Page 65 of Stolen Summer

With me still on his lap, Cole leaned to the side, retrieving his phone. The screen lit up the dark limo, and the scowl sculpted on his lips intensified. “If you’re not being held by a gun or bleeding to death, then fuck off,” he growled into the phone.

“Let me guess, you’re with a girl,” the man on the other side said loud enough for me to hear because I was still in Cole’s lap and he had the volume turned up.

“None of your fucking business. What do you want?” Cole demanded, his hand at my hip stiffening.

“Did you go?” the mysterious caller asked.

“What do you think?” Cole snapped back.

“And he didn’t know?”

I squinted, trying to place the voice. A nugget of familiarity nagged at me. I’d heard it before. But where?

“Does he ever?” Cole frowned, and I leaned forward to kiss it away but stopped myself.

What the hell?

“I owe you,” the nameless man said, sounding as if he meant it. Did that mean this person was important to Cole?

“Twice. You owe me twice,” Cole corrected.

“If you’re getting your dick sucked in the back of the car right now, I’d say we’re even. How is our little?—?”

I fell back to the side, untangling my legs from around him, no longer interested in their conversation. Did the other person know about me? Know what Cole offered me?

Cole’s eyes were on me, watching me intently. “I can’t talk right now,” he said, ending the call without a goodbye but not before I caught a mischievous chuckle from the other end of the phone.

I could pretend as if I hadn’t been eavesdropping, listening to every word exchanged, or I could own it. I didn’t see the point in pretending. There’d been enough of masks, lies, and charades tonight. I wanted those deceptions gone when it was only Cole and me. I wanted the truth from him. I cared little about the parts we played when we weren’t alone. I needed honesty from him. Still, I wasn’t sure that gave me the right to ask, but I did so anyway. “Who was that?”

“No one,” he answered flatly, shoving a hand through his hair.

Irritation flared inside me at his response. I hated being given the brush-off, and it wouldn’t work with me and our partnership. We either did this thing together, whatever the fuck it was, or we didn’t. That simple. Or it could be if Cole stopped complicating it with his secrecy. “It didn’t sound like nothing. It sounded like you were covering for someone tonight. Your brother?” I guessed.

He undid a few buttons at the top of his shirt, his clothes wrinkly. “You hear too much, Killer.”

“It’s not like you were being very discreet. You took the damn call with me on your lap,” I reminded and was rewarded with a flash of gold in his eyes, but the shadows from the brief call remained.

We wouldn’t be picking up where we left off.

“It was my brother,” he confirmed, and the hard set of his jaw when he said it made me realize I wouldn’t get much more out of him. I could deduce a speculation of my own.

“He was supposed to be here tonight,” I gathered from the short call.

Cole nodded, giving me nothing more.

“Do I daresay it was sweet of you to cover for him tonight even if you won’t tell me why? Not that I blame him. After one night, I’m pretty sure I can go the rest of my life without ever stepping foot inside that house again.”

The barest smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, and combined with the silver hoop winking in the dim car sent me to the sexual edge.

Cole stretched out his legs, invading my space, but given his height, he needed it more than I did. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t have a sweet bone in my body, Killer. My brothers and I have a pact, especially when it comes to our father.”

It should feel awkward to be sitting in the back of a car without pants, but oddly, I was fine. “I didn’t think arranged marriages were still a thing.”

He rubbed at his temple. “It’s a business deal. The only thing my father is good at.”

“And you resent him for it.”

“Hmm,” he grunted, all the confirmation I would get.

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