Nicole Edwards - Travis

Like today. All three of them were playing hooky from work. Just because they could. Since the resort was in the final stage and Gage had officially accepted the job as head of security for AI, they could manage to sneak a little time off from time to time. And if they couldn’t, well, they sometimes did anyway.

Travis palmed Gage’s face as he pulled back, staring down at him. “Damn, you manage to take my breath away. You know that?”

“It’s my goal in life,” Gage answered, his voice just as weak as Travis’.

“Well, I can effectively say that you both steal my breath,” Kylie said as she moved up on the bed beside them.

Travis and Gage turned to look at her at the same time. “What the hell were you doing in there?” She still didn’t have a stitch of clothing on – thank you God – but she didn’t seem to have anything else either.

“Nothing,” she said with a mischievous smile.

Travis shifted, rolling off of Gage and then trapping Kylie beneath his body. He got her flat on her back and stared down at her as she smiled so sweetly up at him.

“You’re a sneaky woman, you know that?” he asked as he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her mouth. “But just remember, we’ll always be sneakier.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” she argued, her smile getting brighter.

Travis glanced over at Gage, and a knowing look passed between them.

“I’ll get her tied up, you get the other thing,” Travis told Gage, and the man was off the bed and down the hall in an instant.

“Don’t tie me up,” Kylie said.

What Travis heard was, “Please tie me up.”

Did he mention the woman was insatiable? The beautiful, beaming grin on her face was not that of a woman who didn’t want to give herself over to the two men she declared her love for each and every day.

But little did she know, Travis had no intention of tying her up. At least not yet.

A minute later, Gage returned and joined them on the bed.

“I thought you were going to tie me up?” Kylie asked, and she sounded disappointed, which made Travis laugh.

“You told me not to,” he pointed out.

“You’ve never listened to me before,” she laughed, her eyes darting back and forth between him and Gage. “What’s going on?”

Travis moved over to one side of Kylie, allowing Gage to ease up on her other side. Resting his head on one hand, Travis stared down at her and then back at Gage.

“We sort of wanted to ask you something,” Gage said, sounding incredibly nervous.

Damn cop. He could stare down an armed maniac, but he couldn’t muster the courage to ask the woman that he loved…

“Will you marry us?” Gage popped the question and Kylie’s head jerked toward him.

“What?”

“You heard him,” Travis added.

“I know what I heard, but I don’t know what it means.”

Travis raised an eyebrow. “No? Ok, well, let me explain how this works.”

Kylie slapped his chest playfully at the same time she told him to hush.

Travis smiled at her, letting her see every ounce of the love he had for her and this man.

“We want to marry you,” Gage said again, sounding a little choked up which caused Travis to look up at him.

“True,” he agreed. “However,” glancing down at Kylie, a knowing look passed between them and they looked at Gage. “We want to marry you too.”

“You wanna… Wait, what? ” Gage’s mouth hung open as he stared back at them.

It was true, Travis managed to get them both good.

Kylie grinned again, and she looked so beautiful staring up at Gage, enjoying the fact that they’d managed to make him speechless. Travis leaned over the edge of the bed and opened the drawer on his nightstand, retrieving a piece of paper that he’d had his lawyers draw up. Thanks to Luke’s unsolicited advice, Travis used a similar contract to one Luke, Cole and Sierra had had drawn up to substantiate their relationship.

He passed the piece of paper to Kylie, and she, in turn, handed it to Gage.

“What’s this?” he asked, his eyes darting back and forth between them.

“Read it,” Travis told him as he leaned down and kissed Kylie on the mouth.

Gage spent a few minutes skimming the paper as they watched him. When he was finished, his eyes were curiously glassy, but he was smiling and that smile pierced Travis’ heart in a big way. “So?”

“So what ?” Gage asked with a smirk.

Travis knew the routine. They didn’t let Kylie off the hook by beating around the bush, and he obviously wasn’t going to get special treatment either.

“Will you marry us?” Travis asked, all humor disappearing because the question was the most important one of his life.

“Absolutely.” The fact that there was no hesitation in Gage’s answer made his heart beat harder.

“But I never got an answer,” Gage said peering down at Kylie.

“What was the question again?” she laughed, but it quickly died on her lips as she stared up at them. “Of course I will marry you both. It would make me the happiest woman in the world.”

Gage took her hand in his and Travis watched the exchange, but it took Kylie a second to realize what was going on. When Gage pulled his hand back, Kylie was staring down at her finger, her eyes wide and full of unshed tears.

“Oh, my goodness. It’s… Wow. It’s so beautiful.”

Travis had to agree. And the fact that the ring had sentimental meaning made it even more so.

Travis and Gage had been talking about getting Kylie a ring, but they wanted something that would signify their love for each other – all three of them. They’d been keeping an eye out, but they didn’t come up with anything until the day he and Gage went to the bank and retrieved Gage’s personal items that he’d stashed in a safe deposit box. They were the only physical possessions he had left after the fire, besides what he’d been carrying with him in his truck while he travelled.

As Gage was going through the contents, to sign off that he retrieved them, Travis noticed a ruby ring, and when he asked about it, Gage had given him the story. The ring belonged to his grandmother, a gift from his grandfather on their fiftieth wedding anniversary. The gold was thin from wear over the years, but the stone was beautiful. After a little discussion, Gage suggested that they have the stone cut down into smaller stones and put into a ring for Kylie.

And now that the ring was on her finger, the tiny rubies and diamonds that wrapped around the band shining as brightly as the tears in her eyes.

Travis had never cried a day in his life – at least not since he was a teenager. But suddenly his throat was clogging up tight, and he was overwhelmed with so much love, he wondered if it was finally going to pull him under.

♀♂♂

As Kylie stared up at Travis and Gage, she was sure that both men were choked by as much emotion as she was. She glanced back at the ring now on her left hand, and she still couldn’t believe how beautiful it was.

“Where did this come from?” she asked, glancing over at Gage and giving Travis a minute to try and rein himself in. She knew how much he hated this much emotion.

“The ruby came from my grandmother’s ring,” he explained. “We had it cut down and placed in the center band. It represents that you are our heart. The outer rings of diamonds represent us, protecting you forever. We knew you didn’t want big stones because they would get in the way when you were working, so we opted for something smaller.” His smile grew bigger. “Only because we’re not going to allow you to take it off. Ever.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” she told him as she brushed her fingers over the three bands of stones inset in the ring that wrapped around her finger. Three bands of stones, the inside ring of rubies were for her and the outer rings of diamonds protecting the precious stones on the inside were for Travis and Gage. The ring was absolutely perfect.