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Being alone is a trigger for him, and we’re fortunate enough that he doesn’t have to be alone. He has me.
“I won’t,” I promise.
She hands me the champagne flutes and starts to fill them. “Good! Now… are you excited to meet the girls?”
I don’t know what I was expecting with “the girls,” but it definitely wasn’t Lucy and Megan.
The two girls live together. Lucy works in a dress shop designing custom-made outfits for some of London’s richest socialites. And Megan is a columnist for a women’s magazine.
“This. Is. Heaven,” Lucy mutters, her words slightly muffled from her head being face down on the massage table.
“I’ve not had a massage in years,” I tell her, my eyes glued to the paintbrush as it glides across my big toe. The therapist smiles at our bliss-filled conversation.
I was nervous about what we’d be doing when we arrived at my brother’s penthouse to a sea of balloons—and what looked like an entire spa set up in the sitting room—but after a full-body massage and a couple of glasses of champagne, I couldn’t have planned a better day for myself.
“Thank you, Mason Lowell,” Megan hums in appreciation. “Nina, does being a stubborn fool and paying for your own treatments get you out of sexual favours? Or…”
“Piss off, bitch!” Nina tosses a discarded gel eye mask at her friend. It lands on the underside of her arm before dropping to the hardwood floor.
“Eww! Nina, no.”
“Leave me alone then.”
“You paid? I thought Mason was—”
“He is.” Nina nods, rolling her lips as if she’s embarrassed or uncomfortable. Both make me want to drop it. “I like to pay for things like this myself. He paid for everything else today. The food and decorations.”
“Oh.” I’ve never had to worry about money. I don’t work, and yet I have thousands of pounds transferred into my bank monthly. The idea that Nina’s financially independent seems like such a monumental thing to me. I nudge her arm. “There’s something to be said for a woman who can do it alone.”
“Exactly, and it feels more rewarding this way. I work hard to have days like this,” she says as if trying to reassure herself.
“I work hard,” Megan pipes up. Nina rolls her eyes. “I also have nice thingsandsnap gazillionaires’ hands off when they offer up spa days and all-you-can-eat catering. I don’t even have to put a penis in my mouth. Work smart, not hard, girls.”
“Megan,” Nina warns.
I chuckle as Megan sits up from her massage bed. “You know I’m messing with you.”
“Yeah, well, pick on someone a little less sensitive.”
They all laugh between themselves, and I sit and watch them with a smile on my face.
“How was dinner last night?” Lucy asks Nina. “I mean, I know it was to meet the family and Scarlet is here, but any details we should know?”
“It was incredible. The house—” Nina turns to look at me. “Is it even a house? What do you call it?”
“I normally just say the estate, but I guess it’s a manor house.”
“You live on an estate?” Lucy rises from the bed, wrapping a towel around her chest. She thanks the masseuse and then hops down to grab one of the platters of food before getting back up to sit on the massage table.
“I do. You girls will have to come out and see it with Nina at some point. It could do with some new faces.”
“It’s out of this world, girls. Peaceful and full of life.”
I huff out a laugh under my breath, knowing the girls won’t catch it. It’s not funny, not really. But it’s a little ironic to me that Nina can spend a couple of hours at the estate and see everything I do, yet my brother, who was born and raised there, can’t stand the thought of the place. He certainly wouldn’t say that it wasfull of life.
“Do you have a title, Scar?” Lucy asks, her brows pulling together as she thinks on it.
“She’s not a fucking royal, Luce.” Megan snorts, shaking her head at her friend. “Lady Scarlet of Lowerwick.”
