She looked like she wanted to protest, like there was a catch, but finally she gave in, moving to the other end of the sofa with her own bowl. She grabbed the blanket from the sofa’s back and put it over her lap so I wouldn’t see her bare pussy beneath the hem of my shirt. That was us, two classy people with our crotches covered. They should send us an invite to Buckingham Palace.
We ate for a minute—I had worked up a nice post-sex appetite—and finally she said, “I have questions.”
The alarm bell went off in my head again, but I ignored it. “Go ahead.”
She looked around my penthouse. “You own this place?”
“Yes. Trust fund. I didn’t earn it.”
She looked surprised at my words, but for some reason it was important that she know. I didn’t want her getting the wrong impression of me. “What do your parents do?” she asked.
“Invest other people’s money, and skim pieces of it,” I replied. “And, apparently, pay off their kids instead of raising them.”
I sounded harsh again, but it was the truth.
“So you don’t get along with them,” Evie said.
“They hate me,” I clarified. “They think I’m a disappointment and a waste of space.” They weren’t wrong, but it didn’t mean they had a claim on any of my mental real estate. Not after they way they’d abandoned Andrew for the crime of getting into an accident and not being whole anymore. I really didn’t care what they thought of me, but fuck with Andrew and as far as I’m concerned, you’re done.
“Who’s Andrew?” Evie asked.
I stared at her in surprise. It was like she’d read my mind. Or had I spoken aloud? I was pretty sure I hadn’t. “How do you know about Andrew?” It came out hostile, but I couldn’t help it.
She looked taken aback. “The jacket you lent me,” she said. “It had a business card in the pocket. Andrew Mason, programmer.”
Now the alarm bells were going off like crazy. I wanted to get on a plane and take off again. But I calmed myself. It was okay if she knew his name, after all. It was just a name. “Andrew is my brother,” I admitted—more than I’d admitted to any other woman I’d been with, no matter what dirty things we did in bed, or how many times. I’d never even said Andrew’s name to a single one of them.
Evie put down her cereal bowl, which she’d cleaned out. “And?” she prompted.
No. I had nothing else. Just saying his name had been like wrenching a rib out of my chest, listening to it snap. “And nothing,” I said.
“Do you get along with him?” she prodded.
The back of my neck was sweating. “We get along fine,” I said. “Do I get to ask the questions now?”
She didn’t look finished, but she said, “Okay.”
“Did you just fuck me to get back at Bank Boy?”
She stared at me, her lips parted in shock.
I wasn’t sure why I had asked that. Partly because of the Andrew questions—I needed to shut her down, regain control.
But part of me actually wanted to know the answer. Whether I was the nearest convenient dick for her. Whether she was slumming it for revenge.
Because if she was slumming it, I needed to know now. I didn’t ask myself why.
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” she said, her voice getting tight with anger. “He’s not here to watch us. And he already thought we were—”
“Not literally,” I said. “In your head. You know what I mean. Did you fuck me to get back at him in your head?”
She let out an exhale of breath, like I’d shoved her in the stomach. Her cheekbones were red again, anger and sex mixed together, and I felt my cock wake up again beneath the throw pillow. He’d gone to sleep when we talked about my family. “You have some nerve, asking me that,” she said. “You told me to fuck someone the first night we met. You said it would make me feel better.”
“And did it?”
That hurt her for a second—I hadn’t meant it to, but it did. Her jaw went tight and her lip quivered. Then she said, “Nick, if you don’t shut up I’m about to throw my cereal bowl at you.”
Great. Now I was an asshole. Usually I didn’t care, but this was Evie. “It’s just a question,” I said. “I want to know.”