Billionaires Dollar Series

My eyes flit past his shoulder to lock on Nick’s. He doesn’t look away. “I am?”

“Yes,” Cole continues. “I pretended to be surprised, but of course I wasn’t.”

“Of course,” I repeat dazedly. Nick nods his hello to me before taking another sip of his drink. His face is impassive again, no hint of amusement in his eyes and no sardonic smile lurking in the corner of his mouth.

“Not to mention that you’re both here together and we didn’t have to trick you or hold you here under duress.” Cole’s smile is still wide.

No, he definitely doesn’t suspect anything.

“Progress,” Nick intones, raising his glass as a toast to me. I feel burned by the intensity in his gaze. Play along, it says. You promised to behave.

“Progress,” I echo.

The sound of footsteps on the staircase breaks us out of our staring contest. Timmy comes barreling down, Skye’s nephew, a boy of fourteen. Puberty has just started to grab a hold of the boy and his gangly limbs are longer every time I see him.

He stops next to his aunt. “I heard dinner was done.”

“So it is.” She reaches up and pushes his hair back. They’re almost the same height now. “I booked a time at the hairdresser tomorrow. Your hair is really getting too long.”

A faint blush spreads across Timmy’s cheeks. He pushes her hand away. “Hi, Blair,” he says to me.

I smile at him. He often spends the night at Skye and Cole’s place, and they’ve given him his own room. “Hey, kid. How’s it going?”

“Good.” He comes up beside me. “Cole and I just managed to get tickets for the Super Bowl.” His voice cracked once, faintly.

“What, really?”

“Yes.” His wide grin is infectious. The discussion takes up a fair amount of bandwidth around the dinner table, with both Nick and Cole chiming in. Skye sends me a commiserating look across the table. Neither she nor I have ever been able to cultivate any true interest in baseball.

Nick and Cole smile, too, at the occasional crack in Timmy’s voice. It’s only after dinner, when he scampers back upstairs to his new video game-my brother spoils him beyond belief-that they both laugh.

“I remember that,” Nick says. “Thank God it only lasts a few months, at best.”

“Cole’s voice cracked for at least a year.” I sink deeper into the armchair, nodding to where my brother is sitting with his arm around Skye.

“Really?” she asks.

“Oh, yes. And Lairy didn’t let me live that down, either.”

Nick sits in the armchair beside mine. His dark eyes find mine. “Can you really be that cruel?”

I cross my legs and feel a slice of triumph as his eyes take in the movement. The dress had been an excellent choice. “Sometimes.”

“She was merciless,” Cole adds. “But I’ve teased her about a fair number of things too, so I’d say we’re even.”

“Even?” I feign mock outrage. “Any younger sibling knows that there’s no such thing as even. Skye, help me out.”

She nods sagely. “They can tickle you, you can’t tickle them. They can tease you, you can’t tease them. I’m with Blair here. You had to take every chance you got.”

“Show no mercy, take no hostages,” I say. And then, because I can’t resist, I turn to Nick. “Do you have any siblings? Help us convince Cole.”

The shake of his head is smooth. “Only child, I’m afraid.”

“What a wonderful thing,” Cole sighs, and we all laugh as I pretend to flip him off.

“To be fair, you gave me a lot of things to tease you about. You made it easy, Lairy.”

“Are you victim-blaming?” I shake my head at my big brother in mock outrage. “I’d advise you to stop talking right about now.”

“Or what? You’re going to get our lawyers involved? We have the same ones.” He laughs good-naturedly and reaches out to rest his arm around Skye’s shoulder. “You had a crush on a new guy every week. It was great fodder for jokes.”

Skye and Nick both laugh. I don’t, the smile on my face growing just a tad tighter. “You kept bringing your friends over. It was very easy to.” My voice is carefully cheerful. My mingling voice, honed by years of parties. Inside, I’m trying to telepathically tell my brother to shut the hell up.

Skye takes a sip of her alcohol-free cider. “As if you didn’t have crushes when you were a teenager.”

Cole leans his head back against the couch. He looks the picture of ease, at peace and amused. Shouldn’t people who’ve found their happiness be kind? Not, you know, ruin it for others? My brother hasn’t gotten that memo, because he destroys everything.

“Not like Blair did. Didn’t you have a crush on Nick when we first became friends?”

Several things happen at once, then.

In my peripheral view, I see Nick still.

Skye frowns at her husband in clear disapproval.

Cole grins at me and Nick, thinking this is nothing but a fun joke. Something we’ll laugh about.

I force my voice to obey. It comes out unhurried, unforced. “That was such a long time ago,” I say. “And it lasted for exactly a week.”

“Until you discovered what a brute he is.” Cole nods to Nick, his smile growing wider.

Nick smiles back. It’s his sardonic one, the one that says he’s laughing at his own private joke. “Not fit for anyone’s little sister,” he says.

“Exactly.” Cole takes a sip of his own whiskey and glances down at Skye. Her displeasure is still plain, and as he sees it, he pauses. “What?”

She shakes her head at him, but thankfully doesn’t say anything.

“Should we turn the tables?” I ask instead. “Who was the one who crashed Dad’s old Corvette a month after he got his license?”

Cole groans and Nick latches on to the story immediately, asking for details. I breathe a shaky sigh of relief, even though I know it’s only temporary.

There’s no way Nick will let me live this down.

And somehow, when it’s time to leave, Nick is the one who stands and faces me. “I’ll drive you home,” he says.All rights © NôvelDrama.Org.

The walk to his car is silent. I glance at him twice from the corner of my eye, but he looks like he’s retreated, back into the cold impassivity I’d been used to for years.

I repress a sigh as I climb into the passenger seat of his Land Rover. “Come on. Didn’t we behave ourselves perfectly in there? I kept my promise.”