Page 2 of Playing Mr. Perfect

“Please don’t hold the reports until I get back. I don’t want to get behind,” I say to my empty hotel room as I lean over my laptop and reply to an email from one of my employees, Min Zhao, a brilliant medical engineer. I swear owning a research and development company requires forty-eight hours in each day. I don’t like taking time off work, but my siblings pressured me into coming to Paris with them to support my twin, Sable, the lead singer for Surge, on her international concert tour. Now that I’m here, I’m glad I came, but work won’t stop because I’m on vacation.

A knock sounds at my door.

“Pepper, open up!” Brindle hollers. My youngest sister is about as patient as a gust of wind. I open my mouth to respond, and she knocks again. “Pepper!”

“Hold on,” I call out as I type.

“Move your butt, Pep!” Brindle demands. “We’re going to be late.”

“Give her a second,” Amber, always the mediator, says.

“She’s had hours,” Brindle complains.

“The guys are waiting for us downstairs,” Morgyn chimes in, in Brindle’s defense.

I huff out a breath, trying to tune them out as my fingers fly across the keyboard. I’m used to tuning out my younger siblings. I love them dearly, but I know once I open the door, they’ll sweep me into their chaos and I won’t have another chance to think clearly all night.

“Hey, Pep!” our only brother and the youngest of our brood, Axsel, yells. “Is that guy who tried to pick you up last night in there?”

As if I would sleep with some guy I barely know? Axsel knows me better than that, but I can’t help smiling as I type, because while I’m thrilled that I’ve had the last couple of days with my siblings, I’m especially happy to have had that time with Axsel. As the lead guitarist for the band Inferno, his schedule is insane, and we don’t see him often enough.

“Yeah, right,” Brindle says, her laughter carrying through the door.

Tension tightens across my shoulders as I click send on the email and then stalk over and open the door. Four sets of eyes land on me. Brindle’s are filled with impatience, Morgyn’s shimmer with happiness, Amber’s are apologetic, and Axsel’s smirk reflects in his eyes like trouble waiting to happen.

“About time,” Brindle snaps, strutting past in a black leather jacket over a concert T-shirt, a red suede miniskirt, and black boots, with her blond hair pinned up in a highly teased ponytail. She looked more like a college student than a high school English teacher and mother of a toddler.

“Sorry. I was working,” I say as the others file in.

“You’re in the City of Love,” Morgyn says as she breezes by. “You’re supposed to be having fun, falling in love with this romantic city, and forgetting about real life.” Her fair hair is loose and wild over the shoulders of her bejeweled green velvet jacket, which she’s paired with jeans that are ripped and patched strategically. She embellished both items of clothing herself—proof of her incredible creative side, which I’ve always been a little envious of. Morgyn could make a paper bag beautiful.

I’ve been in Paris for two days and have yet to see what’s so romantic about it.

“Is everything okay with your project?” Amber asks gently. She looks sexy in leopard-print leggings, a black turtleneck, and matching boots. Her brown hair falls halfway down the back of her black cropped jacket. She never would have worn a curve-hugging outfit like that before falling for her husband, Dash.

Amber would worry all night if she knew I was stressed about work, and I don’t want to stress her out for fear of exacerbating her epilepsy, so I lie. “Yes, it’s fine.”

“Work, my ass. Fess up, sis. Where’s the hottie hiding?” Axsel plants a hand on the hip of his leather pants, his shaggy dark hair trapped beneath a backward baseball cap, the ends curling around his ears. The sleeves of his long-sleeve black shirt are pushed up, revealing the tattoos he’s accumulated over the last few years.

“You think I’d let you near any man I’m interested in?” Axsel was handsome, gay, charismatic, and a shameless flirt with all men. “I made him climb down from the balcony.”

Axsel laughs. “Smart move.”

“If only it were true,” Brindle exclaims. “I’d love to believe Pepper cut loose, but the evidence says otherwise.”

“Evidence?” Amber asks.

Oh, Amber, why couldn’t you just let it go?

“The laptop is open,” Brindle points out. “The bed is perfectly made, and there’s no way a man’s fingers were in that perfectly combed hair of hers.”

I roll my eyes. Brindle has owned and flaunted her sexuality since she was old enough to understand the power behind it. She mostly only used it on her now-husband, Trace Jericho, who she’s been in a relationship with since she was fourteen, but compared to her and Sable, I might as well be a nun. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I’m just careful and private.

“Your pinched expression says it all,” Brindle says. “If you got a few good Os, you’d be grinning like a fool.”

I can’t even remember the last time I had an orgasm from a man. “Not everyone thinks about sex all the time.”

“They don’t?” Axsel asks with a baffled expression.