AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not being nice to you. I’m allowing you to hear Maggie explain things in person, so I don’t have to repeat them to you later.”
She wrinkles her nose as she grins, an expression that’s weird and also adorable. “And you’re being nice.”
“I told you to shut up,” I remind her.
“But you didn’t really mean it, and you don’t have angry eyeballs anymore,” she says, hopping out of bed and sashaying toward the bathroom in her bare feet, reminding me how short she is.
Such a little wolf…such a giant pain in the ass.
But my thoughts are tinged with affection and my tone is mild as I say, “You have ten minutes, short stack. If you’re not dressed and in the kitchen by the time I finish a cup of coffee with my sister, I’m leaving without you.”
“Done! Fastest shower ever!” She dashes into the bathroom and slams the door.
A beat later I hear the water turn on and a soft curse and a thu-da-dump against the wall as Willow apparently injures herself in her haste to get ready.
I stand smiling at the closed door for a second.
Then I mentally slap the grin off my stupid face and head back into the kitchen to yell at my sister for removing the listening devices I planted in her room.
Yes.
Smiling is bad.
Yelling is good.
Yelling will help remind me that there’s no room in my life for someone like Willow, even if she can occasionally be rather…lovely.
Chapter Eleven
Willow
Two hours later, I’m in nerd heaven.
Even hearing Maggie explain all the ways the shit could hit the fan for Maxim and me in the near future can’t kill my knowledge buzz.
And the smell of all the old books in the treasure room?
Swoon.
I want to bottle the scent and dab it on my wrists every morning. I pull in another deep breath and hold it, trying to memorize every note of the aroma.
Beside me at the large table, Maxim grunts and mutters, “You have a problem.”
“I do not,” I say, turning back to the photocopies Maggie made for me and circling the sentence that caught my attention before I was distracted by library nasal porn.
“If library smell was a drug, you’d be wasted by now,” Maxim mutters in faux irritation.
He’s resorted to faking being annoyed with me, a development that I’m finding strangely…delightful.
He wants to loathe me, but somehow, I’ve broken through the Maxim ice again. This morning I’ve seen glimpses of the man I met at the theater, the charming, intelligent, funny person who made me want to get closer to him, to learn more about him, to bask in the glow of his undeniable magnetism.
And to let him do filthy things to me on his living room floor…
I could still fall for him.
It’s a shocking realization. I thought that night in his study and everything that happened after had killed that spark, but it’s still here. Maxim is a complicated man, and not always a kind one, but in moments like these, when I catch a glimpse of who he is deep down inside…
I would swear that he’s good.
