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“It’s your name.”
Her lips flattened into a hard line. “It’s on my birth certificate. That doesn’t make it my name, Nicholas.”
I grinned as I tossed my keys in the air and caught them easily. “Nice try, but my name doesn’t bother me.”
She raised her chin with smug delight. “But it bothers you when I call you Saint N—”
“Don’t start that shit, Charlie.” Irritation spiked my blood, and I shoved my fingers through my hair to keep from strangling her.
She’d gotten it in her twisted little head years ago that I was some sort of paragon of virtue. I wasn’t. I just wasn’t obvious about my recreational activities.
“Saint Nick is so dreamy. He’s so smart.”
Chance said not to fuck her. He didn’t say I couldn’t strangle her.
A rogue image flashed in my mind of my hand curled around her throat, her eyes glazed over… Jesus, okay, so ‘fuck’ and ‘strangle’ were clearly two verbs that didn’t belong anywhere near each other in my head.
This was all Chance’s fault. He’s the one who’d brought up fucking her and inadvertently planted some sort of subliminal spank bank inspiration in my psyche.
The prick.
“The star player on every team. Le sigh. When he walks by, I just can’t help but go tits up, ready for Saint Nick to—”
“Your parents should have spanked you.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and squinted at the sudden pain throbbing in my skull.
“Aww, picturing me getting spanked. That’s not very virtuous, Saint Nick.”
Gritting my teeth, I took a step toward her. A menacing step. Every bit of frustration from the past week at my job colliding with the mouthy pain in the ass standing before me.
The snarl that rose from my throat had her hands up and surrendering… well, as much as Charlie surrendered to anything.
“Okay, easy… Don’t no need to tarnish that halo or anything. I just thought you might want to know that your parents arrived with your favorite blond parasite, Mariah Quinn.”
“You’re lying.”
She crossed her arms and casually leaned against my car. “Nope, pretty boy. She looked straight out of Saks and ready to pin you under her lethal-looking Jimmy Choo until you agree to put a ring on it.”
“I’d rather eat dirt.”
“That’s what I thought, so I figured I’d do you a favor so you can avoid that fate.”
“A deal with the Devil sounds like better odds.”
One long weekend with Mariah, as a favor to my mother, and I hadn’t shaken her since. A cool and collected classy package on the outside, but pure venom pumped with cruel glee in her frigid heart.
She had zero chance at ever being anything to me. If she sank that heel into my chest, I’d bleed out before I’d give in to a life of poison.
Charlie branded me a saint, but I’m not. I just value kindness and respect. If you’re in my circle, I give it freely. Everyone I meet is in until they give me a reason to push them out.
She reached for her bag with a single shoulder shrug. “Okay. Well, good luck with Mariah. I’ll see you at the lodge. I’ll be the one with the popcorn.”
A soul-sucking weekend of tactical maneuvers with Charlie waiting in the wings to pile on the snark loomed before me. I choked back the bitterness of surrender and reached out to grasp her arm. “Wait. What are you thinking?”
She glanced up at me, her eyes sparkling with victory. “All we have to do is show up together and you won’t have to worry about fending off the ice queen.”
“We are showing up together.” I have to be out of my mind to even consider this. Our families are intertwined like a strand of DNA. Our mothers have successfully remained best friends for over forty years. This plan means a lifetime of those closest to us reminding us we were an item once.
She rolls her eyes. “I mean together. As in, as a couple.”
