“You should pour it readily and heavily if we’re going to have this conversation,” I admitted with a sigh.
Marilyn grinned. “Oh, yes, I suspect we’re going to need a lot of wine.” She began walking toward my bedroom door. “I’m going to go get glasses and drool all over that man again. I’m also going to put together a cheese platter to balance out the sugar.” She nodded her head at the snacks covering my comforter which Sirius was sniffing thoughtfully. “I know you well enough to know that you have the fixings for an excellent charcuterie platter in your fridge at all times.”
Marilyn did know me well enough to be right about that. Two things I always had in my fridge: ingredients for a charcuterie platter and French champagne. She knew me and my house well enough to leave and come back in twenty minutes with an excellent looking cheeseboard and two very generous glasses of wine.
I knew her well enough to know that it did not take her twenty minutes to pour wine and put together a cheeseboard. This was not her first rodeo.
I also knew her well enough to know that she loved men, hot men. And Hades was beyond hot. Fortunately, I also knew that she loved me more than she loved hot men, if only by a slim margin. She was protective. Behind the red lipstick, the perfectly curled, perfectly colored hair, the slim-cut red suit and rockstud Valentinos, she was a bad bitch. Certainly brave enough to take on someone like Hades if she thought he was a threat to me. It was very likely that she had given some threatening speech to him in the kitchen. On any other occasion, I might’ve grilled her about what she’d said to him, but Hades would not have been in my kitchen on any other occasion.
So instead of doing that, I took the glass of wine and waited for her to arrange our little feast on the bed, sneaking a slice of cheese to Sirius before I shooed him off my bed and back to his bed in the corner of the room.
Marilyn held up her glass. “To the super bad, super-hot, super scary biker and his team of equally super-hot and scary bikers finding that motherfucker and burning him alive,” she toasted cheerfully.
My stomach dropped ever so slightly at that visual and the prospect of Derek’s death weighing on my conscience for the rest of my life. But I gritted my teeth and clinked my glass to hers, taking a heavy swallow.
“Now’s the time to spill,” she informed me, picking at the Brie.
I took a breath, then another sip, and then I spilled.
And spilled.
Everything. From the night we met till now. Everything including my confusing feelings for the man. Including the fact that sometimes I thought he might have confusing feelings for me too. Except when it seemed like he didn’t; when it seemed like he didn’t like me at all.
“Holy fuck,” she uttered.
I nodded.
“Holy fuck,” she repeated.
I nodded again, as this entire situation really did warrant two holy fucks.
“I don’t know how it happened,” I admitted as she refilled my wine. The story had needed a lot of it. “I moved here because it’s small. Tranquil. Quiet. A place for me to settle. Peacefully. Where there’s no trouble.”
Marilyn quirked her brow. “Honey, you’re a stripper with an ass that won’t quit, moves that I’ve never seen before in my life and eyes that tell anyone looking that you’re a great fuck. On top of that, you’re a YouTube sensation, some kind of whiz with the stock market and make more in a year than a fucking surgeon.” She gulped her wine. “There’s no way you can exist anywhere in this world without at least a little trouble. And I’m not talking about the asshole who did that.” She nodded to my face, fire in her eyes. “I’m talking about that out there.” She pointed in the direction of the kitchen with her wine glass.
“But I don’t think he likes me,” I whined, hating the way I sounded. I also fucking hated that I was somehow still interested in whether a guy did or didn’t like me after what had happened to me last night.
“Honey, he likes you. He’s prowling around out there like a caged lion. You can feel it in the fucking air, his fury. I only know that because I’m plenty fucking furious too. And I love you. It’s only people who care about you that can get that mad about you getting hurt.”
I bit my lip. That made sense. At least a little sense. I’d been battling with why in the heck his reaction to this was so damn strong. Yes, Anderson had seemed pretty fucking pissed off, his normally casual expression turning rock hard, his eyes filled with rage. But he hadn’t demanded I move in with him and his pregnant girlfriend, nor had he been willing to move into my home with me.