I can stop being a dick. I can apologize to Laurel. I can be nice to her again and remind her why she liked me in the first place.
The door opens and Sin is predictably on the other side, dead-eyed and expressionless. “What do you want?”
I hold out the wine as an offering. “I’m here for dinner.”
“You weren’t invited,” Sin states, but he takes the bottle from me anyway.
I glance beyond him and see Laurel hovering at the top of the stairs. Damn, she’s wearing a thin cami top with no bra underneath and a pair of snug shorts. Given his words earlier, my gaze goes straight to her pussy. Those shorts are thin, too, reminding me of when I had her naked body spread out on the bed for me to feast on. I hear her soft sighs in my memory as she watches me cautiously from insi
de Sin’s house.
I offer her a smile, addressing her instead of him. “I come in peace.”
Crossing her arms, she narrows her eyes at me skeptically.
“Honest,” I tell her, raising my hands in mock surrender.
Sin regards me warily, but takes a step back to let me inside. “You start kicking up shit, I kick your ass out,” he warns me as he pushes the door shut and heads up the stairs.
I follow him, noting that as soon as he reaches the top of the stairs, he rests a possessive hand on Laurel’s hip and leans in to murmur something in her ear. Amusement tugs at the corners of my mouth—if I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a man do that in my presence, I could buy myself another casino.
Sin drops his hand and heads into the kitchen without so much as a glance back. I know it’s intentional. He wants to illustrate that he’s not threatened by me, that he doesn’t care if I’m alone in this narrow space with Laurel because he’s that confident in his hold over her. If she were mine, I’d do the same thing.
Laurel shifts uncomfortably, glancing back the way Sin disappeared, but she remains where she is. I wonder what he said to her?
Shoving my hands into my pockets and ducking my head to strike Laurel as more vulnerable, I move a little closer. “How are you feeling?”
Her eyebrows rise, like my question catches her off guard. “About what?”
I nod toward her stomach. “Aren’t pregnant women sick all the time?”
Now she shrugs, glancing down at her stomach. “I actually haven’t really had any morning sickness. Lucky, I guess.”
“Good, I’m glad to hear it.”
I suppose it’s not unwarranted that she eyes me even more warily after my friendly response. “What are you doing here, Rafe?”
“Having dinner.” She raises an eyebrow like she’s unimpressed, so I offer a charmingly detrimental smile and add, “Plus, I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to apologize for being such an asshole.”
Her arms are crossed, her tone still heavily skeptical. “You did?”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking about you a lot—not because someone else is playing with my discarded toy,” I say, remembering her words from the restaurant. “I just don’t like the way things are between us right now. I was so happy to see you when you showed up on my doorstep like the cutest, most welcome stalker in the world.”
Her cheeks flush and her gaze drops to the gray carpet beneath our feet.
“The kid thing… it scares me,” I admit. “I reacted poorly and I’m sorry about that. I’d like a chance to do better. I’d like to order a DNA test to make sure—”
Irritation flares up in her blue eyes and she interrupts. “You still don’t believe me.”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” I assure her, reaching out to touch her arm. She eyes me cagily, but I keep a firm hand on her and she doesn’t pull away. “It’s just that we used protection so I want to be positive that there were no mistakes with anyone else. I do not mean this as an insult. Something could have happened to the condom with someone else and you may not have even necessarily known. Through absolutely no fault of your own—”
“I am not pregnant with anyone else’s baby, Rafe. There hasn’t been anyone else. I have only had sex with you in the past year.” Indicating her still-flat stomach, she says, “The only person who had the opportunity to put a baby in here was you.”
Does she go to school at a fucking convent? “Just me? In a whole year?”
“That’s right,” she says, placing a hand on her hip and tipping her chin up, daring me to call her a liar.
Thing is, it doesn’t seem like she’s lying. It seems like she means it. Obviously she isn’t accounting for Sin because he came after the pregnancy, but still, two men in one year? “You don’t get out much, do you?”