Maizy the Bear Charmer(Diving Creek Ranch 16)(51)

“I can’t wait. I may even walk out my back door at work and take a stroll down here on my lunch breaks.”

“You should come at night sometime. Soon all the rosebushes will be full of blooms again and the white roses seem to glow in the moonlight.”

“Sounds very romantic,” Lucy said softly. “Speaking of romance…”

Maizy giggled, impressed that Lucy had held off asking as long as she had. “They’re wonderful, Lucy. All three of them.” When Lucy sighed Maizy looked up at her. “What?”

“I’m both happy and worried for you.”

“Why?” she asked as she sprinkled the granules and patted the mulch back around the next bush.

Lucy sat back on her heels as she poured the compost tea around the bush. “I’ve gotten to know the bears and I know how much finding you means to them. But I also know how much teaching kindergarten means to you.” She shrugged and added, “Maybe I’m not able to be impartial because of my own experiences with certain people in town.”

Knowing where she was going, Maizy nodded. “We talked about it last night. The four of us acknowledge it’ll be complicated. Cody said they’d talk about it today and we’d discuss it more tonight and propose a plan.”

“A plan?”

“A way to make it work.”

“What? Like taking turns?”

Maizy shrugged. “I think that may be part of it. It’s not ideal because I want to be with all of them.”

Lucy sighed. “No, it’s not ideal. You need time with them alone, that much is true, but you need to be with them together, otherwise things could get more complicated.”

“I don’t have much practical knowledge about ménage relationships but I’ve been thinking about that all day. I want what you have with Patrick and Beck but my circumstances are much more precarious.”

“Yeah, they are. So how do you envision this playing out down the road?”

Maizy pulled her bottle of water from their cooler and plopped down in the shade created by the retaining wall and uncapped it. “When I imagine the future, it worries me. I see one path that includes the three of them and I see another path where I continue teaching at Divine Elementary. I don’t see the two intersecting. They’re like two elements that can’t be bound together.”

“Are you falling in love with them?”

Maizy swiped an errant curl off of her sweaty brow with the back of her hand and looked at Lucy. How did she explain to her practical friend that she probably had been falling since the day she’d met them? There were still things she didn’t know about them but they each brought something special to the relationship. On their own they were hot and sweet and sexy but together…they were intoxicating.

Lucy sat down next to her and her twinkling eyes told Maizy that she wanted details but Maizy couldn’t do that. What they’d had the night before and that morning was too precious, too new. She wanted to hold it close for a while.

“Damn, girl. Without saying a word, you spoke volumes. You have it bad for them, don’t you?”

Maizy looked down the row of rosebushes and spied Lola working closer to the creek. The coordinator for the rose garden worked just as hard as all her volunteers and Maizy liked that about her. “Do you know what?”

“What?”

“Lola recently told me that she was raised in a ménage family here in Divine.”

The shock on Lucy’s face said it all. “Lola?”

“Yeah. Her family has a ranch outside of town and she was raised by her mom and her two dads. She’s in her thirties and they never once ever revealed that to anyone. She had to guard her conversations from the time she started school and they’ve managed to keep the secret all these years.”

“I can’t picture myself being able to keep a secret that big for that long.”

Maizy giggle-snorted. “Neither can I.” She grinned when Lucy flicked water from her bottle at her. “Know thyself, woman. You’re a blabbermouth but I love you. Anyway, Lola told me that ménage groups like yours and all the others give her hope that someday her mother will come into town with her husband and his brother and be able to walk downtown hand in hand with both of them.”

“I’d love to see that happen.”

Maizy smiled, remembering how surprised she was by that admission from Lola. “She said the three of them are set in their ways and may never do it, but it gives her hope for them anyway, and maybe a little hope for herself as well. In answer to your question, yes, I do have it bad for them. I just don’t think I’m in a position to go public, as long as I hold a teaching job, especially teaching kindergarteners.”