I didn’t like that at all. I was usually a good read on people and their intentions, but I never caught a whiff of anything wrong coming from Leo. He was almost squeaky clean compared to what I usually went after. The first night I met him, we talked for hours, and he never seemed to get bored. At the end of the night, I usually propositioned the guy for a night of sex with no strings because I didn’t do relationships. At the end of the night with Leo, though, I found myself handing him my number and leaving it in his hands to message me the next day; he did. It was the first morning I got that good morning baby text, and I was hooked.
I know I’m stalling in the shower, so I turn the water off and step out, wrapping a fluffy towel around my body. Wiping the steam off the mirror, I stare at my reflection and almost don’t recognize the girl staring back at me. Her eyes are sad, but there is also hope hiding behind them. If he’s telling the truth, can I forgive him? He didn’t know what his father did to me, that I knew for a fact, but did Evander and Mateo? Leo said they were nothing like Frankie. So, could they set a plan in action to have their brother pursue me, knowing Frankie set me on a crash course of having to grow up too fast?
Shaking those thoughts from my head, I brush my teeth and put on minimal makeup, jeans, and a t-shirt, not even close to ready to take on this day. It was just after seven in the morning, and I had barely slept. All the thoughts of Leo ran through my head.
I walk into the kitchen to find Micah fixing breakfast. Walking up, I snag a piece of bacon, and he swats at my hand with the spatula. “Back off.”
“What are you, Betty freaking Crocker?” I ask with a laugh.
He has his usual three-piece suit on, without the jacket at the moment. At thirty-two, he looks so much like my dad that it hurt to looks at him sometimes. He has the same black hair and blue eyes as my father and me. He is tall, broad, and doesn’t look a day older than me.
“For your information, shithead, I like to cook. I don’t have thestaff do it all for me.” He points at me with the spatula before resuming to his eggs.
“I don’t have the staff do it all for me,” I defend.
He scoffs. “You can’t cook for shit, Les.”
I laugh. “Fair point, but we order out. We don’t always keep staff here.”
He looks around. “No kidding. This place is a mess.”
“Shut up, asshole,” I say, throwing a kitchen towel at him.
He chuckles. “I’m just fucking with you. You never were the princess people made you out to be.”
“Like mom would have ever let me,” I say sadly. Mom died when I was twelve, but she never let me use our lifestyle as an excuse to be lazy; Dad was the one who spoiled me to no end.
He wraps me in a one-arm hug. “I know..” He squeezes me once before ushering me to the other side of the island to sit down. “Where are the guys?”
I shrug. “I don’t know; it’s not my day to keep up with them.”
He blows air out through his nose. “Yes. It is. They are your team.”
Getting under his skin is my favorite pastime, so I keep pushing buttons. “Who was the girl last night? Am I going to have an auntie?”
He glares at me. “Not a chance in hell.”
“Come on, Micah,” I beg. “I need a woman figure in my life.” I grimace. “Unless she’s younger than me.”
Micah shrugs. “She had big tits. That’s all I know. I don’t even remember her name.”
My mouth drops open. “You’re disgusting.”
“You started this game.”
Fuck, I did. “Truce,” I declare. I do not need to hear about Micah’s little flings. He grins and turns back to his eggs. I might fuck with him to get a reaction out of him, but he does the same to me. I didn’t have siblings growing up, so Micah was the closest thing I had to a brother, and I didn’t know what I would have done without him after my dad died.
Gage walks in, laying a noisy, sloppy kiss on my cheek. “Morning,wifey.”
“Stop calling me that,” I say, wiping his kiss off my cheek.
Micah turns around, jabbing a finger at Gage. “And stop putting that shit on her pictures.”
“What?” Gage asks innocently.
“Don’t play stupid, dickhead. You get the gossip mags fired up every time,” Micah points out.
Being in a high population area like Abbs Valley, the paparazzi and gossip magazines follow you around like vultures if you have any type of status. I have seen so many laughable stories that it was crazy. We didn’t play into their shit, so we never sat for interviews. They ended up making up their own stories.
