Power Drilled (Roommates, #8)(21)

“I’ll talk to Hunter before you go. He’ll be on his best behavior.” Jackson chuckled softly, and the sound was intimate in the dark. “Which isn’t all that good, but just remind him to act like Reid.”

“Let’s hope I remember to call him that.”

“Yeah, that would be a good start. And maybe it’s best not to mention our last name.”

“Okay.” I cocked my head to the side, trying to think if I even knew their last name. It wasn’t on any of their social media channels. “What is it?”

Jackson laughed. “Hartley. Well, that’s one of our last names.”

“You have more than one?”

“We do. Our mom’s into genealogy, so she named each of us for a last name on the family tree. So our ancestors had the surnames of Jackson, Hunter, and Reid.”

Huh, I hadn’t thought about that. “That’s a cool naming concept.”

“Yeah, it works for us.”

“Why don’t you want my family to know your last name?”

“Because then they’d look us up and figure out there are three of us.”

“But isn’t it possible that I’m dating a guy who has two identical brothers.”

“You are,” Jackson insisted. “The official story is that you’re dating Reid, and he has two brothers. But again, we’re not going to volunteer information. It’s probably easier to keep our story straight if we don’t talk too much about ourselves or have your friends and family look us up and ask a bunch of questions.”

And I didn’t particularly want to talk about myself and the recent crappy events in my life, either. So, I guess we’d spend a lot of time talking about the weather.

“It’s a left here, right?”

“Right. I mean, correct.”

He pulled into my parking lot and killed the engine. “Should I wait here or come on up?”

“Can you come up? I have a lot I need to bring with me.”

Jackson gave a theatrical sigh. “You’re one of those kinds of women?”

Ignoring the slight on my gender, I nodded. “In this case I am. I need my laptop and editing equipment, plus enough clothes and toiletries for a week.”

“Right, I forgot you’ll need all your stuff for the wedding events.” His forehead wrinkled. “I guess we will, too. Suits and dress shirts and that kind of thing.”

“Only one of you needs to bring nice clothes,” I pointed out.

He grinned. “Now you’re getting the hang of it.” He opened his car door but put his hand on mine to stop me from doing the same. “Wait right there.”

What, did he think he was going to gain access to my apartment without me? But then he appeared at my window and opened my door. “Thanks.”

“Reid always opens doors for women. Might as well start practicing now.”

That made Reid and my ex extremely different from each other—thank goodness.

Jackson waited on my loveseat while I gathered what I thought I’d need. Although he wasn’t a giant of a man, he looked unnaturally large in my small studio apartment.

His eyes grew wider as the pile by the door grew. “What’s that?” he asked when I brought out a huge garment bag.

“My bridesmaid’s dress.” He looked so curious that I almost offered to show it to him, but we were in a hurry. We probably wouldn’t even get back to the house until midnight, and Jackson had already warned me that they’d start work tomorrow at dawn.

“And your cousin is a bridesmaid, too?”

I had a lot of cousins, but I knew which one he meant. “Yeah.”

His silence seemed to speak volumes, and I felt the need to stand up for the bride. “It’s not Claire’s fault. She doesn’t approve of what Tanya did, but they’re sisters. I never expected Claire to uninvite her sister no matter how mad I was.” Though mad had come later. First had been hurt. Major hurt.

“I get it,” he said when I emerged from the bathroom with a bag full of toiletries. “My younger brother can be a screwup sometimes, but I’ll always have his back.”

I frowned “How many brothers do you have?”

“Just the two.” For a moment, he looked confused, but then his expression cleared. “I meant Hunter.”

“But you’re triplets. You can’t be more than an hour older than him, can you?”

“Minutes older. Just like Reid is minutes older than me.”

“Minutes?” I repeated.

“Nearly all triplets are delivered by C-section. Our birth order was determined by which one of us the doctor grabbed first.” He crossed his long legs at the ankle and leaned back on my couch. “But somehow, over the years we fell into the pattern of older and younger. Reid’s the oldest, he’s the responsible one. Hunter’s the youngest, and he’s the wild child.”

“And you?”

“Classic middle child syndrome,” he said.

“Are you the peacemaker?”

“Sometimes.”

Fifteen minutes later, Jackson probably felt like more of a pack mule than a peacemaker. “Is that everything?” he asked, after our third trip to his car.

“I think so.”