Page 126 of Ten Hammers

“What do I look like, some kind of Neanderthal?” he teases.

“Yep,” Mason cracks.

“Hey,” says Axel. “Since Deez and I are identical I take offense to that.”

“Eh,” Cruz says. “I don’t take offense to anything.”

I get a delicious, minty fresh good morning kiss from each of them as we bustle around.

This is my life!!!

“Holy shit, Jack slept in?” Gunnar asks, when he finally wanders in and takes a head count.

“No, he’s up,” I say. He was up in more ways than one until I made him sit down at the table under which I gave him a blowie when it was just the two of us awake. My cheeks flush thinking about it. Anna is going to kill us if she ever finds out what we’ve been up to in her kitchen.

“And he’s not bitching that there’s no coffee?” Gunnar goes to the coffee maker and gets that going.

“I sent him to the market to get some powdered sugar.”

“Oh, Darlin’, don’t you know I can give you all the sugar you need?” Cruz winks at me from the blender.

Everyone but me groans. I blow Cruz a kiss.

Diesel’s hands are back on my ass.

“Deez, I need you to resist while I’m holding a hot skillet.”

“Oh, baby, but how can I when you’re in those little shorts?” He’s behind me again, and whispers in my ear. “Especially since I’ve had my cock buried inside this fine behind–”

“Okay!” I announce. I’m sure I’m beet red. “I’m going to change into something with more coverage.”

“Noooo!” at least three or four of them chorus.

“Don’t let my bacon burn. I’ll be right back.”

I get to my room and lock the door behind me before any of them can sneak after me and follow me in for a morning quickie. Not that I’d say no. But I really don’t want to wind up permanently bow-legged from too much sex.

I’m in a t-shirt but haven’t gotten my overalls on yet when my phone starts ringing.

I glance at the display. It’s Lexie our manager.

“Hey, Lex,” I answer. Then I say as kindly as possible, “If you are calling to try to get me to do some kind of 1 Girl, 10 Hammer spinoff, please don’t.”

Max and I talked about it at length last night and eventually, he and Mason do want to do another show, but it’ll be some kind of home improvement show. Definitely not anything to do with our personal lives. He and Mace both formally backed out of Who Wants To Marry A Hammer Brother? before even writing their letters to me.

“I’m not calling to try to get you to do anything, Win,” Lexie sounds extremely flustered, but I mean, that’s kind of on brand for her. “Well, yeah, actually I am. I need you to convince Max and Mason to say they were out of their damn minds and obviously didn’t mean it when they decided to back out of the new show!”

Uh, yeah, not happening, babe.

“Max and Mason are big boys, Lexie. They do what they want.”

“Well, the consequences are not going to be pretty!” she screeches.

“They are well aware that they’re in breach of contract and there’s going to be financial–”

“We’re not talking about financial shit, Win. We’re talking about something money can’t fix. The guys are going to be blacklisted from the entertainment industry. They’ll be lucky if they can get a gig on a freaking local morning show after this. The project was moving very quickly and both the production company and studio are out for blood over Max and Mason backing out.”

I sit down on the bed. “Oh, boy.”

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