Sharon narrowed her eyes at her as Angel sat up a little bit straighter, hazel eyes alight with interest.

“Oh yeah? What’s going on with you and Jake?”

“The usual,” Sharon insisted, sticking her tongue out at Leigh. “He was a dick and took it too far, so he came out to apologize. I went home. I don’t know why he didn’t go back inside; you’d have to ask him.”

“Uh huh.” Angel gave her a look. “You know he’s totally got a thing for you, right?”

This was not a conversation she should be having.

Rolling her eyes, Sharon shrugged. “Then he’s got a shitty way of showing it.”

Total lie. She got why he’d been a dick last night. If she’d thought he was fooling around with another woman before going home with her... Yeah, she wouldn’t have reacted well either. But it wasn’t like either of these two knew anything about that.

They were just fishing for information.

“The Stronghold gossip train is already up and running this morning, huh?” she asked, making a face. The whole group could be worse than a bunch of old ladies sometimes, men included. Heck, sometimes the men were worse gossips than the women. Before she’d become a part of this group, Sharon hadn’t realized exactly how gossip-y men could be. The Stronghold Doms were tightly knit and it showed in how fast news spread among them.

“Just people making sure I’m in the know,” Angel said, blinking sleepily as she grinned at Sharon.

Uh huh. Sharon saw a lot of future competition for being the first to update Angel and Adam on any juicy gossip. She and Jake were going to have to conduct themselves more carefully if they didn’t want their friends butting in.

Planning Lexie and Patrick’s engagement party wasn’t really something Jake was interested in, but he found himself sitting through a planning session anyway - mostly because once the topic started over dinner, his mom wasn’t about to let it go. He was absolutely willing to help out, but he’d rather just be told what to do, rather than involved in figuring out what they were going to do. His dad was the same way, and tended to grunt when asked for an opinion.

Not surprisingly, Patrick - control freak that he was - jumped right into being involved. Lexie was interested but not particularly picky about any of it. Watching their dynamic always made his lips twitch, especially because right now Patrick was trying very hard to make sure Lexie had everything the way she liked it, while Lexie didn’t care as much as Patrick did about the gritty details.