Page 26 of Man Advantage

“Nothingyou twoshould try onyourteachers,” I warned, eying Cam.

“What?” He spread his hands, grinning like a jackass. “Do you really think I’d be a bad influence on your kids?”

“What’s a bad influence?” Zach asked.

“Oh my God,” I muttered. “Hey, why don’t we all get in the pool? It’s going to start getting cold soon, and you’ll be at school, so you won’t have as much time to swim.”

That distraction worked like a charm. Both boys immediately took off up the stairs, probably to get changed.

“Well played,” Cam said.

I rolled my eyes and elbowed him. “You’re such a brat.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t know.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

He snickered, then gestured outside. “So are we swimming too?”

The thought of seeing him in shorts and nothing else sobered me right up, and I gulped. “Uh… Do you want to?”

“Are you kidding me? I haven’t been swimming in ages, and your pool is gorgeous!”

I laughed, thankful he couldn’t actually hear my heart going wild. “All right, all right.” I gestured at the stairs. “Go get your swim trunks on.”

When I came downstairs in my own swim trunks, the boys were waiting by the fence around the pool. Zane carried a couple of pool noodles, and Zach had a handful of weighted rings that could be retrieved off the bottom.

As I padded across the sun-warmed flagstones, I gestured at the rings. “Remember, you only use those when someone’s watching. Tell me or Cam before you start tossing them in, okay?”

Zach groaned and nodded. “Iknow, Dad.”

They both did, but I was never going to stop being extra careful where the pool was concerned.

I unlocked the gate, and the boys were in the water in two seconds flat. Zach had left the rings on the side, and they splashed and played in the shallow end while I sat on the edge with my feet in the cool water. As much anxiety as it gave me, having a pool with young kids, I loved watching them have fun in it. Now that the twins had gotten past a lot of their anxiety over being in the water, they couldn’t get enough of swimming.

In fact, with the colder months on the horizon, I needed to look into some facilities around Pittsburgh with indoor pools.The one we’d signed them up for last year had closed, but there had to be more that were?—

The sliding glass door opened and closed behind me, and I twisted around.

And… wow.

I did a double take as Cam stepped out onto the back deck.

Holy shit, you’re hot.

His ripped physique was on full display except for what was covered by a pair of blue and gray swim trunks. He had on dark sunglasses, too, though he left those on the table before jumping into the pool.

He’d taken out his nipple piercings, which I appreciated. I didn’t mind my kids seeing body modifications—their other dad had tattoos, after all, as did Chats and most of my teammates. But I really wasn’t ready for a call from my ex-husband about,“Tell me why our sons said you told them they could get their nipples pierced if I said it was okay?”

Though Bryan was probably wise to it by now, especially after“Dad said if it’s okay with you, we can get tattoos.”

Kids, man. What can you do?

“Cam!” Zane called out. “Do you want to dive for rings?”

“Rings?” Cam looked around, then zeroed in on the stack of weighted rings. “Sure!” He swam over and grabbed them. “Who wants to go first?”

And just like that, they were playing a game—tossing rings into the water (the shallow end, of course) and retrieving them off the bottom.

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