Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THANE
Even custom-made tuxedos are uncomfortable as hell. Tugging on my collar, I stare out over the city that never sleeps.
My penthouse has always been my sanctuary away from prying, judging assholes. I’d never even brought a woman here until Kara moved in, and she doesn’t exactly count as a woman yet.
Does she?
“Drink this.” Rafe hands me a tumbler of clear liquid I know isn’t water. “It’s a gin and tonic.”
“I don’t care to be intoxicated tonight.” I continue to stare at the city that was my home for most of my life.
I ate, slept, and breathed here, but I never truly lived. Not the way I do in Sweetbriar.
I hid in plain sight here.
There’s no hiding in Sweetbriar. It’s something I started off hating but have grown to tolerate because I’m comfortable there. Initially I thought it was Lottie who gave me that sensation, but she’s here with me now, and my skin is crawling across my bones with the need to retreat to our quiet little town.
“It’s not to get you drunk. It’s to relax you enough that you’ll stop pulling on your tux before you ruin it.”
“Take the drink, Brad. You look good, and you’re going to want to be relaxed when Lottie walks out here, otherwise your head might explode.”
I spin toward the sound of my sister walking down the hallway.
She’s different here too—stiffer, anxious—and I hate it.
“Is it strange being back here?” I take the drink from Rafe, but my gaze remains on my sister. Her shoulders are up around her ears. She called me Brad, but it didn’t have the same punch I’ve come to associate with it. She’s the exact replica of the flashcard for sad.
She sighs heavily and enters the room by dramatically hunching over at the waist. “Yes.” She drags out the s sound as though she’s a snake. “I’m so glad you noticed.”
That surprises me.
“You are?”
She flops her whole body onto the sofa. “Yeah. It’s like Dad is going to jump out at me any moment here. You know, like walking through landmines after someone dumped a bucket of spiders on you.”
“That’s very…descriptive.”
She taps her forehead. “See, I’m learning how to express myself in a way you understand.”
“Kara.” The word is harsher than I intended. “Sorry.” I swallow and try again. “Kara, Dad is not allowed within a hundred feet of either of us at the moment, so you can rest easy about that. He won’t be jumping out at you anytime soon. And you don’t need to change anything about yourself to make my life easier. That’s my job. I will learn.”
She rolls her eyes but then graces me with something that’s becoming more familiar as time goes on—happiness. It swims in her eyes that are the exact same shade of green as my own. “I know you will. But Rafe also told me that teenagers are notoriously—that’s a vocab word from last year, by the way—hard to read. So if you can work on it, so can I.” She grips her hands in her lap so tightly, her knuckles turn white. “We’re a team, right? So we both have to try?”
Her gaze jumps from her hands to Rafe before very carefully dragging to me.
“It means a lot to me that you’re trying, Kara, but I’m going to warn you, I suck at being a teammate. Just ask my employees.”
Her expression lights up the room, from the way her eyes crinkle to her cheeks that puff out before expelling an infectious laugh.
“Hey, at least you said it and not me. We can be the best bad teammates ever. I got kicked off the debate team last year because I, well, debated too much with Abigail Jones. She’s a suck-up, so I’m the one who got into trouble, but still.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh, a full-body experience that doesn’t happen very often.
“What did I miss?”
We all turn at the sound of Lottie’s voice, and my brain goes numb as I take her in.
“Breathe, Brad, geez. You’re going to pass out. I knew you should have chugged that drink.”
Rafe removes the glass from my hands before I drop it.
I’m not sure what to take in first. She’s done something to her long hair so it sits gracefully over one shoulder. There’s a pin or a button or something on the left side of her head that sparkles in the overhead lighting.
An earring dangles from her exposed ear like a sparkling teardrop, matching the one that hangs low between her breasts.
I suddenly have a love/hate relationship with her ruby red dress. It has no straps to hold it up. How the hell is she keeping it on?
The dress appears to be a structure in its own right, with a cut clear down to her ribs, but somehow still lifts and separates her luscious tits. The fabric looks soft, and I long to touch it but fear doing so because I’ll want to know every nook and cranny, the how and whys of this dress holding together as it does. Logically, it should fall away from her body with the slightest movement, but as she glides closer, the damn thing only moves as if it’s a piece of her, hugging the curvature of her waist, down her hips, to a slit on her left thigh that might show off a panty line if she’s not careful.
She stops in front of me, and my hand falls to the slit, attempting to keep it closed. I’m going to be chasing her around all fucking night on dress duty, just so no one gets a glimpse of something they don’t have permission to see.
I can’t do this.
I’m going to end up in jail for murder if she goes out in this thing.
With that depressing thought, I remove my hands from the slit of her dress, place them on her shoulders, and spin her around with every intention of marching her back to my room to change, but the frustrating woman digs in her heels.
“What are you doing?” She laughs over her shoulder, her bare shoulder that shimmers as though she’s been kissed by gold dust.
“Nope. I can’t do this, Charlotte. If you walk out of this apartment wearing…this, I will not survive the night. And every man with eyeballs might end up blind.”
Kara cackles on the sofa. Rafe hoots from his perch next to the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Lottie? She spins slowly as I study the frame of her dress, still trying to find the magic that holds it together.
“Thane Scotland Wilder.”
How the hell did she find out my middle name?
“I knew that would come in handy someday,” Rafe says and belly laughs.
I hope he chokes on my expensive gin.
“Charlotte Ireland Sinclair.” She gasps, reminding me that I want to have shirts made in her specific shade of blush.
“My middle name is not Ireland.”
“It sounded good.” Then I bite my lip. I know what her middle name is. I found it when I pulled the dossier on her. What was it? “Dorcas. Charlotte Dorcas Sinclair. I like Ireland better.”
“Dorcas?” Kara is stumbling over herself to stand upright. “Dorcas?”
“It’s not dork-us.” Lottie is spitting mad. I’ll admit, it’s helpful to know these emotions as they happen. “It’s dor-sayse.”
“Siri, how do you pronounce Dorcas, spelled D O R C A S?”
Lottie swipes the phone from my hand and shoves it between sofa cushions. “Forget you ever learned that name. I mean it.”
“I will. Just as soon as you change. I rather enjoy being a free man.”
She steps up until her exquisite chest presses against my ribs. “You will forget that name, and I will not change this dress after I spent two hours getting ready.”
“Don’t test me on this, Charlotte.”
Fire ignites the blue flames in her irises, threatening to combust at any moment.
“You have two options, Thane. You can get your ass in that elevator with your memory of my middle name erased from your genius-sized noggin, or I will leave without you, and you can watch me from afar as I make my way around the room introducing myself to every”—she presses closer into me—“single person at this event. Did I mention that I’m very good at entertaining anyone and everyone in my proximity when I want to?”
“Charlotte.” I growl like a feral bear. In my periphery, Rafe is ushering Kara out of the room.
“Thane.” Jesus. When did she learn to growl like that? I wonder if I could get her to do that around my cock? “You will not now, nor will you ever, dictate the way I dress. If you’re uncomfortable with what I’m wearing, you can stay home, or you can go fuck yourself. And if you ever try to tell me what to wear again, you are the only one you’ll be fucking in perpetuity. Got it?”
She’s bluffing.
She must be.
Is that a risk you’re willing to take? Now my narrator takes her side. What the fuck, man?
“You have exactly ten seconds to decide. I promise you, if I walk out of here alone, I will not acknowledge you again until I’ve calmed down from your caveman and, quite honestly, misogynistic request.”
I’ve always dreamed of the silent treatment from people. When was she able to turn it into such a viable threat?
“Fine.” I almost stomp my foot but catch myself at the last moment because I’m not a goddamn child. “But I swear to God, Lottie. One wayward look from anyone and you’ll be bailing my ass out of jail. Where did you even find a fucking dress like that anyway? Is there a witch close by with a magical incantation keeping that thing from falling off? Because I have to tell you, I’m not impressed with anything witchy. Harry Potter scarred me when I was younger, and I’m not interested in coming face-to-face with anything demented or invisible.”
She stares at me with a blank expression. I spend all this time learning every facet of her face, and then she goes blank on me?
That’s just not fair.
“You had a tantrum over my dress.”
Clutching her hand in mine so she doesn’t leave without me, I dig around the sofa cushions for my phone. When I find it, I slip it into my pocket and then drag us both toward the elevator.
“I do not have tantrums.”
“But you did. Admit it. You almost stomped away like a bratty child.”
“Never.”
Her reflection in the mirrored doors of the elevator is breathtaking.
“You’d better be on your A game tonight, sweetheart. As soon as we collect that award, I’m dragging you from this event.” I cast a suspicious glance around the room, but don’t find Rafe or Kara. “And then I’m going to shred this dress from your body and fuck you so hard you’ll forget you ever bought it in the first place.”
She sucks in a breath, and I pull her closer to my side. If I could handcuff her to me so everyone knew she was mine, I would. But after that little episode in the family room, she’d probably knee me in the balls.
“This dress cost two thousand dollars. Don’t you dare ruin it.”
I lower my lips to her exposed ear. “Sweetheart, I don’t care if it cost twenty thousand dollars. By the end of this night, it will either be in shreds or covered in our cum, and trust me when I say it will be unsalvageable. I don’t care which way it goes, but this dress is done after tonight.”
She smiles sweetly as we step onto the elevator.
“That’s fine, sweetheart .” Oh hell. I’m in trouble. “But remember this, I can always up my game. You don’t like this dress? Wait until you see the next one.”
This is escalating quickly, and I finally admit, at least to myself, that I’m in over my head.
Charlotte Dorcas Sinclair will be my downfall.