Page 228 of Tell Me Something True

“This isn’t what it looks like,” Verity blurted.

The bearded one gave a pointed look to where her fingers were still wrapped around Reed’s arm, then moved that look over her messy hair, down her pajamas, and then over to Reed’s bare chest.

He raised his eyebrows. “So you didn’t sneak a boy into your room last night?”

Reed could practically feel the massive eye roll Verity gave her brother, but her fingers tightened on his arm. Trembled, like she was nervous, and she swallowed audibly.

This girl. She couldn’t lie worth shit.

But she sure as hell could talk.

“I mean, if you’re going to be technical about it. But there were extenuating circumstances. Such as the fact that he was hurt and had nowhere else to go. And I, being the responsible, caring person you both raised me to be, could not, in good conscience, leave him to sleep in his truck in his condition. What if he got hypothermia and died?”

“It was sixty-five degrees last night,” the bearded brother said.

She waved that off. “Be that as it may, it would have been… cruel… and heartless and selfish and… and… cruel—”

“You already said cruel.” This from the cop.

“Oh, so sorry,” she said in her snippy tone. “I hadn’t realized you were also the repetitive word choice police.”

“Just tell me you used protection,” the bearded one said.

“We didn’t have sex. God. And if we had, of course I would have used protection. Contrary to what you obviously believe, I’m not an idiot. But, really, look at him” —she swept her free hand up and down as if to showcase what a sad sack of shit Reed was— “he’s hardly in any shape to steal a girl’s virtue.”

Turning his head slightly, he caught her gaze. “Oh, I don’t know about that, princess,” he murmured. “I can do a lot of damage to a girl’s virtue, no matter what shape I’m in.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the bearded guy frown at him. The cop stiffened.

But the girl still holding his arm?

She saw right through him.

“Yes, yes,” she said, and while she didn’t roll her eyes this time, an eye roll was clear in her dry tone, “you’re a big, bad rebel, dangerous to all who encounter you.” Now she used her free hand to give him a mocking pat on the shoulder. “We get it. You don’t have to try so hard to prove it all the time.”

Well, fuck.

Saw. Right. Through. Him.

“Mind if I do my job now?” the cop asked his brother.

The nape of Reed’s neck prickled. Do his job? What the fuck did that mean?

It only took a moment before he figured it out.

The bearded guy shrugged, then stepped into the room. The cop followed. And that was when Reed saw the other cop, this one a tall white woman with brown hair and a sharp, watchful gaze.

Like Assistant Chief Jennings, her gaze swept the room, taking in all the details, before settling on him. “Reed Walsh?”

He nodded.

“Mr. Walsh,” she said, “you’re under arrest—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Letting go of his arm, Verity leapt in front of him, standing between him and the cop, her arms outstretched, his own personal curvy bodyguard with bedhead and sleep marks still on her cheek.

“Jesus Christ,” the bearded brother grumbled, pinching the bridge of his nose at Verity’s theatrics. “Verity, let her do her job.”

“No,” she snapped at him, then whirled back to the lady cop. “You can’t arrest him for spending the night in my room. He didn’t break in here. I let him in.”

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