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Being in close confines with him couldn’t be easy, and I didn’t ever want her to feel like she couldn’t talk about it, or like she had to be nice for my sake. After what’d gone down, there’s no way she should be putting herself in that position.
Each time, she’d smile at me and explain she was an adult, and she was doing it because of that. She also didn’t ever want her nephews to feel uncomfortable with both of them around them, so she’d put it into a box, and was moving on. She kept a blatant distance between them by calling him Jaeger, though, almost like he was just another one of the Club.
I’d also spoken to Hunter and warned him not to upset her, but he’d just walked away after it, not saying anything back.
I will say, though, that I loved how well she got on with the rest of the Club. We’d continued our shooting lessons every day, and the men would come round to help her teach me, and it was like she was one of them. They joked that they shot shit while they shot the shit with each other.
She’d also brought her brother, a cop in New York, in to help with the problem. After he’d lost his mind over it all, he’d started helping out, finding out as much as he could about the people involved. Taras said they now had information and links they hadn’t had before, and they had a bigger picture of what was going on.
Her brother, Bauer, had also benefited from the relationship. He’d made numerous arrests, which had removed some of the power from the people Donna’s family was using to get at us all.
Bogdan knew that Taras had filled me in on some of it. He’d told me a few days ago, after they’d heard about the most recent arrests, that sometimes sharks and their prey swam together and lived in harmony, to outwit any other fish who’d try to target them if they swam alone. It was a weird analogy, but it made sense.
“Ben’s adorable,” Lena snickered. “But I wish he’d call me Lena, and not Selena. I keep expecting to turn around and see my parents looking at me like I’m dirt.”
“I feel you on that one. I rarely get called Penelope, and it sounds weird.”
“Eh,” she shrugged a shoulder, “coming from his mouth, I’ll tolerate it. He’s hotter than hell, so it’s a small price to pay.”
A noise from the doorway got my attention, and I looked over to see my brother watching us, his lips pressed tightly together. Lena was so involved in what she was looking at that she hadn’t seen him yet.
“I’m going to show you something you can’t tell anyone about.” She turned her laptop so I could see the screen, which also meant Hunter could see it.
“This is from the spring/summer line for next year, but I swear my nipples are going to pop over the top of those cups. I mean, it’s pretty and all, but Jesus, couldn’t they add like an inch?”
It looked like a bridal set, but a naughty one that’d make the man do whatever you asked him to.
“Do you have to wear the garter belt and stockings?”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “I’ll be modeling the white version for the release, and then there’s a black version that I’ll wear during fashion week, so they get a bigger idea of the range. Last year I had to wear a thong, but this year they’re saying the panties are Brazilian cut.”
I don’t know how she did it. If I had to walk down a runway with hundreds of people watching me and cameras pointing at my body, I’d crawl into a hole and die.
Then again, I’d carried two babies at the same time, and I didn’t look like her, so the likelihood of me even being asked would be slim to none.
“How do you do it, Lena?”
Still staring at what she was showing me, she asked absentmindedly, “Do what, honey?”
“How do you get up in front of all of those people and cameras, and walk around in underwear?”
Turning the laptop back around, she looked at the keyboard for a moment while picking at a nail. “To begin with, it was the hardest thing. I felt like people were going to say I was too fat, or just be assholes about it. Then I realized I didn’t care what they had to say, so I just decided to enjoy it.
“I get to wear clothes as well for the shoots and shows, and most of the people are amazing, so that helps. Some people wear suits and sit behind a desk, I walk around in things people haven’t seen yet and will end up wanting. Different folks, different strokes.”
She turned around to smile at me as she said the last word, and it slowly faded when she saw Hunter standing behind us.
