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But kissing her felt like someone had flipped a switch to set my brain on fire. It wasn’t supposed to make me feel that way—like I could spend the rest of my life collecting memories with her. Like every smile and moment could be a prized possession. Like she could be the prized possession—the one to permanently take away my itch to look for anyone else.
I stopped outside my little sister’s place once I’d dropped off Elizabeth. Kenzie had gone on to become a successful author, along with her husband, Sebastian St. James. That meant the two of them were usually out of the state, if not the country. But they were typically in the city for winter, which meant I could drop by Sebastian’s mansion to bug them.
The bastard lived way out of town, but I knew the route by now. I detoured to pick up my cat, Mr. Meatball, because I’d originally kidnapped him from Sebastian’s house. I liked to bring Mr. Meatball to the mansion so he could roam his old stomping grounds while I visited my sister.
Kenzie had her one-month-old daughter, Abigail, in her arms when I came in.
“Hey there,” I said, giving Abigail the obligatory barrage of kisses on her big, bald head. She giggled and cooed until Kenzie swatted me away from the two of them, laughing.
“How did you know?” Kenzie asked.
“How did I know what?”
Sebastian came from the kitchen with a little baby pit bull in his arms. The little puppy squirmed at the sight of me, pumping its stubby legs in an attempt to air-run. It wanted to come lick me. Of course it did. Animals and I always shared an immediate, mutual bond.
“Oh God,” I said. I fell to my knees and motioned for Sebastian to let it go. With a sigh, the big man released the puppy and let it run to me. Babies were cute, but it was hard to beat a wiggly, floppy puppy.
Eventually, we headed out back to let their puppy, Minnie, out back to take a leak.
I got comfortable in one of their pool chairs with Abigail and a few of her favorite teething toys. Kenzie and Sebastian sat to my right. My sister was one of those people who occasionally dyed her hair a crazy color. She’d go through phases with it where it was a new color every month, and then suddenly she’d be back to her natural light brown as if nothing ever happened. Today, she was going with a kind of silvery gray color that blended to a dark purple at the ends.
Sebastian was the type of guy that stole other people’s girlfriends without trying. He just had one of those faces. All sorts of chiseled with eyes cut from blue steel, yada yada. He was also supposedly a world-famous author who wrote some book everybody and their grandma had read. I wasn’t much of a book man, but I took my sister’s word for it when she told me it was good.
Personally, I liked the guy. He treated my sister well, and that got him a pass from me. It didn’t hurt that he let me keep Mr. Meatball, too. Sebastian may try to play it off like he didn’t care about the cat, but every time I brought Mr. Meatball for visits, I caught the two of them bonding when they thought nobody was looking.
“Seriously, how did you know we got a puppy?” Kenzie asked.
“And no,” Sebastian said. “You can’t have it.”
I held my palms up in innocence. “I’m at full capacity right now. Besides, I’ve got plenty on my plate without trying to acquire another pet.”
“Acquire a pet?” Sebastian asked. “Does that sound better to you than stealing another pet?”
Someone was still sore about the brief, totally innocent catnapping incident last year, it appeared. “Yes, it does,” I said. “And I had no idea you got a puppy. I just wanted to come visit my niece and see two of my favorite people. Is that so suspicious?”
“A little,” Kenzie admitted. She was sitting cross legged on the pool lounger and keeping half an eye on Minnie, who was deep enough in a bush that only her butt was visible at the moment along with her stumpy, wagging tail. “You don’t visit that often.”
“Alright, the cat’s out of the bag. Actually,” I said, noticing Mr. Meatball padding out to the back patio. He crouched by the pool and started punching at his reflection, tilting his head every time he disturbed the water. “The cat is punching your pool.”
“Get to the point,” Sebastian said.
“Sebastian,” Kenzie scolded. She gave his thigh a little squeeze, and the iron in his eyes softened to something a little less cold and hard—like ice cream fresh out of the freezer. Still cold. Still hard. But if you brought the right tool, you could still manipulate it.
