cut off abruptly. I heard her swallow, heard her moan like Tash and I had, and then I heard her huskily ask Lance if he felt like a nightcap…and just as she did the mute button on the alarm bells in my head suddenly released.
“No!” I turned swiftly to her. “Whatever you do, don’t ask them in, Kat! They’re—they’re—” My protest sputtered off as I tried to figure out why I was making it.
“We’re what, honey?” Dean’s voice had a sexy note I’d never heard in it before. “A little bit drunk? A little bit horny?” His eyes, their normal pale blue now a glowing sapphire, met mine and again I felt heat lapping over me.
“A little bit…dead,” I said faintly.
I didn’t know where the words had come from. Confusion filled me, and I opened my mouth to begin an apology—but then I stopped.
Because just for a second I saw what was really standing on our doorstep.
Unbuttoned shirts fluttered open around three rotting chests. Lank clumps of hair barely covered brown, parchment-looking scalps. Even as I watched, Dean leaned casually against the doorframe and a chunk of greenish flesh detached from his fingers. They hadn’t been dead long enough to have become putrid corpses, of course. I realize now that what I saw in that instant was the essence of their deadness.
But the way they looked wasn’t the worst part. That came when I glanced down and saw what remained of their feet: Dean’s in polished Brooks brogues, Lance’s in Italian slip-ons, Todd’s in the ergonomically correct German loafers he swore were the only shoes that could stand up against hard hospital floors.
Admittedly, Todd’s uber-shoes always made me want to fling my hand across my eyes and cry, “The horror, the horror!” but not this time.
Because this time they were hovering an inch or so off the ground…and so were Dean’s brogues and Lance’s slip-ons.
And then they weren’t. All three of our gentlemen callers were standing on solid ground, and as my gaze traveled upwards I saw everything else was back to normal, too. They shimmered. They were gorgeous. They were walking wet dreams and they were here for the fabulously fortunate Crosse triplets. And even if that wasn’t normal, suddenly it seemed so to me.
“A little dead?” Beside me Tash gave a breathy laugh. “Don’t mind her, Toddie. Meg’s been chugging back Kat’s appletinis all evening.”
“So how about it, big guy?” Kat looked through her lashes at Lance. “You up for it? A nightcap, I mean.”
“And anything else you’re offering, beautiful,” her impossibly handsome fiancé growled back. “You inviting us in?”
BING!…Bing!…bing…I firmly shut off the irritating bells that kept fading in and out in my head as Kat replied.
“As tempting as the three of you are, lover, I don’t think my darling sisters would appreciate me poaching on their turf. I’ll let them hand out their own party invitations.” She crooked a pink-polished nail at him, gave him her most smoldering look and began sauntering back into the living room.
Lance looked at Todd and Dean. “The crooking-her-finger thing—unspoken but a definite legal invite, right?”
“Hell, don’t look at me.” Todd raked strong surgeon’s fingers through his chestnut curls, and even as Dean’s locked-and-loaded state sent erotic shivers down my spine, I indulged myself in imagining what Dr. Todd’s dexterous fingers could do to a girl. “I’m the schmuck who figured if a nurse’s aide was batting her eyes at me, I had the green light to hustle her sweet ass into the laundry cupboard and give her my best bedside manner, and we all know how that turned out. Sure, the little tramp was fired, but I almost got hauled up before the hospital board. I’d say the crooked-finger thing’s a tease.”
“That was a no-means-no situation, Whitmore.” Dean saw me watching him and gave me a devastating grin before turning to Lance. “Unlike our groping friend here, Zellweger, you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a shot. See what happens when you try to cross the threshold.”
I can’t explain it. Tash says she can’t, either. We both stood there and listened to this conversation, and neither one of us found anything weird about it. All I felt was a kind of dizzy impatience to get Dean alone and out of his clothes, and I couldn’t understand why they were still standing there.
Neither could Kat, apparently. “Come on in and help me whip up more appletinis, gorgeous,” she murmured as she passed by on her way to the kitchen with the empty pitcher dangling from her fingertips. “Why waste time making nice with the brat and the brain when you could be with the only Crosse sister who can tie a cherry stem with her tongue in three seconds flat?”
“That’s my cue, boys.” A sharklike grin on his face, Lance stepped over the threshold and into the house. “Think you can perform that trick without the cherry, babe?” he asked as his hand slipped around to Kat’s tush.
Kat, who’s made it clear in the past that she doesn’t appreciate being handled like a melon being tested for ripeness, gurgled sexily. “I can try. Let’s find some privacy while your dreary future sisters-in-law are deciding whether they’re women enough to handle what their fiancés can give them.”
“Women enough? What a total bitch!” Tash sputtered in outrage as Kat led Lance down the hall into the kitchen.
My attention was temporarily diverted from Dean. “But being obviously bitchy isn’t like Kat. Do you think she’s—”
“She could be right.” Todd’s superheated look at Tash held a hint of dubiousness. “If you’re still set on waiting until after the ceremony tomorrow, princess, I can respect that. I think I’ll head on back to the Hot Box, okay?”
“The Hot Box?” Tash’s gaze narrowed. “Listen, Pookie, whatever my cherry-stem-tying slut of a sister says, I can show you a whole lot better time than some boob-job recipient in a G-string. Get in here and I’ll show you.”
Okay, the Crosse triplets could never be mistaken for Jo and Beth and Amy of Little Women. I mean, even now I was storing away the intriguing tidbit Todd had let slip about Tash rationing out the sugar until she was well and truly Mrs. Doctor. Tash had given the impression that her prowess in bed was so amazing her formerly tomcatting fiancé didn’t have the energy to look at other women anymore. But there’s a line we don’t cross, and both Tash and Kat had just jumped eagerly over it. First off, we never diss each other in front of anyone else—not seriously, that is. Secondly, we don’t use what Grammie calls “gutter-talk.” Bitch didn’t quite make that category. Slut did. And Kat’s slam about us not being women enough was unforgivable.
So, as a panting Tash yanked Todd into the house, I reached out to do the same to Dean…and then let my hand drop. I turned to watch her flounce up the stairs, Todd so close behind her you couldn’t have slipped a piece of paper between them.
Weak-kneed lust warred with sisterly concern in me. I credit Grammie’s steel-under-marshmallow upbringing with the fact that concern won, at least, temporarily. “I should go after them,” I sighed. “If she’s been holding out all this time only to let Kat goad her into it at this late date, she’s going to hate herself in the morning.”
“Sooner than that.” Dean’s voice was velvet. “Honey, let her and Todd play doctor while you and I occupy ourselves with our own
