7. A lot of people are mean to me
A lot of people are mean to me
Mike
“Hello, ladies,” I said as I passed my sister Lucy, then Lottie and Vicky on the sun loungers on my way to the pool.
Christ, she was wearing that goddamn bikini again. I’d only risked the briefest of glances, but the image of her slim, golden body laid out on a sun lounger with her golden hair splayed all around her was burned into my brain.
This was not going to be good at all for the ejection of Vicky from my late-night appointments with my hand, which seemed to be the only way I wanted to get off nowadays.
Or the fevered dreams I still had about her every night, which had ramped up significantly since that day at her house.
All the women turned their heads towards me as I passed, and to my absolute shock, Vicky squeaked. The woman actually made a squeaking sound.
When I risked a glance back at the trio, the other two were staring at Vicky in open-mouthed shock. But Vicky? She was staring at me .
Lottie whispered something to her, but she didn’t respond to whatever the other woman was saying. So, as usual, fucking weird.
“Hey girls,” I said when I came up from my dive into the pool to smile at Hayley, Lottie’s little sister and Florrie, Ollie’s niece.
“Hey, Mike,” Florrie said, and Hayley gave me a shy smile.
“Uncle Ollie, do the thing! Do the thing!” Florrie shouted, then squealed as he plucked her off the side of the pool, lifted her high above his head and then launched her into the deep end, where she swam to me then stood on my shoulders until I launched her into the air again.
Hayley even managed a much gentler launch and came up with a proud, smiling face.
“That’s brilliant, Hayley!” I said. “I’m amazed you’ve learned anything from these losers, to be honest. You must be natural. How about you learn from the master?”
“Get over yourself, mate,” Felix said as he balanced Florrie on his shoulders. “We’re way better swimmers than you.”
I snorted. “Only because you overprivileged losers had your own pool.”
Florrie was on my shoulders now, and I launched her high in the air, back towards Ollie.
Felix rolled his eyes. “You had use of the pool.”
“Okay, well I taught Lucy to swim.”
“I taught Vicky to swim,” Ollie said.
“Lucy was younger.”
“Well, that’s nothing, Vicky was…” Ollie was interrupted by the sound of a sun lounger scrapping back.
We all looked over to see Vicky stand, shove a man’s large T-shirt over her head and run from the pool.
“Shit,” Ollie muttered.
“You swore again,” Florrie shouted. “I’m telling Granny!”
Ignoring Florrie’s threats to her uncle, I swam over to him. He was still staring after Vicky.
“Vicky was what?” I asked, and his gaze snapped to me before he frowned.
“My sister was and is none of your fucking business,” he said.
“Granny’s gonna be super mad, Uncle Ollie,” Florrie put in helpfully.
I stared at Ollie for a moment but then he broke eye contact when his sister Claire, and her dickhead husband, Blake arrived.
“Come on, Hails,” Florrie said, her expression now grim as both girls glanced up at Claire and Blake before exchanging a look. “We’d better go and muck out Legolas and Bertie. We said we would.”
Christ, that kid really did not like her stepdad.
Was that why Vicky ran? But they only just arrived.
No, it was when Ollie was about to say something about her to me.
Why would she run? I knew I’d spent way too much time thinking about Vicky lately, but I couldn’t shake the gnawing thought that I was missing something.
And the way her hands shook after I’d been a shit to her that day was still playing on repeat in my mind, making my chest tight.
I made a decision and hauled myself out of the pool.
“I’ll see you later,” I muttered to Lucy as I stalked by her and Lottie on the sun loungers, grabbing a towel from my sister to dry off as I went.
Lottie gave me a narrow look, but thankfully, didn’t say anything about me going in the same direction as Vicky. Lottie was like Vicky’s personal security or something, which I didn’t really get. The woman was perfectly capable of looking after herself from what I’d seen.
When I was sure I was out of sight, I jogged up the lawn towards the main house. The motherfucker was huge, and I’d always been really intimidated by it as a child. Felix’s modern monstrosity of a family home was bad enough, but the Buckingham Estate was on another level.
Luckily, I knew my way around this place like the back of my hand, and I knew which of the many entrances Vicky would have used.
By the time I made it up to the house, I wasn’t soaking wet, but I still left watery footprints on the wood floors, which I decided I’d take the flak for from Margot later.
I caught up with Vicky as she was traversing the vast expanse known as the orangery. Weird as no oranges featured, but it was about fifty feet long and almost entirely glass, like a mega posh conservatory built over two hundred years ago.
“Hey!” I called, and Vicky came to an abrupt stop before she spun round to face me.
The light shimmered off her long, blonde hair as it swung out and over her shoulder with the movement.
Fuck me, she was beautiful. Possibly even more beautiful with no make-up, her hair down and left to dry in natural waves after swimming.
The only thing spoiling the picture was the fact she was standing there in another man’s T-shirt.
This made my temper spike for some unknown reason, so I forgot what I meant to ask her and said the first thing that came into my head instead.
“Whose T-shirt is that?” My voice was a low, territorial growl that I barely recognised.
Bloody hell, I was losing my goddamn mind.
“W-w-what?” Vicky whispered, and I gritted my teeth. One of the things that kept replaying in my mind after my confrontation with Vicky when I delivered her table was when she stuttered. It was so un-Vicky like, so vulnerable, that the thought of it made my stomach hollow out.
“Shit,” I muttered, my hand going to the back of my neck to grip it in frustration as I forced myself to break eye contact with her and stare out of the glass wall.
I was scaring her again. Why was I driven to be such a prick around this woman?
The bottom line was that she was into me.
Way, way into me, and I’d been fucking rude.
I needed to apologise, and then get us to a place where I could find out why she wasn’t bloody well eating.
I did not need to bark at her and interrogate her in her home.
But then, I looked back at her, and I saw her eyes were no longer on my face; no, they were focused on my chest, on the muscles I knew were now flexed there and on display, seeing as I had yet to get dressed and was still wearing a pair of low-slung board shorts with a towel in my hand.
Okay, not totally scared of me then. Despite the tense atmosphere, I had the sudden desire to smile.
And I decided that if Vicky was going to eye-fuck me like this, then I did, in fact, deserve an answer to my question.
I took a step towards her. She startled and took a step back, tearing her eyes from my chest to look at my face.
But she didn’t make direct eye contact, instead, she stared at my left ear.
“I asked whose T-shirt that is that you’re wearing, love?” I said, my voice no longer a growl, but still low and firm. She blinked at the endearment, and her mouth parted for a moment before she snapped it shut.
“It’s my half-brother’s,” she said, her voice still just above whisper.
Half-brother. Never brother, or just Ollie.
It was almost as if she had to clarify the distinction, and, not for the first time, it struck me as odd.
But the knowledge that Ollie had given her the T-shirt, and she was most definitely not fucking her half-brother made my tense body relax.
“I was an arsehole,” I told her.
Her body jerked slightly, but that was the only indication I had that she’d even heard me.
I cleared my throat.
“You were?” she asked as she tilted her head to the side.
My eyebrows went up. “Er… yes, love.” Again, that blink at the endearment, then the briefest bit of eye contact, her crystal blue ones locking with mine for a split second. “I was a total arsehole. I’m here to say I’m sorry.”
“I don’t understand,” Vicky said.
“Vicky, I was mean the other day. It was completely unwarranted.” My voice was soft then. I still wasn’t sure what was going on here.
Surely a girl like Vicky should be taking my apology as her due and being a total bitch about it? She had me over a barrel. If she told Ollie what I’d said to her, he would be furious, but she clearly hadn’t said a word. Which was unusual in itself.
Lucy would’ve definitely come to me if Felix had been a shit to her. In fact, she had come straight to me after he threw her out of his office, and I’d punched Felix in the face in short order.
Where was my face punch?
“I should have been kinder when I turned you down.”
Vicky just shrugged, which pissed me off even more. “It’s not your fault,” she told me in a neutral tone. “A lot of people are mean to me. I’m told I can be extremely irritating.”
White hot anger shot through me at her words. “Who the fuck is mean to you?” I said with that growl back in my voice now. She frowned up at my left ear as if confused by my words.
“Mr. Mayweather?—”
“Mike,” I corrected her.
“Er… Mike.”
Hearing my name on her lips was something I didn’t realise I needed until that very moment, but it shot through me like a knife.
“I can be an exceptionally annoying person. I don’t read people well, and I very often insult people. Thus, people are inevitably… well, mean . It’s not a?—”
She broke off as I took another step towards her, saying in a low voice, “Baby, I asked who was mean to you.”
“Baby?” she whispered, her eyes flying even wider as she took another faltering step back, but she stopped when she came up against the large oak table behind her.