Lucky sits straighter. “You have a new girlfriend named Switzerland, and you didn’t tell us?”
“Don’t be a literal asshat,” Decker says. “You know what he meant.”
Movement near the door catches my attention, though I probably would’ve sensed her even if I hadn’t seen her.
The woman radiates the energy of a squirrel and the tenacity of a bulldog.
Don’t think that part’s genetic.
The triplets don’t have it the way she does, at any rate. They’re good dudes, all motivated in their own ways, and they get their shit done, but they can’t touch Margot and her capacity to tackle the world.
Maybe all three of them together could get eighty percent of the way to her determination and drive.
And if that’s all she was—a businesswoman with drive and tenacity and an endless capability to keep going until she gets what she wants—I’d be telling Decker right now who she is.
But I’m still stuck on remembering the way she helped the server at that dinner, and the way she’s smiled at my friend and his brothers, and the unexpected ways that she’s not the high-maintenance spoiled rich woman I would’ve expected.
There’s more to Margot Merriweather-Brown than meets the eye.
Jack and Decker notice she’s here too.
Lucky can’t see the door with the angle of the curtains and his seat, so he’s slower to realize something’s shifted, but as soon as Bandit leaps to his feet and makes the softestwoofof greeting I’ve ever heard a dog make, Lucky turns too.
Margot sails through the speakeasy like she owns the place, and based on the way Decker slides another look my way, I think he thinks so too.
Like he hadn’t expected his secret half sister to have the poise and confidence she does.
I shrug at him.
His cousin’s a barista from a small mountain town, raised by a single mother, and she’d walk through a building like that.
He sighs again and slouches back in his seat like he’s thinking the same thing.
“Seriously, lay off researching serial killers,” Jack mutters to him while gesturing for Bandit to sit, which he does, though he’s still panting excitedly. “You’re getting stupid paranoid.”
“You can’t write a dystopian novel where serial killers are the only people who survived without researching serial killers,” Decker mutters back.
“Bad move, switching away from litRPG,” Lucky says.
“Dumb decision,” Jack agrees. “Keep doing what’s working.”
“Maybe they’ll both work,” Decker shoots back. “Won’t know if I don’t try.”
“Or you’re afraid you’ve peaked and you’re running away.”
“Hi, guys.” Margot—Margie, I remind myself—stops at the edge of our circle, bending to love all over Bandit as she smiles broadly like she wasn’t glaring at me an hour ago. “Have room for one more?”
Lucky leaps up and pulls an extra chair over for her, so she’s across the little circle from me, her back firmly to the door, the dog within reach.
Other than a brief nod, she doesn’t much acknowledge my presence.
Irritating.
No matter who I am and what I know about her, I’d appreciate a little reciprocation to the way I’m distracted by how her soft lavender T-shirt hugs her breasts under a darker purple flannel.
I swallow and make myself look away.
She’s a shark, I remind myself.
