He’d had his arm draped over the gorgeous, model worthy looking blonde at his side when she’d ducked into the kitchen, but Alix realized, as she edged out of view of the window, ready to snap the blind closed, that she was standing a foot away.
They appeared like they were locked in heated conversation, which was shocking because Ross didn’t normally use his mouth for anything other than bragging rights. Bragging rights about things that she was not going to think about, because it made her feel like someone had just trussed her up and plunged her into a burning pit of lava as punishment for even thinking about said carnal acts.
Apparently, the blonde, with her matching stupid-ass outfit, didn’t like what her date was saying. It became obvious when her face changed to a shade of lobster red and she threw back her head and her hand at the same time. Her hair flew everywhere as her hand flew through the air and connected solidly with Ross’s cheek, with a resounding smack that even Alix heard inside the house.
And of course, because Ross always had to be the center of attention wherever he went, the bastard had to stumble, trip over his own expensive as hell shoes, and plunge in what was probably a two-thousand-dollar outfit straight into the pool.
CHAPTER 2
Ross
One minute everything was fine. Boring. Pretentious, but fine.
Ross knew that the Deroy’s only put on the stupid party because it was another excuse to get together with the rest of their friends. His parents were there and everyone at the place was older than fifty. He didn’t know why they bothered to say it was for Alix. She wasn’t even there. He’d counted on seeing her twenty-two-year-old-graduated-from-college ass for years. Somehow, she always managed to evade him whenever she’d come home on breaks or at Christmas.
He didn’t think she’d be able to escape him this time, at her own damn party. He wouldn’t have come, but he couldn’t miss out on a chance to piss her off, though he was pretty sure he did that just by breathing and existing.
How did that saying go? Hell hath no fury like that of a scorned woman? Whoever said it, they were exactly right.
Ross waited four years to tell her he was sorry. He wanted to patch things up, mostly because Chance was her brother and the fucker never missed an opportunity to bust his balls and grind his gears where his sister was concerned. A person would think that as an older brother, he’d be protective and want to keep his sister clear of said douchebag best bud who clearly had only bad intentions where she was concerned. That was a big hell no.
Chance didn’t care. He found it far too enjoyable to bug Ross about that night four years ago. A few nights before Alix’s prom. Her date fucking canceled on her, epic bag of dicks that he was. She’d asked him, of all people, to take her. He was four years older than her. He thought it would look bad. He used to babysit her ass for god sakes.
His mother was horrified when he’d turned her down. His father told him that he should have manned up and done the right thing and taken that girl to prom.
Only Chance knew that Alix hadn’t just asked about prom. She’d asked alright, but it was just a euphemism for what she really wanted, and there was no way he was going to deflower his parent’s best friends’ eighteen-year-old daughter who he’d practically grown up with as a little sister.
Chance thought that was great.
There was something very, very wrong with Chance. He didn’t have a protective bone in his body. If Ross hadn’t been around half the time, looking out for Alix, she probably wouldn’t have made it past ten years old.
Anyway, the whole Alix fiasco of four years ago was the reason his evening went to shit in an epic fucking hurry. One minute he was chatting with his date. A pretty blonde who had wanted to know what he was wearing, just so she could color coordinate with him, this after just three dates, two of which involved him sticking his tongue so far down her throat that he thought he could actually feel her stomach at some points. There hadn’t been a lot of talking…. Whiiiicccchhhh was probably the reason he’d forgotten her name mid-sentence and called her something else. He didn’t even know what it was. That was the shit part. One minute he was talking, the next, out of nowhere, she wound up and slapped him on the face.
Whoever coined the term, hit like a girl, had probably meant that shit as a compliment and over the years it just got diluted into something with a different meaning entirely, because that open-handed slap packed more heat than a punch.