The new guy asked, “Are you two all right?Jesus,Twist, the situations you get yourself into. You’re worse than Maxence.”
Tristan’s voice spoke in her ears as he turned toward her. “Are you all right, Colleen? Those gormless cockwombles didn’t shoot you, did they?”
Yep,Tristan Kinghad suddenly acquired a starched British accent.
Super tall, muscular and fit, educated and wealthy, tattooed and well-dressed, Tristan King was hotter than a black car in the summer in Phoenix, but he had also lied his shapely ass off ever since he’d walked into her GameShack store.
She turned her head to look into Tristan’s brilliantly blue eyes. “You’reTwist.I mean, you’reTwist theTwistyTraderfrom the Sherwood Forest forums. And . . . that other place.” She didn’t want to name the Devilhouse because the new guy was listening through the headphones, too.
Tristan King was looking over his shoulder at her, still holding her in place with his arm. His expression went from a wince to a smirk in an instant. “Yes, and you’re QueenMod, aren’t you,princess?”
She nodded, pissed at how he’d somehow made her feel ashamed of it. “You know I am.”
Colleen Frost was drenched with fire sprinkler water and yet was somehow still slimy with stinky fear-sweat from being kidnapped and then chased by that asshole Sergey of the Russian Butorin bratva.
Which meantmafia.Bratva meantmafia.That was another thing Colleen had learned in the last few days that she desperately wished she hadn’t.
At least they’d escaped.
Probably.
And yet, even with all that, the raging fire in her brain was that she waspissed off as all hellat Tristan King, the tall, gorgeous, ripped, handsome jackass with the brilliant blue eyes who sat beside her in the helicopter.
Tristan was somehow—oh sweet baby Jesus, she did not know how the hell this had all come together, but God knew she hated it—he was also somehow the person known asTwistyTraderon the stock market internet forum that she moderated.
TheTwistyTradershe’d gotten sexty with online.
TheTwistyTradershe’d met at a place called The Devilhouse for a night she’d never forget, but oh, how she wished she could take it back just then.
TheTwistyTradershe hadn’t been able to stop naughty-texting untilright beforeshe’d sneaked into Tristan King’s bedroom and boinked him.
Tristan King and TwistyTrader were both the same guy.
And she was going to freakin’ kill him.
“I can’t believe that we called TwistyTrader the ‘King of the Killer Whales,’ and you’re TristanKing.”
“Heh, yeah, that was quite a coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“Why are you faking a British accent?” she demanded.
Tristan was looking at her out of the corners of his eyes, the blueness of his irises barely visible in the low lights of the helicopter cabin and fading sunset as they flew over the California desert hills. “I’m not faking it. This is how I speak. Micah can tell you.” He held out his hand as he made the introductions. “Micah, this is Colleen Frost, my impromptu computer science consultant whom I seem to have put in deadly danger. Colleen, this is Micah Shine, an old friend from boarding school in Switzerland, where we met at the impressionable age of thirteen.”
Micah Shine, the new guy, leaned out and looked in her eyes, and she got a good look at his eyes for the first time. They were light gray and shimmery with aqua and green flecks like nothing she’d ever seen before.
Tristan continued, “Our English rhetoric instructor insisted the Americans learn how to speak ‘properly, without an accent,’ according to his standards. It stuck with some of us more than others. According to actual Brits, I have a light American accent. It now takes effort for me to speak like a Midwestern farm boy.”
“It’s true,” Micah said, leaning to look around Tristan at her, but he spoke with a neutral American nothing-accent. “Master Hamilton would fail you if you spoke with, and I quote, ‘an abominable native accent.’ Some friends of ours can’t move their jaws when they speak English at all.” He elbowed Tristan. “Remember when Hamilton used to tell Arthur Finch-Hatten he didn’t sound British enough? I think it scarred him for life.”
Colleen asked, “If you two went to a Swiss boarding school together, whydoesn’the talk like that?”
“Oh, I certainly can,” Micah said with a cut-glass British drawl. “I just don’t. Keeping it neutral American is enough of a chore for me without adding that on top.”
“Why is he calling youTwist?”she demanded. “Is Micah on the Sherwood Forest forums, too?” She leaned out, her cheek resting on Tristan’s arm. “You,Micah!Are you one of the Killer Whales? You’re the one we call Orca Asshole, aren’t you?”
Micah laughed. “No, but thanks for that.”
Tristan shook his head. “He’s not. We gave each other stupid nicknames in upper school that many of us carry to this day to personify the trauma of that place.”
