Page 66 of Daddies' Little Troublemaker

“Can I come in?”

“Nope.”

“Look, Evelyn, I think I made a mistake, and I really just want to sit down and talk with you.”

This fucking guy. I can’t believe him sometimes. I more firmly block the doorway. “You can’t come in, and I don’t want to hear about your mistakes, Troy.”

“What do you mean?” he says. “When we first broke up, you asked about making it work.”

Not my proudest moment. Freshly wounded by the knowledge that he had a sidepiece and the sidepiece was my sister, I’d actually hoped, for a moment, that he would come to his senses and choose me. I had supported him while he searched for a new job after college. I’d supported him when he was drinking too much and needed help cutting back. I’d supported him when he needed me. But when I needed him? He was fucking my sister.

So that moment where I’d wanted to make it work, well, that was utter stupidity and I won’t go back to that, ever.

“Troy, it’s over. It was over as soon as you started fucking Chloe—just neither of us knew it yet.”

He frowns and looks past me, trying to see inside the house. “Are you with one of those guys I saw here the other day? That Caleb guy?”

He was here the other day? I don’t ask about it, though—I don’t want to know. “Who I’m with is none of your business.”

“You aren’t, then,” he says, a sneer curling his upper lip. “You’d want to rub it in my face if you were.”

No, that’s something he would do. I don’t say it, though. “Time to go, Troy.”

“Don’t be a bitch, Evelyn, just let me come in and talk. You gotta listen to me, babe.”

I can’t hold back my full-body shudder. “I don’t have to listen to you, and do not call me a bitch and do not call me ‘babe.’ You lost that privilege a long time ago.”

“We could be together again,” he says.

Ew. No. I can picture it—the whole couple relationship sold by the wedding industry. The two of us walking hand in hand along a beach, our pants rolled up to our knees, the wind gathering strands of my blond hair, the sun setting behind us…and I want to hurl.

I’d been worrying about a relationship as a group of three, because it isn’t typical. But if being with someone like Troy makes a typical relationship, then maybe I wasn’t cut out to be typical.

He lifts his sunglasses, giving me a glimpse of his eyes, widened to puppy-dog proportions.

Instead of caving, I say, “Don’t you have a concert to take Chloe to?”

His eyes widen even more. “Oh, shit.”

I can’t believe I’m still managing his schedule, after we’ve broken up and he has a new fiancée.

“This conversation isn’t over, Evelyn,” he says.

“Actually, it is,” a deep voice says from behind me. Lincoln. I don’t turn around to see him, but I can feel the heat of his body all along the back of mine. I can smell the scent of his freshly washed body.

Troy gapes but puts on a show of machismo and straightens his shoulders. “Our conversation isn’t up to you.”

Menace laces Lincoln’s voice. “You’ve insulted her and tried to bully her, and if you can’t listen to her firm dismissal and leave of your own volition, I will help you leave.”

“I—never mind.” Troy turns around and hurries to his car.

I watch as he gets in, starts the engine, and disappears down the drive. The entire time he goes, I’m hyperconscious of Lincoln’s body, warm against my back.

He clears his throat, ready to say something, but I spin around and look into his eyes. The fierce protectiveness there soaks into my skin, heating me through and through.

We stare at each other for several beats too long.

“Do it,” he finally says. “Kiss me, Trouble. I dare you.”

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