AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t know. Roy stopped her, but she’s insisting on coming, and she will whether I give her permission to or not. Roy’s not going to shoot her unless she becomes a threat to us, and since she’s not going to do that, he’s not scary enough to her for that to make any kind of a difference.”
To most people, Roy would be plenty scary. I narrowed my eyes. “Why are you dreading seeing her?”
“See the thing is—” The doorbell rang. “Okay.”
I didn’t know that I’d ever seen Michael as befuddled as he looked right then.He really doesn’t want to see her.
He walked to the door and opened it. “Sylvie, what are you doing here?”
He’d been friendlier to his mother and father, that was for sure. I could see her in the front door entrance with Roy right behind her. He raised his hand to wave at me just as Michael shut the door, letting Sylvie in and keeping Roy outside.Looks like Roy is in the proverbial doghouse.
The woman was stunning. Like, she could have been in those blogs and on magazine covers in New York instead of me kind of gorgeous. Long black hair fell in an ebony wave down her tall, statuesque body. Her shirt, with its spaghetti strap sleeves, showed she didn’t need a bra. They made clothes to dress someone like Sylvie. Her skirt—they’d call it a pencil type I was pretty sure—went with the shirt, and she wore heels to match the whole outfit. Surprisingly, when she looked at me, I noticed her eyes weren’t as dark as her hair and her outfit. Instead, they were a bright, glassy green.
“Michael.” She smiled and held his gaze a second too long for me to be comfortable. “I had to see you. I heard you got shot.” She walked further into the room. “And that you fled home to heal and to babysit Bridget Radford.” Sylvie sauntered over to me. “Oh look, here you are! Bridget, aren’t you adorable? All you Radford girls are, honestly. I’ve been in the same room with Layla and Hope many times.”
Why did people think that would be interesting to me? I put out my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
She shook my hand very fast and then dropped it. “Michael, I was so worried, but here you are, looking fit as a fiddle. I shouldhave known you’d be okay and wouldn’t need nursing from me. I even brought over my stethoscope, although I guess I left it in my other skirt.”
He sighed. “What do you want?”
“Oh, ignore him, Bridget. He’s so grumpy when he’s injured. Remember that time in Barcelona? You were a bear for weeks.”
Michael rocked back on his feet. “I don’t actually particularly remember that time.”
“And look at poor Bridget! Why, she looks almost like she’s been through awar. Do you not have a brush for her here? Or some real clothes, at least?” I glanced down, because I couldn’t even remember what I wore.Oh, the yoga pants and a pink t-shirt.I wasn’t wearing a bra, either, but my breasts weren’t as impressive as Sylvie’s. I never desired a brassiere so much as I did in that moment. “Please give her something to put herself together. I left a hairdryer the last time I was here, so surely she could use that. It’s under the sink in his bathroom.”
Message received. She’d been Michael’s lover. Her stuff was here in his bathroom. Maybe she still was and that was why he looked so off about her visit. We’d discussed STDs, but I forgot to ask about relationship status. His phone constantly blew up with offers, or it had when I’d been checking it in Germany.
“Why would you leave something here, Sylvie? It’s funny, because I distinctly remember telling you not to do so.”
My lips thinned when I realized he was basically trying to do damage control, but I could make it easy on him. I smiled what Hope once called myI don’t care aboutthis smile. My smile couldn’t be real, not when I hurt, but did I even have a right to be hurt? Since I didn’t, but the pain existed anyway, I would give them both the fake smile and be done with them.
“It was so nice to meet you, Sylvie. I’ll leave you and Michael to talk, and maybe I’ll use your hairdryer later. Thanks for the offer.”
I turned and left as Michael addressed me. “You won’t, because she’s leaving with it and anything else she left here.”
I closed the door to my room and stormed over to the mirror. Her assessment of me wasn’t wrong, sadly. I did almost look like I’d been through a war. What seemed so much like me being rumpled from great sex gave off deranged in the glaring light of day and without the magical glaze over the moment. How often did he see her for sex, I wondered? Did it matter? It wasn’t like I was a nun before we got together. At least he liked sex. Before yesterday, I only took lovers because I was dying to feel something, anything.
I ran my hands through my hair. It was so long. The same length as when I’d been a little girl, and it only got that length then because I didn’t like to bother with it. I just let it grow and grow until it was so long, I never had to think about it.
Their voices came through the door, but I ignored what they were saying and instead put on a bra. I tied my hair up, placed shoes on my feet—the same ones I’d been wearing in Russia—and left the room again. With a quick turn, I headed for the front door.
“Bridget, where are you going?” Michael called as I opened the front door. As I suspected, Roy still waited where Michael had left him.
“Out!” I responded. “Roy, is it safe for me to go to town? Is there anyone nearby who might want to kill me? I need to do something and get some things.”
Michael’s friend and employee blinked rapidly before he looked over my shoulder into the house. Finally, he nodded. “Sure. Nothing happening currently.”
“Great. Then please take me to town.” It was my turn to glance over my shoulder. “Enjoy your visit, Michael. Again, great to meet you, Sylvie. Now if anyone asks, you can say you’ve been in the room with all of the Radford girls.”
I closed the door behind me.
Roy had beennice to me thus far, despite the fact my shopping expedition clearly made him very nervous. He kept looking at his phone. Did I make the wrong choice? I left Michael in the house with a woman he’d obviously slept with—one who’d come, I had to believe, specifically to let me know that she was fucking him first.
I didn’t always speak girl well, but I understood Sylvie perfectly.
“Where would you like to go?” Roy finally asked me when I could see buildings in the distance.
