Twin Dragons

Preview

I'm so exhausted I can barely even keep my eyes open. It's midsummer, which unfortunately is our peak season. Not to mention the newer requests we were getting in the city, thanks to my sister's boyfriend.

Work is something I'll never turn down. Not with where and how we started. I also have no excuse not to make the commute since Pops has been making the hour and a half trek every day for ages.

Difference being he has a flashing siren that doesn't allow him to be stopped going the neck breaking speeds that it takes to cut the usual two plus hour drive in half. The rest of us non cops have to worry about speed traps. I wish we could have just done this in the city.

The last thing I have the energy for is hosting, but the dirty thirty of my best friend is not an occasion any of us would miss. Can't say that it's not complicated at times, but other than the moments my hormones do the thinking for me, I couldn't ask for better or more than what we have.

People would assume that three exes with the sorted history we have would be a recipe for disaster. I, personally, believe that it's our history that made the rundown tool shop my ex stuck me with a stunning success.

Twin Dragons Lawn and Landscaping started three years ago as a means to an end, and if people aren't expecting a dude from the work itself, they definitely do with my name being Danny.

I'm still working through the bitch fit of my last ticket, spending the entire hour of service getting my ass stared at. I may be used to it, given that my hips and thighs got all the extra inches my height was denied, past the eighth grade, but I'm still none to happy about either fact.

Obviously, by the stamp and squish on the offensive mat rails, I need to get in or out of Frank. A beater truck that's older than I am. Sure, people might get that it's a Chevy by the frame, but the rest has more spare parts than the monster I named him after. Also, five times as fast considering my dad's a mechanic. Frank may not win any beauty contests, but never fails to get me from point a to point b with a speedy vengeance.

I feel the ache and weight of my workweek lifting the black bags of prepped meals that cover every one's request for the shin dig. With Gran's condition, and her moving into an assisted living facility a year or so back, Dad and Pops' place has become the go to for family shindigs.

We also have family dinners every week, otherwise the Trio that is my father, not uncle and little sister wouldn't eat. Charlotte is sixteen and still lives at home. She's also using the event of Kelly's birthday party to introduce us to her new boyfriend, Massimo.

............................

The lovely twist and turn of events has the yard finished, the house clean, and dinner at will call for our guests, but my spare clothes ruined and me covered in things which I dare not dredge through the house I just cleaned.

Since it was Kel who delayed things until nine, I'm not too concerned about strangers walking in. Flipping the clippings out of my wild hair and leaving my boots outside the mudroom, I get into the offshoot of the kitchen. Ditching the jeans and cut off tee, to use the mop sink for a quick once over before I go back to the shower again.

Thankfully, most of my under things offer full coverage in a modest two piece of sweat wicking and supportive work out shorts with a sports bra. My room is just around the corner. Hopefully, Dad and Pops ran the other direction or are already watching the game in the den, as I have to go through the kitchen to get to the hall with mine and Charlie's bedroom.

Checking the pots and pans before I collide with what feels like a brick wall in the middle of our kitchen.

One of the many moments in life I was blessed to have such a cushy bum.

With some tune or other still blaring in my ears, I just react when two muscular arms reach for me attached to a face that must have been sculpted. My foot collides with the linebacker's chest, and no fiber of me knows how to respond to a stranger in my kitchen. Hot or not, the warning bells of my pounding heart drown out whatever tune is blaring through my earbuds, making me forget that they are there as the brown-eyed pin up mouths something.

The press of my sock to his chest, pushes me rather than him back four feet to the door I'd come out of where we keep a wood baseball bat.

Scrambling to my feet, I see two more figures sweeping either side of him, making me wonder if I passed out from heat exhaustion. No other explanation for three specimens out of dirty novel covers standing in my kitchen.

While the first is easily six three with light mocha skin, whiskey brown eyes and hair so perfectly clipped it looks painted, the other two are a couple inches taller and obviously twins, and I swear to heavens that I didn't believe obsidian black was a real eye color until their dual onyx stares pin me in a freeze-frame when I pick up the bat.

There is no mistaking one for the other, given the muscle definition between the hulkier and pierced version to a trimmer, but no less ripped version with shorter hair and tattoos replacing the metal that defines the other. Every one of them tall, dark, and sexier than sin. The types that might make me reconsider swearing off men for good.

Well, if they weren't breaking and entering.

"What the hell are you doing in my house?!" No matter how loud I mean the roar to be, it's drowned out. Like I'm underwater in my panic remembering the last time a man with knuckle tats came to visit me unexpectedly.

Another hand touches my shoulder from behind and in an epic nerd move from lightsaber cosplay battles, I forget the weapon in my hand is a bat and try to swing it around the back of my head. My still half damp and fully clipping not to mention mower grease tinted hair tumbles down like a veil brushing my shoulders with the blow being caught. Making me hop and twist to the only unaccompanied wall on my right.

I'm ready to go kicking and screaming, in a blaze of midget glory when my frantic eyes come back to Dad.

His still dark brown hair, fuzzy beard and chocolate brown shades darker than mine are laser sharp. "Danny," the grit of his southern twang hits with two of his gorilla fingers pinching one of my dots while the other holds the bat a few inches from his head.

"Dad," the breath I didn't realize I was holding whooshes out with every last bit of my feigned strength. The bat goes down rather than me, with the support of his hands keeping me up by the shoulders. "What the Sith?!"

Pops says cussing is for idiots. While I've never heard the silver haired Marine curse, I'm fairly certain it was more to get me out of the unladylike habit. Both of the men who raised me are pretty traditional in the way of women are to be respected.

Dad does curse a lot, but tries to keep it to a minimum around Charley and me. He slips, though. A lot. When he thinks we are not listening.

"Il paradiso mi aiuti," heaven help me. While not Italian himself. It seems to be Dad's weakness between my mom and Charlie's. He's fluent in the language and while I understand it, I'm out of practice, or at least bitter about speaking it thanks to my asshat of an ex.

What. I'm creative when I speak. Not when I think. "Oops." I twist my face, knowing damn well that if these hunks were intruders, they'd be on the floor under his fists.

"Danny!" As if on cue, Charley rounds the corner with the blue-eyed kid I'm secretly hoping didn't get her pregnant with the hullabaloo she's making about this dinner.

"Danny?" The kid by her side echoes in a shocked question. Meaning that she likely has been testing him on the jealousy factor because our group has a thing about gender swapped names.

"Danny......." This male voice I do not have to second guess as a warning from my silver-haired not uncle. Proven by the well-worn blue jacket of his cop uniform sliding around my shoulders for modesty.

"Danny." This is said in the most deliciously male voice my ears have ever had the pleasure of hearing, making my insides melt to the moment. The type that you imagine in your head, telling you to..........

Available July 2025 on Inkitt, https://www.inkitt.com/stories/1339146