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Her plait lays across my blankets, the long, brown, almost-black locks glistening under the overhead lights.
Why is she asleep? How? She just walked in here two seconds ago!
“Christabelle?” I head into the room and cross to the bed, setting our wineglasses down on the closest nightstand. “You pretending to be asleep, Darling, all so you don’t have to eat the steak I made you?”
I set one knee on the bed, near her ribs, then my fist down beside her shoulder so her entire body gently rolls closer. “Christabelle? Honey? Use your words and tell me to go fuck myself. It’s only eight.Waytoo early to fake sleep.”
She groans when my weight makes her shift, then whimpers, hugging her legs tighter.
“You’re really committing to your act, then? This is it? You hardly had breakfast, you didn’t eat lunch, and now you’re faking your way out of dinner. Are youreallynot hungry? Because I feel like it’s my duty to feed my guests. Good manners, ya know?”
Her eyelids flutter, her lashes kissing the tops of her supple cheeks. But she doesn’t open them. She doesn’t give up on her ruse, no matter how embarrassing it is.
“Alright.” I drag my bottom lip between my teeth and consider.
Icould go down and eat. Fuck knows, my stomach rumbles after a long day at work. But I kinda want to stay here. Pull up a seat. Drink my wine and luxuriate in the breeze wafting in from outside.
I could read the paper—as in, explore further than Ms. Cannon’s piece on page one. Settle in for the night at a decent hour for the first time in… forever.
Maybe the first timeever.
Not nearly as irritated as I thought I might be at having this woman in my bed, I push off the mattress and snatch up one wineglass, then I dig my free hand into my pocket and take out my phone, since I don’t actually want to read the paper right now. I do, however, want a friend to talk to.
I’m a social being. I like people.
So fuckin sue me.
I take my phone and wine across my room, and setting the latter down, I grab my couch and spin it with a fast shove, my eyes shooting back to Christabelle when I think the sound of the legs grinding against the floor might wake her.
She stirs and moans. She hugs herself tighter. But she commits to her fakery and leaves me all alone.
Nothing to do. No one to talk to. Nothing to look at except her StairMaster ass from twenty feet away.
Situating my furniture and gripping my wine, I sit on the middle cushion and merely… watch her. Contemplate. Drink.
What the fuck am I supposed to do with the girl now that she’s here?What is my plan?
I honestly have no clue. Fuck her? Kill her? Smack her ass and tell her to stop talking about us?
Jesus.
I bring my wine up and take a long, slow sip. Then setting the base on my thigh, my hand still wrapped around the stem, I turn my phone over with the other and unlock the screen.
I have a call to make. A discussion to have. And luckily, it’s still early in Copeland, so I won’t be interrupting the newlyweds when they’re…busy.
Hitting dial, not on my brother’s name, but on that of his wife’s, I settle back into my sofa and smirk, knowing the chances of her answering are around two percent.
Unlike me, Minka Mayet doesnotlike people. And she most certainly doesn’t fight a daily urge to talk to them.
The call rings… and rings… and rings. Just when I think she might send me to voicemail, she answers, the roar of Copeland City traffic so loud in the background, I wonder if Ms. Cannon can hear it all the way across the room.
“Are you ringing because you desperately miss your little brother and want him to come home?” Minka asks hopefully.
I love her. I think I genuinely, truly, affectionately adore Minka Mayet. But of course, she went and married a different Malone, breaking my heart before I even knew who she was.
“Hey, Doctor-Do-Me-From-Behind. You’re sick of Cato already? He hasn’t been there long.”
“I’m sick of all men who carry the name Malone, you included. What do you want?”
