sure she took all the right courses to prepare her for a prestigious university and future career. That left her to try to cover up her newly emerging assets with overly large skirts and blouses in just the wrong colors.

  Her color and fashion sense hadn’t improved much over the years, but it hadn’t completely dissuaded the male population, assuring that she had plenty of dating opportunities. Though she matured and excelled in her chosen field, graduating at the top of her class and building a thriving business from the ground up, she hadn’t quite progressed as much emotionally or socially. Inside, she was still the same old awkward Dee of high school days.

  Dee jerked when the door opened behind her. She’d walked into her office but had yet to sit down at her desk. Instead, she stood just inside her office door while she’d daydreamed about the past. Now she wondered just how long she’d been standing there. She was almost afraid to turn around to see who’d walked in.

  To her relief, it hadn’t been the twins. Instead, her secretary, Hazel Applewood breezed in and settled at her desk with a flourish that sounded almost like a flock of birds settling down to roost. Hazel wore the most elaborate outfits Dee had ever seen. She’d finally asked the young woman where she managed to find them. To her utter shock Hazel admitted that she designed and created them herself.

  “Why are you working as my secretary here when you could be running your own shop somewhere?” she’d asked.

  “That takes money, honey. I just don’t have enough to do that right now,” she’d said without blinking an eye.

  It had weighed on Dee for several weeks afterward until she’d offered to help back her with a loan so she could set up a shop and small store front, but the young woman turned her down with a smile and a sincere thank-you.

  “I’ll get there, but I’m going to get there on my own. Once I have enough saved for a good down payment on my supplies, I’ll see about a small business loan.” Dee realized then that her slightly odd and flamboyant secretary had a good head on her shoulder with a solid business plan. From then on, she gave the young woman more to do that would challenge her and help her learn.

  It had been Hazel who’d helped her spread her wings, so to speak, with her wardrobe and style. The young woman might have been nearly fifteen years her junior, but she’d had a very adult and serious view of what Dee needed to do to change her appearance. They’d spent a long weekend shopping, getting her hair and nails done, and expanding her knowledge of the fashion world.

  They became much closer, though Hazel kept their relationship more professional instead of allowing it to develop into a true friendship. Dee could appreciate that since the young woman did work for her. It would be difficult to separate the boss-employee relationship from the equation if they were on a closer level.

  Still, Dee greatly appreciated the sincerity and valuable help Hazel had given her and set out to make sure her secretary obtained the skills she’d need to develop and run her own business when she was ready to jump out and give it a go. As much as Dee was going to miss her, she would be even more proud to see her succeed with her plans.

  “Are you okay, boss? Something wrong in your office?” Hazel’s rich voice caught her daydreaming again. What was wrong with her today?

  “I’m fine. Nothing’s wrong. I was just trying to remember something that’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite get it,” she lied with a wince before continuing into her sanctuary to take her seat behind the large antique desk.

  “I hate when that happens to me. I end up going back to where I’d been when I first thought of it to try and remember. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t,” Hazel admitted as she put away her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk.

  Dee knew what she was doing by the squeak of the drawer that needed some soap rubbed over it to ease the glide. Plus, Hazel was a creature of habit just like Dee herself was. She sat down at her desk, took off her glasses, and laid them on the blotter. Next, she would pull open the bottom left drawer to stuff her elaborately decorated purse inside before forcing the stubborn drawer closed with a thump. Finally, she finished off the morning ritual by starting a pot of coffee.

  “You’re too young to have memory problems like that, Hazel.” Dee shook her head with a broad smile, happy to jar her mind away from the two men guaranteed to ruin her day if she let them.

  “It’s not age that does that, boss. It’s how much you have filling up your cup.”

  Dee blinked slowly, her mouth dropping open to ask her what she meant before snapping it shut because she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. Hazel didn’t seem to notice as she filled the water reservoir of the coffee machine.

  “The more you experience in life and the more you learn, the more you fill up your cup, which is your brain. I think that some of us have larger cups than others so they get full at different times in our lives. When that happens, they start to overflow. Whatever went in last tends to be what overflows first.”

  Dee couldn’t help but smile. Hazel’s quirky way of looking at things and explaining them never ceased to amuse her. It also tended to inspire her at times. Right then, it made complete sense. But it still didn’t explain why Hazel would forget things at her young age.

  “Because my cup is smaller than yours and others’ your age. That’s why,” she said answering Dee’s unasked question.

  Shaking her head, she flipped through her planner to see what she had coming up over the week ahead. It didn’t take her long to become immersed in the everyday workings of her career. By lunchtime, she was well on her way to finalizing a portfolio of investments for a father who was planning on surprising his son at graduation from college. The young man already had a position lined up with a prestigious company in Dallas starting two weeks after graduation.

  “Ready for lunch, boss? I’m having smoked, free range chicken and guacamole on a whole grain, gluten free baguette. I have plenty if you’d like one,” Hazel offered with a knowing grin.

  The smart ass knew she hated avocados in any form. Just the thought of the green gruel made her want to gag.

  “No thanks. I appreciate the offer to make me wretch and lose weight, but I think I’ll run over to the diner and get a grilled chicken salad instead.”

  Hazel grinned. “With avocados?”

  “You’re evil. You know that don’t you?” Dee asked as she headed toward the front door.

  She could still hear the young woman’s rich throaty laughter as the door closed behind her, cutting off the much cooler air from inside the office and leaving her with the thickly heated air that almost refused to fill her lungs.

  Sheesh, I don’t remember it being this hot when I was a kid. Maybe there’s something to all that global warming crap they keep talking about after all.

  Dee really didn’t believe that but the alternative to global warming being the culprit was that she was getting older and less tolerant of temperature changes. She liked that reality even less.

  She walked the three short blocks to the restaurant and crossed the street at the intersection of Main and Church to walk across the gravel parking lot of the Perry Flats’ Diner. While
the name wasn’t all that original, the inside of the diner was. Instead of the normal tired old black-and-white squared linoleum and springy red vinyl booths normally found in diners all over the country, Perry Flats’ Diner had bright lime-green Naugahyde booths with orange-and-white table tops. The floor looked like a first grader’s finger paint masterpiece after a grown-up had smoothed out the edges some. Why it didn’t make people dizzy when they walked across the floor, no one knew.

  Customers were served on tin plates and drank out of mason jars, using mismatched silverware to eat with. The napkins looked as if someone had bought every color of the rainbow and mixed them up so that every patron had a different color at their table or booth. Then there were the waitresses and cooks themselves. They all wore loud shirts and blouses that fairly screamed tourist. Add to the fact that none of them, except maybe the cashier who owned the place with her husband, looked like they should work at a small-town diner and you couldn’t have shocked a true tourist more.

  Mable and her husband, Sam, had wanted something different when they’d bought the place from the original owner twenty-five years earlier. Sam had said that the only way it would support itself was if it had something unique going for it. So they decided to make it eclectic, looking more along the lines of a cross between a hippy hangout and a daycare center. Oddly enough, it worked.

  Still, Dee thought as she slid onto a bar stool at the front counter, it wasn’t the crazy atmosphere that kept the place filled most days. It was the amazing food they served.

  While they always kept the normal fare like meatloaf, chicken fried steak, and fried catfish, they also did a single different dish every Friday night for the adventurous. One Friday night Dee had taken a risk and ended up with the best crab cakes she’d ever eaten before. Another Friday night, she splurged and chose the lamb chops that literally melted in her mouth.