“Cut it out.” He waved a hand.
“What? You don’t think your smile is sexy?”
“It’s not that. It’s—”
“So youdothink your smile is sexy?” She tsked. “Sam, really. How conceited.”
“What Imeantwas cut out the flirting.” He gave her a censorious look she thought was meant to be intimidating. Instead, it just made her want to use his ears as handles as she kissed the glower right off his mouth.
“Why?” she asked. “Is it inappropriate? Are you seeing someone?”
“What?” He shook his head vigorously. “No.” She felt a rush of relief. “I don’t have time for—” He shook his head again. “What I meant is, you shouldn’t be flirting because it’s like…incestuous or something.”
Okay. Now she wanted to kiss himandstrangle him.
“Incestuous? Last I checked, we’re not related.”
“But I dated your sister. Which sorta makes me like a brother. Or a brother-in-law, at the very least.”
That did it. She was ready to forgo the kiss altogether and get straight to the strangling. The man was an idiot.
“In what world?” she demanded.
Instead of answering, he asked, “How is Candy, by the way? When we ran into each other in the pub all those months ago, we didn’t really get the chance to catch up. We talked about you and what you’ve been up to since graduating, and then her friends dragged her off to dinner before I could ask how life has been treating her.”
All Hannah’s indignation leaked out of her. It was replaced by defeat, because…
Candy.
Her entire existence things always came back to Candy.
Candy the beautiful.
Candy the glamorous.
Candy the golden girl.
She’d assumed Sam had looked her up andthat’show he’d known what she did for a living. She’d assumed he’d been home alone one night and thought to himself,I wonder whatever happened to little Hurricane Hannah?And she’d felt giddy knowing that, even after all the intervening years, she’d still crossed his mind.
But of course it’d been Candy who’d mentioned her and reminded him that once upon a time he’d sat on a porch swing with an awkward thirteen-year-old girl.
Her shoulders slumped and her tone was less than enthusiastic when she told him, “She’s married to a commodities broker and living in the Gold Coast. She wears Prada, carries Birkin bags, and spends most of her time with her trainer or at the spa getting beauty treatments. In short, she’s living her dream.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. She looked pretty fancy when I saw her. The rock on her left hand probably cost more than I make in a year. She always said she was getting out of Englewood by hook or by crook.”
“She chose the first way. She took one look at Jared…he’s myrealbrother-in-law, by the way,” she added with a pointed stare, “and sank her hooks into him so fast and so deep he had no hope of escape.”
Canting her head, she reconsidered her words. “Or, maybe it’s more accurate to say she took one look at his Ivy League degree and nearly seven-figure salary and decided he was her meal ticket out of the Southside.”
“You make her sound predatory.” Sam frowned. “I never thought of her that way.”
“Not predatory. Just…” She wrinkled her nose as she tried to think of the right word to describe her big sister. “Determined. And more than ready to use the assets she was born with to get exactly what she wanted.”
When a distracted look crossed Sam’s face, she thought he was thinking about Candy’s assets and her hands curled into claws. Then he crossed his arms and his expression turned contemplative. “Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”
“More like exasperation.” She pursed her lips. “Jared reads books likeA People’s History of the United Statesand Candy readsAllure. He watches documentaries about the melting of the polar ice caps and she can’t be bothered to tune in to anything more intense than TikTok. He’s a rabid fan of NPR and she listens to Fat Mascara.”
“Fat Mascara?” Sam raised an eyebrow.
