She waved him in, shaking her head. “You’re a man who looks good in whatever you put on. You don’t understand.”
“You look good,” he said closing the door behind him.
She couldnotengage with that. Because if she did…she might read into it. He was just being polite. “No, you said I lookfine, and I don’t. I look like… I’ve been rotting in bed all day. Because Ihave.”
“Does it matter?”
She fisted her hands on her hips and gave him her best glare. “Do you want to keep arguing or do you just want to let me get dressed?”
He made a waving motion for the hallway. So she went into her room, inwardly groaned that she could not take her time thinking this through. What did you wear for a pizza dinner at your protector cop’s sister’s house? When you were the sad victim, not an actual guest.
Match Royal’s vibe. Casual. Relaxed. She changed out of her yoga pants into jean shorts with a plain blouse—slightly elevated from a T-shirt but not fancy. Then tennis shoes, because if she remembered correctly, Brooke lived on a ranch. Footwear should match the location.
Hair? No mirror. She grabbed a clip off her dresser, twisted her hair up, then used her phone to use the camera as a kind of mirror.
Once she was satisfied—or at least as satisfied she was going to get in a few minutes—she went back out to the main room. Royal was standing in front of her bookcase.
And she was back to thinking about someone purposefully burning all her books.
“You got a favorite?” he asked, pointing at the shelf where she’d arranged her own books.
“Of my books?”
He nodded.
She wasn’t sure why he’d ask, but she gave it some thought as she walked over to stand next to him. The physical representation of the past seven years of work. “I don’t know that I have a favorite. They all mean…something different, I guess.” She reached out, tapped her fourth one. “This one though? Rejected by my first editor, so selling it to a new publisher—and then having it do well—probably the one that brings the biggest smile to my face.”
He chuckled. “Spite determines your favorite?”
“Spite is a great motivator.”
His mouth curved. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
“You’re not a police officer out of spite.”
“Maybe not, but it didn’t hurt thinking about how much my dad would hate it when the academy was annoying as hell. Kinda spitey.”
“Kinda,” she agreed, amused. More…thrilled than she had any sensible right to be that he understood.
“Well, we better head out,” he said. “I promised Brooke I’d pick up the pizza, and she likes to remind me you shouldn’t leave a pregnant woman hungry.”
“Oh, she’s having a baby? Isn’t that great?” She grinned at him as they left the apartment. She locked the door and set all the alarms. “Uncle Royal.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He grunted, leading her down to a car that wasn’t his police cruiser. “Kinda weird.”
They settled into the car. “I love being an aunt—well, honorary aunt, because I don’t have siblings. But I got to help Vi when she had Magnolia, so I became Aunt Franny, though Mags calls me Geen.”
“Why?”
“Not a clue, but even now that she’s stringing full sentences together, I’m still Geen. It’s cute. And then Fox came along, and he’s the sweetest little pudge ball. And now Rosalie is having a baby? It’s the best. You get to spoil and play and be fun instead of having to worry about keeping a whole other human alive twenty-four-seven.”
“Not sure I know how tobe funwith an infant.”
“Oh, it’s easy,” Franny said waving that away as they drove. “I’m guessing the teenage years will be the hardest, but then you just take them to the R-rated movie their parents don’t want them to see or buy them the energy drink their parents won’t let them have.”
He eyed her. “You’re really planning on walking on the wild side.”
She laughed, even though he was kind of making fun of her. “Wild is my middle name.”
