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The elevator took me directly to the last lobby in the building. I shuffled along to the penthouse elevator, which was a direct path to Travis’ apartment. If you asked me, penthouses were overrated. Who wanted to have to take two different elevators up to their place every day? If I ever landed the magical unicorn book deal and made my millions, it’d be a cute little cabin for me.
I pictured my dream cabin for the thousandth time while I waited for the elevator to take me up.
I’d want something small and cozy. A fire burning at my back, a window frosted at the edges in front of my desk. Outside, the snow would blanket everything and shut out all the noise. It’d just be me, my keyboard, and my stories. And maybe my latest male conquest sleeping the previous night off in my sheets.
I was grinning at that last addition until I pictured Sebastian St. James rolling out of my bed with messy hair and a wicked smile.
Nope. Bad fantasy.
I left the elevator and knocked on his door. “Travis! I’m here, asshole!”
My brother took his sweet time, shuffling toward me and yawning. He fumbled with the lock and pulled the doors open. Travis was tall, tattooed, blond-haired, and every woman’s worst nightmare.
Travis was also my worst nightmare because he had a knack for reading people. And with me, he’d had a couple decades of practice perfecting the art. He squinted at me, tilting his head.
“Stop that,” I said, pushing past him, hoping I could skip the part where he guessed what was on my mind. Just in case my idiot brother really could read my mind, I banished the image of Sebastian’s face inching toward mine at the conference.
“Stop what?” he asked easily. “Letting you into my place?”
“That would save me from having to talk to you.” I tossed my bag down by the front door and headed inside. I had to thread my way past two cats, a monitor lizard, some exotic flying squirrel looking thing, and a small dog with a massive head. “Why do half of these animals look new?”
“They are,” Travis said with a shrug. “Picked them up here and there.”
I shook my head. All it took was a glance around my brother’s place to see he was a collector of all things odd. Discarded, odd pets were probably his primary passion, but he also enjoyed collecting junk like broken bike wheels, dented trash can lids, and anything else that caught his questionable eye. “Do you even know what you’re supposed to feed a giant monitor lizard? Or if it’s okay to have it wandering around with your cats?”
“Are you serious? The cats love Rat.”
“You named a giant lizard ‘rat’?”
“And,” he said, ignoring my question. “Yes, I know exactly what to feed him because I looked it up on the internet.” Travis picked a piece of candy from a jar, popping it into his mouth and chewing. “Pet care. It’s not rocket science.” He knelt down and scratched the big lizard behind the ear holes. To my horror and disgust, it flipped its forked tongue out at him like it was giving kisses. Jesus.
“All they need is a little love,” he said.
I was still shaking my head when I flopped down on his couch. Penthouses may be overrated, but I had to admit I loved the view. We could see everything in the city laid out below us. I could almost imagine us drifting lazily along in some sort of ship above the clouds.
His Bengal cats climbed into my lap. One of them was notorious for punching anything that moved, which meant I had to stay deadly still if I didn’t want to get attacked.
“So, who’s the guy?” Travis asked. He sprawled out on the couch across from me, perceptive eyes digging little holes straight into my soul.
I groaned. “Is there even a point in claiming there’s not one?”
“Nope,” he said.
I briefly debated, then wound up unloading everything on my mind, minus the more sultry bits. It surprised me when it only took a minute or two to unload the entirety of my dilemma into his lap.
For all his faults, my brother was a good listener. He also never judged. Maybe that was why I always seemed to spill my secrets to him. “So you and this guy hooked up, but your feelings are hurt because it didn’t seem to mean as much to him as it meant to you?”
“Basically,” I admitted.
He spread his long arms out on the top of the couch, nodding wisely. “Guys can suck like that. Yep.”
“That’s all you’ve got for me?”
Travis shrugged. “Look, I’ll be totally honest with you. Guys really are just looking for a… uh,” he gestured, frowning as he formed some vague shape with his hands.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
