Total pages in book: 225
Estimated words: 218500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1093(@200wpm)___ 874(@250wpm)___ 728(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 218500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1093(@200wpm)___ 874(@250wpm)___ 728(@300wpm)
“And you’re not sopping it up like a dry sponge? Not letting him treat you like a princess? Do you want to get kicked out of the sisterhood?”
I lower my voice, maybe because there might be surveillance. “Before I met my ex I used to write an anonymous sex fantasy blog. He’s even trying to deliver on all of that. Or… he was until we had a big fight and I finally fought back. Oh shit, sorry… you don’t want to hear that about your own brother.” My face flames.
She waves her hand. “If I don’t respect other peoples’ boundaries, I can’t exactly draw my own with those people, can I?”
I laugh nervously. “Still. He’s your brother.”
“Yeah, and every friend I’ve ever brought around him has developed an instant crush on him. I have had more than one friend hook up with him, too, and drive me nuts afterwards with talk of how good he is in bed, so I’ve had no choice but to become immune.”
She looks at me and smiles big. “Is that a little bit of jealousy I see on your face at the idea of your husband hooking up with my friends?”
“No, not at all,” I say, but I might not be being entirely honest. I can’t let my brain even ponder this notion for a minute, so I keep talking. “You do have a very good-looking family. But looks aren’t everything. Neither are sex skills.”
“No, not everything but they do count, don’t they?”
I’m about to protest when she waves her hand, “I know, and it’s not my business. But I wanted to share some insight and hope it’d help. If it doesn’t, I tried.”
“Something tells me you’re the type to keep on trying.”
“And that tells me either Derek warned you about me, you’re intuitive, or both.”
“What are you doing?” I ask.
She has my phone in her hand.
“Programming myself in your phone. I’m your favorite sister-in-law. Not Nay. Okay?”
I tip my head and smile. “Let’s go find something for lunch.”
I answer my ringing phone. “I’m busy, Grace.”
“I love her. Love her!”
“Huh?”
“Chloe, Derek. I love her.”
I scrub my itchy jaw with my fingernails. I should’ve shaved this morning.
“Derek?” Grace inquires.
“What?”
“I think marrying her was very smart. And I also think that if you play it smarter, you can win her over, too.”
“Oh yeah?” I mutter, sounding bored. But I’m not really bored. I’m actually interested in learning what my sister might suggest here, though I’m not about to feed her interference or she’ll run rampant with it.
“She’s having a lot of difficulty with some of your tactics.”
“No shit?” I volley sarcastically.
“Brother, you need to focus on showing her your good side. Keep doing what you’re doing in terms of showing her that her happiness matters to you, but ease up with the threats. Don’t do anymore of that if you can help it. Just do the other stuff. Show her what a life with you would be like if you didn’t feel like you had to make threats. You follow?”
“I follow,” I confirm.
“And lots more of the sexy stuff. She goes to a happy place when she thinks about that stuff with you.”
I say nothing to that, not remotely willing to talk sex with my sister, but now I’m wishing the house had cameras so I could rewind to see what Grace is referring to.
“Gonna dash,” she says. “See you tomorrow night then. We got her dress and shoes all picked out. She’s going to look stunning. I dropped off your pocket square, too.”
She always looks stunning. Especially when she first wakes up in the morning. Sleepy. Fresh-faced. Hair fanned out.
“Oh, and Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“Get home. It’s only days since you got married. You shouldn’t be at work. She said you guys aren’t speaking but you can’t fix that if you’re not home.”
“Did she tell you why we’re not speaking?”
“No. Do you wanna tell me?”
“No,” I say, scratching my jaw some more. “Gotta go, Grace.”
“Okay, love you, bye!”
She hangs up.
It’s after nine o’clock when I walk in to a quiet house that smells like lemons.
I go upstairs and see the light filtering around the door to the master bedroom. I walk the opposite way to the spare room I’ve been in the last two nights, but I stop in the doorway, surprised. The bed is made, and the room has been cleaned. The room smells like laundry soap. She must have washed the bedding. The clothes that were on the floor earlier are now folded on the chair. She did my laundry.
A half bottle of bourbon still sits on the table beside the bed, but the empty one is gone.
My stomach nags at me for food and it hits that I haven’t eaten for twelve hours, so I back out of the room, intending on going downstairs to see what might be there, but here she is, in the hall, in a pink tank top and matching short shorts. Very short shorts. No fucking bra.