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“You bought her shoes?” Riese asks with a giggle.
“Were you drunk?” Carter vanishes off-screen, only to return with her phone, and she starts tapping away. “It’s not legal. She took advantage of you.”
“We were both sober.” Not exactly, but I’m not going to debate that with Carter. I need to get her on my side before Grandfather finds out. “It was legal, and no she didn’t take advantage of me. Fiona wouldn’t do something like that.”
“How long have you even known this woman? A day? Why is this the first I’m hearing about her?”
“She wouldn’t do that,” I repeat.
“I’ll wait until tomorrow to tell you ‘I told you so’ then. Mase…” On-screen, Carter shakes her head in resignation. “What do you need me to do?”
“I don’t know.” Asking her to tell Grandfather seems cowardly but oh, so tempting.
“What do you wantmeto do, Mase?” Riese asks, for once her gentle voice making me more uptight.
“I don’t know that either!” My voice rises. “Maybe try to be happy for me?”
“Happy?” Carter snorts. “Brother, dear, your libido has already cost this family several million dollars, and this is only going to make it worse. How am I supposed to be happy about that?”
A noise at the door has my heart sinking right into the toilet I’m sitting on. Holding my breath, I reach out and open it slowly.
Fiona stands there, her eyes wide and clearly listening to every word.
Chapter Twenty-One
Fiona
“Whatareyoudoing?”I breathe.
“Fee.”
Clearly, Mase is doing something he thinks would upset me, because he’s sitting on the toilet behind two closed doors, FaceTiming someone.
I woke up alone, and after last night, I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with Mase and when I heard him talking… “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” I say stiffly.
“Wait.” He reaches for me, but I back away. “Fiona. These are my sisters.” He turns the phone to me, and I get a flash of faces before it’s gone. “I’ll talk to you later,” he says to the screen. “Not a word.”
“You need to call me,” a disembodied voice orders before he ends the call.
“Fiona… The walls in this place suck.”
I back away, the tile on the bathroom floor cold against my feet. The room is half the size as the one in Mase’s room, but just as nice with the glass door on the shower and halo of lights above the mirror. Everything is white and gold and very pretty, and the walls seem to be closing in on me.
But I stop myself from running. I stopped running to men years ago, and I’m not about to start running away from them, not when I want answers.
“You called your sisters,” I state. When I heard the voices coming from behind the door, my first thought was that he was talking to Emelia or one of the women from the club. I’m glad it was his sisters, but I’m not happy he was no doubt telling them about our marriage.
I thought we had agreed to keep it quiet.
Which means Mase makes rules he has no intention of following. “I thought we were waiting to tell people.”
“I had to give them a heads-up.” He flinches at his reply. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You obviously did,” I say coolly. “If you had to warn them, then you think they won’t like me.”
With every mention of his sisters, Mase has conveyed his closeness with them, so it’s a sharp slap at the thought of them not liking me. His family sounds difficult—scary even—but I thought. with his sisters on my side, I’d be able to handle it.
“Of course, they’ll like you,” Mase tries to assure me. It might be more effective if I thought he believed what he’s saying. “They’ll love you. Riese is excited to meet you.”
