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“Bullshit, Row. I saw it the moment I walked in. You might as well have pissed a circle around the poor girl. Good for you, dude. She’s gorgeous. She’s got that southern sweetness thing going on.”
My head felt like it was about to explode. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I sighed. “Can we not talk about my assistant and get back to the reason why you’re here?”
“Can’t a man stop in to say hey to a family member once in a while?”
“Not when that man lives to annoy the ever-living fuck out of me,” I answered.
“Fair enough,” he responded, the grin on his face slowly leaking away, turning Griffin’s usually carefree features into something much more serious. My hackles went up instantly. Griffin Locklaine rarely did serious, as he always said he had enough serious shit to deal with when it came to his job with the NYPD. He worked to keep his personal life as stress-free as possible.
“What’s up?”
“Man,” he huffed, running a hand through his shaggy brown hair. “You know I try my best to stay outta shit. I’m neutral all around, you know that. But I got a call from Aunt Marie a couple days ago.”
My head fell back on a groan. I knew my mother wasn’t giving up about getting me to reconcile with my brother, but to pull Griffin into our fucked up mess was just low. “Fuck,” I hissed out. All of a sudden, the dull headache I’d been feeling at the start of our conversation turned into a sharp, piercing pain.
“This isn’t something you’re going to be able to ignore, Row,” Griffin stated, causing anger to surge through me.
“I know you aren’t actually suggesting I talk to that motherfucker,” I gritted out.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Of course not! Look, I get your anger, man, I do. What Rich did wasbeyondfucked up, and I’d be the last person to tell you to kiss and make up. I didn’t come here to lecture you. I came to give you a heads up.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. “A heads-up about what?”
Griffin fell back in the chair with a heavy breath, running a hand through his hair in agitation. “Aunt Marie called me to try and talk some sense into you, but I told her it was your business and I wasn’t getting in the middle of it. She was pissed, no doubt about it, but she didn’t push.”
“Then why are we talking about this, Griff?”
“Because I got a call from Rich a few days later. He’s coming to the city, Row.”
It was like a band of screaming toddlers had taken up residence in my skull and were all beating on drums. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!” Fury I hadn’t felt in years took root in my chest, setting everything aflame. I moved to New York to get the fuckawayfrom Connecticut so I could escape them. And he had the nerve to invade my territory?Fuck. That.
“I’m just the messenger. Believe me, this is the last thing I wanted to come here to tell you. He claims he needed to get away after the split. Apparently, the divorce was less than amicable—”
“What a fucking shocker,” I interrupted sarcastically.
“He took a transfer to his firm’s New York office. He’ll be here within a month.”
My elbows hit the desktop, my head falling into my hands as I tried to grasp the fact that, once again, my brother and I would be sharing the same city… something I never wanted to do again. We’d shared everything growing up—toys, clothes, a bedroom. You name it, we shared it; the plight of being a twin. One thing I never expected us to share, however, was women. I never expected the woman I was head over heels for to crush my heart by betraying me with my own brother. But what hurt worse was that Richard, my flesh and blood, mytwin, didn’t hesitate when Bree found her way into his bed.
I raised my head when I heard Griffin stand from his chair. “Look, I know it’s just another in a long line of fucked up situations, but think of it this way. New York isn’t small, Row. The odds of you ever running into him are slim to none. You don’t run in the same circles, your career paths don’t cross. You’re probably never even gonna see the guy.”
I knew Griff was trying to find the silver lining in the shit storm that was my life, and I appreciated the hell out of him for it, but I just couldn’t find it in me to look at things with the same optimism.
“Let’s get shitfaced tonight,” he offered. “I’ll call up Dex, see if he can join us, and we’ll make a night of it. What do ya say?”
Dex was my best friend from college and Griffin’s partner at the NYPD. The three of us were closer than my brother and I had ever been. A night out sounded like just the thing I needed to push all thoughts of Richard out of my head. “Yeah… yeah, that sounds great. Let’s do it. Call him and see if his wife’s willing to unshackle him for one night.”
Griffin’s carefree smile returned. “I’m telling Wendy you said that,” he teased.
“You do that and I’ll tell her about the strippers you hired for his bachelor party,” I returned. We loved to give Dex a hard time about being the only one of us to be tied down, but the truth was we loved Wendy. She was exactly what he needed to keep him on the straight and narrow.
Griffin had just opened his mouth to respond when a husky, seductive laugh echoed from the living room.
Ah, hell.
I rolled my eyes as Griffin’s head whipped toward to office door. “Pepper’s here?” he asked, turning back to me, a gleam in his eye that could mean nothing but trouble. As a favor to Dex, I’d hired his sister, Pepper, to be my personal stylist when she first started trying to open her own store. Pepper lived and breathed clothing and was in desperate need of cash to get started. I didn’t have the first fucking clue what to do with a personal stylist, but I had money to spend and Pepper was just as much family to me as Dex was. She wouldn’t just take a check, so I did the only thing I could. I came up with a bullshit job for her to do so she wouldn’t feel guilty about taking my money.
Turned out, the decision paid off pretty damn well. I never had to buy any of my own clothes, or suffer the torture that was retail shopping, and Pepper had a fantastic eye. It was the perfect arrangement. And it seriously helped that Pepper wasn’t like most other women. There really wasn’t any drama where she was concerned.
