His gaze flicks to my lips, and just when I think I have him reeled in, a voice cuts through the sexual tension.
“I’d ask if you two wanted anything else, but it looks like you want to get your own dessert, so here’s the check,” the waitress says with a smile, putting down the slip of paper and smiling as she walks away.
Corbin snickers when I curse, and he throws down some cash before pulling me out of the booth.
“I need to change,” I tell him, pouting again.
He just rolls his eyes. “Fine. But I’ll wait in the car while you change. I don’t trust you now.”
He narrows his eyes playfully, but genius strikes.
“Actually… I think I know what triple dare I want to use.”
When the playful glean dissipates to make room for suspicion, my wicked grin forms. I have a feeling he’ll definitely cancel it now, or lunch will be very entertaining. Either way, I’ve just turned a lose/lose situation into a win/win with one triple dare.
Thank you, Britt, for the genius idea.
***
RUBY
“This is ridiculous,” he hisses as we get out of the car.
I’ve been laughing too hard to even be able to speak on the drive over here, but I have to get together my straightest face before his mother sees him.
“Then cancel,” I quip, trying and failing to master that straight face.
“I can’t! You know I can’t. Fuck my life; she’s going to flip out.”
“At least you don’t have to worry about the Stepford being interested,” I tell him, grinning like the Grinch on the night before Christmas.
I’m about to wreck the Sterling Christmas—figuratively speaking, of course.
“Please recant it so I can go wash all this shit off,” he begs, and I pat his cheek, patronizing him with that touch.
“You’re fucking evil,” he growls, which only makes me grin bigger.
“And you’re a sexy bitch. Work it, girl,” I tell him, mocking a random accent that really has nothing to do with the words.
He growls before stabbing the doorbell with more force than necessary.
The maid opens the door, as expected, but her eyes widen to the point I’m afraid they’ll pop out of her head. Her mouth falls, unhinged, too surprised to even laugh.
Quickly, she shakes her head and stutters, “Mr… Sterling… Sir… Um, your mother… is um… she’s in the… um…”
“I’ll find her,” Corbin grumbles, glaring over his shoulder at me as he stomps by her.
The horror on her face when she looks at me is priceless, and I wink at her while giggling my way through the door.
I follow him through the massive, ungodly home. I mean, who really needs this much space?
It’s like a museum in here—look but don’t touch. Everything in this place is worth more than my actual house.
Corbin takes a deep breath as we reach the large, double doors that lead to a cold, queen-like dining room.
“You still have time to back out,” I tell him, still grinning. “If not, don’t forget to strut. It’s part of the dare.”
He curses before opening the door, and I follow again, painfully holding back the laughter when he swishes his ass and struts like a woman on the prowl for a man all the way to the second dining room, where his mother and date are sitting at the informal bistro table next to the patio doors.
“Corbin is delightful, as I’m sure you know.” Lisa’s voice carries toward me, even though she’s still unaware we’ve already reached her. “And he’s—”
The Stepford and Lisa both look up at the same time, and Lisa’s fork clatters to her salad plate before thudding to the floor. The Stepford chokes on her bite, and she’s forced to cough indignantly to save herself.
And I’m… fucking… dying. Silent laughter is soooo painful. It’s excruciating, honestly. Yet, somehow I manage not to let go of the riot going on inside me.
“Corbin?” his mother squeaks, looking at him with even more horror than the maid had.
His face… About ten pounds of makeup has him looking like a diva ready for club night. His hair has several little ponytails that make his hair stick up on the top like short stacks of bundled straw, all of them standing at attention. His shirt is unbuttoned to his navel and tucked into the leggings… Oh the leggings.
It takes her a second to recover, but she cuts her eyes toward me, not even acting surprised by my presence, even though Corbin never told her I was coming.
“I see the two of you are still playing childish games,” she says with unmasked disdain, slowly turning her attention back to her diva-inspired son.
The Stepford finally stops choking, and she gulps her water. My eyes dart to their salads, and I take in the extreme amount of walnuts in it. Yeah, his mother knows about us, and she’s a total fucking bitch.