I scoffed and returned my focus to the unread email—despite having read it three times. I couldn’t focus. Not with him and his spoon licking.
My cell vibrated in my hand, a text flashing over the screen.
Sister: The parents kicked me out. I need a place to crash. Be at your new hubby’s in ten.
I jolted in my seat, the phone dropping from my hand.
“Shit!”
“What?” Cannon was instantly at my side, so quickly I hadn’t seen him move, his cereal bowl forgotten on the other side of the island.
“My sister,” I said, my heart racing, “is on her way here!” I bolted off the stool, my bare feet padding against the hardwood as I hurried to my room. “Help me, Cannon!” I hollered behind me, though I knew he’d followed.
“Help you what?” he asked as I darted into my room and into the en-suite bathroom.
I grabbed everything I used daily, cradling it against my chest as I booked it past Cannon and toward his room down the hall.
Cannon blocked my entry. “Oh, no, Princess, I said—”
“To hell with your rules, Cannon! Andromeda is nearly here, and if she finds out I’m sleeping in a guest room despite being blissfully married to your gorgeous ass, what do you think she’ll say? You witnessed how she acted at the engagement party,” I said. “She’ll twist the information to her advantage.” I paused, my heart sinking. “What do you think she’ll tell my mother?”
He furrowed his brow. “She’d do that?”
“Yes. She’d do that and more.” I sighed. “My parents kicked her out—it’s not the first time—and she needs a place to stay.”
“And you want her here, even though she could potentially betray you?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Obviously,” he said, but he didn’t move. “I don’t understand the upper-class-gossip-war.”
“She’s my sister,” I said, eyes pleading. “What would you do for Lillian?”
He moved and opened the door to his room, allowing me inside. All at once, I was hit with an essence of him—his smell, his books stacked on the nightstand by his bed and strewn across the dark wood dresser across the room. “What do you need from me?”
I swore I melted a bit at his words.
“Grab the clothes out of the dresser in my room, please? You can just toss them in here anywhere. I don’t care. The gowns and dresses are fine hanging in the guest closet, since we can always say we were saving space in here. It’s just the daily stuff—”
“I’m on it,” he said, cutting off my ramble. He disappeared as I found my way into his bathroom and dumped the contents of my facial régime into a random drawer. I’d organize later. Or I wouldn’t. I didn’t know how long she’d be staying.
At least a night.
Which means…
I stared at the massive bed tucked against the back wall, a hot thrill rushing through me at the knowledge that I’d share that bed with Cannon tonight. His body next to mine, only inches separating—
“Clothes are done. Anything else?” Cannon’s voice cut into my fantasy, grounding me in the present.
Right. So not the time.
“Thank you,” I said as he finished shoving my clothes into a pair of empty drawers in the dresser on the opposite side of the bed. “I’ll just go make the bed—”
“Done,” he said, and I sighed.
“Thank you.”
“You don’t have to keep saying that,” he said. “What else?”
“Well, if it isn’t too much trouble,” I said, wringing my hands. I heard a car screech to a stop outside. “If you could do that thing again.”
He cocked a brow at me, and my skin flushed.
“Where you pretend to love me? Like at the engagement party? I know it’ll take more effort on your part since she’ll be staying here, but I’m not sure how long and I just—”
“We’ll figure it out.” He reached out, grazing his knuckles ever so gently over my cheek. The sweet, innocent gesture sent a white-hot tremor down the center of me.
I leaned into that caress, biting down on my gratitude since he’d told me to stop.
A firm pounding on the door broke the tension buzzing between us, and I jolted out of his touch. He dropped his hand, a muscle in his jaw ticking as I brushed past him and out of his room.
“You would not believe the way Waze took me to get here!” Anne said by way of greeting, stomping past me and dropping her two large Louis Vuitton bags on the floor. “This is such a cute little town! And an even cuter little house!” She scanned the interior—taking in the clean lines, open floorplan, and simple yet comfortable furniture Cannon had outfitted the place with. Little was the last thing I’d call the house, but my sister had much more lavish tastes than I ever had.
“Please, come in,” I said, a bit sarcastically as she made herself at home. She found the kitchen and plopped on a barstool, reaching for the bowl of fruit I’d replenished this morning. Cannon loved a banana before his morning run.
She fiddled with an apple, crossing one leg over the other as she chomped into it.
I took a seat across from her, and Cannon elected to remain on the other side of the island as if he needed the distance.
“What happened?” I asked after she’d had a few more bites.
“Did you get these here?”
I nodded. “Sweet Water Farmer’s Market.”
“They’re so much better than the ones in Charleston.”
I raised my brows, not at all amused by the evasion. “What. Happened.”
She huffed and sat her half-eaten apple on the island, not even bothering to reach for the small fruit plates I had next to the bowl.
Patience. Kindness. Compassion.
“Mother and Father totally overreacted,” she said.
I waited, silent.
“They did,” she insisted. The black from her mascara had smudged underneath her eyes, whether from tears or staying out too late, I wasn’t sure. “I got kicked out of one itsy-bitsy club—”
“Which club?” I cringed when she didn’t answer right away. “Not the club?”
A slow nod. Then she rolled her eyes. “I was drunk, and I got into a fight with Brittany. She tried to say…well, it doesn’t matter what she said. She deserved a few slaps for it. Then she pulled my hair, and I don’t remember much after that. Except that Gerald threw me over his shoulder! Can you believe that? The nerve.” She sucked her teeth. “I should have Father fire him.”
Anger bubbled beneath my calm exterior as I counted my breaths. I couldn’t speak, not at the moment, because if I did, I would say—
“You get in a drunken fight so intense at your parents’ country club that your head of security has to haul you out, likely for your own safety and that of the other guests, and you threaten to have him fired?” Cannon’s voice was all hard edge, none of the softness from earlier. “Sounds to me like your parents kicked you to the curb for good reason.”
My lips parted, but Anne’s mouth dropped.
Yes, I’d been thinking the same exact thing, but she was my sister.