“Shut up,” I hissed at his exaggeration, earning me another wink.

“’Kay, later,” Trip finally said before getting off the phone. “He’s coming over.”

The words had barely come out of his mouth as the boys started yelling all together loud enough to be heard down the hall, “Kill him! Kill him! KILL HIM!”

And that was exactly how I found myself in a house with seven males on a Friday night.

* * *

“I told Ginny to come over,” I told the two men leaning against my kitchen counter, each cradling a bottle of the beer.

“She coming straight from the salon?”

I shook my head, flipping the steaks over with a fork. “No. She’s meeting up with Wheels for dinner and after that she said she’d come by.”

It was impossible to miss the slight sneer that came over the blond’s face, even though my attention wasn’t centered anywhere near him. I was too busy trying to coat the steaks in the oil evenly.

“You don’t like Wheels?” I asked him, referring to Ginny’s fiancé.

It was Dallas who let out a snicker in response that had me swinging my gaze over in his direction. He hadn’t said much since he’d showed up a few minutes ago, freshly showered and with a bottle of Jack in one hand and a cardboard container with four glass bottled Cokes in the other, which had me eyeing him, wondering if I’d been selling this man short all along. Oblivious to me checking out his excellent taste in sodas, all he’d said was, “Hi, Diana” and I’d said, “Hi, Dallas. Come in. Trip’s in the kitchen.” That was that.

We had just agreed to be friends—or at least friendly—so this should be no big deal. I didn’t want to make it weird, and I was glad he didn’t either. We could figure this out. Luckily, Trip talked enough to make up for any awkwardness there might be lingering between us.

So for Ginny’s fiancé to be the first thing he decided to comment on after Trip and I had argued about how to properly cook a steak, I was caught off guard. Then for him to shrug and be all casual about it, threw me off even more. “He’s all right….” Trip trailed off.

“You can’t tell me he’s all right and not tell me what you don’t like about him,” I said.

The two exchanged a look I wasn’t familiar with.

“Really? You’re not going to tell me?” I thought about it and straightened my spine, one sentence away from getting really angry. “Is it bad? Did he do something to Ginny?”

Trip hooted. “Not if he wants to keep livin’.”

Oh. “Then what is it?”

“Have you met him?”

“Yeah, a few times. He always seemed like a pretty good guy.”

Trip and Dallas shared another glance.

“What is it?” I asked again. “He’s always nice to me.”

It was only Trip who snorted that time. “Why wouldn’t he be nice to you?”

“Because no one has to be nice to anyone else. I’ve met plenty of assholes.”

Dallas snickered at the same time Trip snorted.

I went back to Ginny’s fiancé. “Is that all that’s wrong with him? You guys just don’t like him?”

The blond bobbed his head as if thinking about the question. “If Ginny was your family and you knew the stuff he’s done and the people he’s… messed around with, you wouldn’t be all about him being with her either,” he finally managed to explain. “But that’s who she wants to be with, and she knows all of his shit, so we can’t say nothin’ anymore.”

I could smell bullshit from a mile away, and that was exactly what I had a whiff of as he spoke his reasoning. Ginny loved Wheels. I’d seen them together enough. I’d overheard their phone conversations. And Wheels had always been really sweet to Gin. He brought her flowers, brought her lunch from time to time, texted and called her regularly. For whatever he might have done before her, he was nice to her now, and Gin was a grown woman. If she knew his business, then she could deal with it. If I was in her shoes, not so much, but I wasn’t.

“I’m sure she appreciates the thought behind you wanting the best for her, but she knows what she’s doing,” I told them.

“I’m not saying she doesn’t.”

“Yeah, but you’re saying you don’t like him because of what he’s done in the past, right?” I peeked at Trip over my shoulder to try and soften what I was going to say next. “Imagine if you found someone you wanted to be with and her family didn’t like you for the things you’d done ten years ago. That isn’t fair. I’m not the same person I was when I was twenty or even… twenty-six. Some people don’t change, but other people do. They grow up.”

“It’s different,” Trip started to argue.

“How is it different? Are you going to tell me that you guys have only slept with women who you’ve been in long-term relationships with?” Neither one of them said anything, even though I looked at both of them with a smirk on my face, knowing how they were going to answer. Of course they hadn’t. “No. Exactly. We’ve all done stupid things we regret. And if Gin knows all this and still wants to be with him, then let her do what she wants. Just saying.”

“You’re saying you’d marry somebody who’s messed around with half the women you’d have to see at get-togethers?” Trip asked with a goofy grin on his face.