Chapter 6
6
Kieran
Lila knocked again and then called through the door. “Sweetie, when you’re done in there, let your guest know their purse is outside the door.” She was poorly disguising that she was fucking with me, but Sybil didn’t know that, and her eyes widened and she squirmed under me. The body that had been so languid and open under my touch a moment before snapped tight in an instant.
“What the hell?” She pushed me back and pulled her pants up while I mourned the loss of her soft skin. “Are you married?”
“No,” I said, rising to my feet, running a hand through my hair. “It’s my sister. She’s just being…weird. I lost track of time, and she’s here to prep for tomorrow. I thought we had time.” Lila was early for once in her damn life. Damn it. “Stay here. I’ll convince her a customer left the purse and we can…”
Sybil searched the floor, casting a doubtful glance in my direction as I trailed off, my frustration rising.
“Kier?” Another knock at the door left me flustered, and Sybil hadn’t responded, but I turned the handle to slip out after adjusting myself.
“Please, just wait. I’ll send her home. Don’t go yet.”
On the other side of the door, Sybil’s purse rested near the wall, and my cheeks heated as I set it inside before looking for my little sister. The back of the shop wasn’t cavernous, so I had to only peek around the corner to find her setting up supplies. My younger sister was helping me with the shop while she finished her accounting degree and decided which of the multiple companies courting her she wanted to go with. She’d decided to stretch her last semester into two so she could help, and she took the overnight shift, prepping everything for the next morning while studying for her CPA exam. I hated that she was putting off graduation and starting her life, but I was always glad to see her, to have someone to share this place with. Well, I was almost always glad to see her. In that moment, I wanted her to get the hell out and leave me with the prep, because a sleepless night would be worth it to have more time with the woman in my office.
When she spotted me, she smirked without losing her place, measuring out ingredients for the cake donuts. “How’s it going? Catching up on some paperwork in there?”
I tucked my hands in my pockets and glanced over my shoulder at the closed door to my office. “Drop it.”
“What?” She pulled the mixer and ingredients she needed off the shelf, her movements efficient and practiced. “I am truly impressed, even though hearing it from my brother is a big ick.”
I heard Sybil moving around inside the office, and I had a feeling the night would not end as I’d hoped. “Why don’t you go home, and I’ll prep for tomorrow,” I offered hurriedly.
Ignoring me, Lila poured the mixture into the ancient industrial mixer that whirred to life. “It sounds like you looked up how to find and really work the G-spot.”
“Sex advice from my little sister is not something I need,” I gritted out. “And I went to medical school. I’m familiar with anatomy.”
“So many men think they’re familiar.” Lila pushed past me toward her bag, slung on a hook across the room. “I have earbuds. Don’t worry. Carry on.
“And please,” she said with an eye roll, counting out eggs and arranging them in rows on the counter. “You’d fall asleep halfway through prep, and you know one of us has night owl genes and it’s not you.” Lila flashed a sweet smile. “Maybe take your guest home, though, if you can avoid waking Granddad?”
I glowered, her smart-ass smirk pushing my panic into annoyance. “Can you give me a break? Just…I don’t know. Give me a few minutes to get out of here.”
“If it only takes a minute, I feel bad for that poor girl. You can do better than that, Kier. Put your back into it!” She laughed, pouring the flour into the batter. “Besides, I’m positive you need to wash your hands before stepping anywhere near this kitchen.”
That was my sweet baby sister. It had been me and her against the world, until she broke her arm on the playground at school and neither the school nor the hospital could find our mom, who’d been gone for a few days by then. I remembered the doctor setting Lila’s arm and then looking me in the eye to talk to me, to tell me they were going to get help for us. That’s when we were placed with my grandparents. We were both tough, but I’d turned to type A tendencies to avoid dealing with emotions, while she’d figured out how to make hers charming. She was quick with a joke and gave me more shit than anyone else I knew. I glanced at the closed door again. My heart was still racing from the encounter, being interrupted, and—God, how Sybil had tasted. How she’d sounded. I shook my head again. “Lila, please.”
She straightened her smirk and tilted her head. “Fine. I’ll make sure the front is cleaned up and give you a few—”
The crank-crank-clank sound of the mixer’s rotating blade becoming detached from the apparatus distracted us at the same time. We both lunged for the machine, but it was too late, and we both shielded our faces from the flying mixture. The ancient machine had been on borrowed time for two decades. I’d fixed this problem a few times, but the banging grew louder and the mess bigger as we wrestled with the machine to turn it off without breaking the bones in our hands. When I could finally pull the plug from the wall, the sound of the bell on the front door and the subsequent slam broke through the silence. The office door was open, but there was no one inside.
“Fuck.” I pushed off the wall and sprinted to the front of the shop. Outside, a car was pulling away from the curb, and I could vaguely make out the outline of Sybil’s curls in shadow under the streetlights. I watched the lights disappear up the street with an oddly consuming sadness. Yeah, I’d wanted to sleep with her—she was hot and funny—but there was something else, something I hadn’t experienced in a long time. When I was with her, I’d forgotten how much I wanted to go back to my old life. I turned slowly back to the kitchen, where Lila had begun to clean up. I guess that’s why distractions are dangerous.
“Damn it,” I muttered, surveying the mess. “I’ll get the toolbox. I can try to fix it.”
“You need to buy a new one,” she said, wiping flour and egg from the nearby wall.
“I know.” It wasn’t happening anytime soon, though. Industrial mixers were expensive, and there was no way I could afford it with all the bills mounting faster than I could pay them. In my office, I slumped into the chair where Sybil had sat, legs gloriously spread. It was just a desk chair now, and I glanced around and spotted a scrap of paper on my desk. It was a lottery ticket on top of two twenty-dollar bills. I picked it up, the curls of her loopy handwriting betraying the message. “Thanks for the donuts and the orgasm,” I read. “For the boxes I sort of shoplifted this morning—the ones for Josefina. Sorry!” The scent of her lingered in my office, and I could still taste her on my tongue. I’d spent just enough time with her to hear her voice forming those words in my head perfectly.
I reread the note and flipped over the ticket. Confusion swamped me, followed by bewilderment as I held up the two twenties. She’d been the one to take the donuts that morning, and now she was tipping me…with a lottery ticket?
I slumped back in the chair, still fully dusted with flour. This was my life. It was already midnight, I’d be cleaning and doing repairs for at least an hour, and the woman I’d lost my mind over thought my sexual services were worth the long-shot chance at $350 million and a quickly scribbled thank-you note. “Two hundred and fifty million after taxes,” I muttered, tossing the ticket and the twenties on top of the ancient keyboard. This lucky day had turned out exactly the way I’d thought it would.