“What a wonderful coincidence.”
She returns my smile with one of her own. “Isn’t it?”
Carly audibly scoffs, shaking her head as she pulls out her phone and begins scrolling on social media. Lowering my voice so she is the only one that can hear me, I speak into her ear.
“Put the phone away. You’re not going to sit at the table like a petulant teenager because the topic of discussion is not on you.”
She looks up at me in outrage but when I lift an eyebrow in warning, she begrudgingly puts her phone back into her purse, sitting up a little straighter as she does. She’s on thin ice, right now, and she knows it too. If she wants me to keep up the appearance that everything is fine and thriving between us, she knows how to behave. Instead, she’s like a toddler, pushing the boundaries to determine her limitations. I swear to Christ, we can’t get on the plane home tomorrow fast enough.
“So, sweetheart. How was your birthday last night?” Henry asks Cassi.
That grabs my attention, my head turning to tune into theconversation as I speak without even contemplating considering my words.
“Last night was your birthday?”
Cassi’s eyes cut to me, her words careful and guarded.
“Yes.”
“Not just any birthday, her twenty first. My baby,” Mary says, emotion choking her words.
An eyeroll escapes Cassi but it’s accompanied by a soft smile.
“Mom, stop.”
“What did you do to celebrate?” I ask, unable to help myself.
Her green eyes cut to me, carefully assessing my intent as she speaks.
“My best friends and I rented a hotel room and bar hopped on Capitol Hill.”
A bald fucking face lie.
I nod my head in faux interest.
“What was your favorite bar?”
Her eyes widen in irritation with me, and I can’t help but release a small smile. I’m having entirely too much fun riling her up.
The look of frustration muddled with a dash of panic slowly eases as she gives me a perfectly composed smile.
“I’m not sure, it didn’t have a name. The place was certainly memorable, the people, not as much.”
My teasing smile falls in an instant as Carly butts in with a sneer.
“Well, yeah. Capitol Hill is filled with newly twenty one frat kids. If you wanted to have a good night, you should have searched for somewhere with a little more…class,” she says with a wrinkle of her nose, her eyes raking over Cassi like hot coals.
I wait for the meltdown, the sneered insults or something. That’s what Carly would do if someone basically said to her face that she has no class or taste. To my surprise, she doesn’t reactoutwardly. She keeps her face poised, her posture unyielding before delivering a sickly sweet smile.
“You are an expert on class, Carly. You were even the head of your econ class in college, or did you just give head in class to your professor, I forget.”
Henry practically chokes on the breadstick before him, Mary mutters under her breath to take a sip of her wine and smoke is practically billowing out of Carly’s ears as she glares at her sister. She looks ready to throttle her from across the table, but she doesn’t, instead panickily turning to me.
“It was before you and I got together, I swear.”
Little does she know, I don’t give a fuck. I’m not an oblivious man. I wasn’t even the only executive she was flirting with during her internship, I was just the one that took her back for rounds two and three. I’d be a moron to be surprised by the fact that Carly used her body to get ahead in school, she certainly used it to get ahead in the start of her ‘career’.
I place a placating hand upon her thigh, squeezing it once before facing ahead. Cassi is still staring at her sister, as if she were daring her to challenge her. In the battle of wits, or maybe wills, Carly absolutely lost this round. A fact I’m sure she will not be letting go of easily.
