“Are you pulling on air?” I asked, not amused.
She grumbled, “Dante would understand.”
This conversation was off to a great start. “Morina–”
“I don’t want to argue with you.”
“I don’t want to argue with you either.” Good, we could be adults. “I’m just here to discuss everything. Can we talk now?”
She looked a little concerned before she closed those big doe eyes. Her long dark lashes rested on her high cheekbones before she stepped back and said over her shoulder, “Bradley. We’ll have to hang out tomorrow.”
“Baby, third base is not a home run,” Bradley, a tall blonde guy, said from her living room as he rolled up his yoga mat. “And we never actually got to yog–”
I walked around Morina and stared at him. The whining abruptly halted.
“Bastian, right?” He pointed at me and squinted as though trying to remember. “You’re the suit that wanted a smoothie the other day.”
I nodded. Then my gaze ping-ponged between them. “Morina and I have a complicated relationship, one that goes way back.”
“Not that far,” she grumbled.
“Morina,piccola ragazza, don’t discount our relationship.”
“Relationship?” Bradley looked puzzled.
Something burned in my stomach. I couldn’t place the feeling. I hadn’t had it in such a long time. It could have been frustration, pure and white hot with the fact that she’d been fucking around with a guy and had the audacity to call him here but couldn’t be bothered to call me.
Or maybe it was that damn little green fucker called jealousy. I wouldn’t place my bets on it quite yet though.
Still, the man was tall, well built, and seemed to know his place around Maribel’s home. He ambled through the living room, straightening a few things as he waited for me to give more information.
“Well, Morina is supposed to be my fiancée, Bradley,” I announced. “Which means she probably isn’t going to be giving you any homeruns any time soon.”
Her jaw dropped and Bradley’s practically hit the floor.
“Mo.” He turned to her immediately. “Baby, you’re free-spirited and go with what moves you. I get that. I love that about you, Mo. And you’re hurting from your grandma passing, but you’re not alone. You can’t marry a suit on a whim, Mo. That’s not–”
“Bradley.” I cut him off with just his name, an emotion flowing through my body that I wasn’t quite sure I could control even if I wanted to. “My fiancée and I need to talk. Please leave us.”
It was his turn to look between the both of us.
Morina didn’t immediately do anything. Her sports bra rose and fell rapidly with each breath she took and maybe I’d shocked her a bit with what I’d said. Straightening suddenly, she combed a hand through that long wavy hair of hers and motioned him toward the door. “I’ll call you later, okay? It’s complicated.”
“You know I’m here for you, whatever you need.” He caught her gaze and held it, showing me he probably would have gone toe to toe with me if she told him in that second.
“She doesn’t really need anything from you that I can’t give her myself,” I found myself saying.
Making allegiances in this town might have been harder than I originally thought.
The man studied us a second longer, murmured to Morina to call if she needed anything and then walked out the door.
13
Morina
“Are you kidding?” I slammed the door and turned to him. “You can’t go around saying stuff like that!”
“Like what?”