His Golden Touch [Gold Rush 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage and More) by Tish Domenick Page B

may make an amendment to our agreement.” She walked toward her own house. “I don’t believe I’ll be eating at Vern’s. I’m going to fix something simple, and, since you’ll be going back out in the fields after dinner, I’ll take a nap. Wake me if I’m asleep when you come in.”
    In her imagination, her back caught darts from the stares her husbands gave her as she left them standing there. She smiled. They’d agree to whatever she wanted. Rocco was right. Now, all she wanted to do was snuggle into her bed and replay everything her new lover had done to her on that schoolroom desk.
    She boiled an egg and slathered some home-churned butter on a chunk of bread for her meal. Undressed to her slip for her nap, Hannah contemplated sleeping naked. It appealed to her, but felt too decadent this early in the day. The crude cotton of her slip bunched under her when she tossed, and wishes of silk undergarments flitted into her dreams.
    “I’d like to give you silks and satins and furs.”
    Hannah was immediately awake. The voice was neither Brady’s nor Wade’s. She looked up into the face of Rocco Ponti. “How did you know what I’d been dreaming? And what are you doing up here?”
    “Your husbands have gone back out to the fields, so no one saw me. Did you talk to them about us?”
    “No, I haven’t figured out what to say,” Hannah mumbled as she scooted to a sitting position up against the headboard. “What do you expect will happen when I tell them I lay with you and intend to do it again?”
    “Maybe they’ll ask me to be a third husband.”
    “Unlikely,” a voice from the doorway shouted. Wade bounded into the room. “What in Sam Hill are you doing in my bedroom, Rocco?”
    “I’m talking to Hannah.”
    “You don’t talk to a man’s wife when she’s in bed in her underwear without expecting to get beaten to a bloody pulp.”
    Despite the warmth of the evening, Hannah pulled the bedclothes up to her neck. “Please stop, Wade. I’ve invited Rocco to join us.”
    Wade came to the side of the bed opposite Rocco and glared at her. “What in hell do you mean, join us?”
    “I want him to join us in our marriage.”
    “Hannah!” Brady came rushing in. “What’s going on here?” He shot a menacing glance Rocco’s way.
    “Hannah wants him.” Wade gestured toward Rocco with his thumb. “She wants him to be a third husband.”
    Brady held onto the footboard and leaned over Hannah. “Does he know—uh—everything?”
    “He figured it out and visited me at school today with a proposition, and I accepted. I think I’m in love with him, too. We think alike and talk about things important to me. I need that in my life.”
    Brady, hands on hips, stepped so close to Rocco that he had to lean back out of Brady’s way. “You, downstairs. Hannah, get dressed and come into the parlor. We will talk like civilized people in a civilized location.”
    Rocco nodded to the room and went into the hall. Wade and Brady followed.
    Hannah released the breath she’d been holding and slid her feet to the floor. She quickly threw a nightgown over her head, not trusting the men alone for long. Without her calming influence, they might kill each other. She crept down the stairs carrying her shoes, hoping to hear their conversation, but the house was quiet. At the bottom of the staircase, she put on her shoes and walked as sedately as she could manage into the parlor. Wade and Brady sat stiffly on the sofa, scowls on both their faces. Rocco casually leaned on the fireplace, one elbow braced on the mantel. Hannah chose a ladder-backed chair so as to sit tall and perhaps look more commanding. If her husbands didn’t agree, she might become a deceitful sneak finding ways to meet Rocco alone or else try to avoid him completely. Neither course appealed to her.
    Wade spoke first. “Okay, Hannah, explain exactly what you’ve confided to Rocco and what kind of arrangement you’ve made to keep him quiet.”
    “Hey,