Page 42 of Enticing

Coraline clicks her tongue as she picks up a cherry-red laptop from an end table. She slides down to the floor and rests her laptop on her knees with her back to the couch. “Yeah, ya do. Look at it this way, sissy. He’s perfect. Your kids like him. He’s not after your money because he’s got his own, and truth be told, you could even offer him a settlement at the end of the marriage. And let’s not forget he’s pretty to look at too.”

“He’s also right here,” I remind her, and she laughs at me.

“Don’t like being objectified?” Coraline laughs.

“Nope. That part’s fine. I just wanted to remind you,” I tease, trying to thaw the ice that’s formed in the room. Part of me knows this plan is insane, but the rest of me isn’t so sure it is. That part, the bigger part doesn’t give a shit that it all sounds nuts. It just wants to take care of Addie. “And I don’t need any of your money. I’ve got plenty of my own.”

“Leo,” Addie pleads, her soft expression giving me everything her words won’t. “I can’t ask you to do this.”

“You didn’t ask,” I remind her. “I offered.”

Lennox whimpers, and I sway from side to side, the way my niece Molly used to like.

Addie chews her thumbnail for a minute, then peeks over the back of Coraline’s laptop. “Was there a stipulation for how long I have to be married?”

“Who the hell were your parents that they made that kind of a stipulation in the first place?” I ask the one thing that’s been eating at me since Coraline spilled her guts earlier.

The sisters look at each other in a way that screams I’m not going to like what I’m about to hear. “Don’t leave me hanging now, guys.”

ADELAIDE

Well, I didn’t see that plot twist coming.

—Addie’s Secret Thoughts

My eyes close as I suck in a jagged breath. This was hard enough before Coraline handed my baby to my own personal hockey hottie over there—not that he’s mine—but then you add in the way his big hand cups the back of Lennox’s head and the way his blue eyes keep looking from her to me...

I’m pretty sure my brain is mid-malfunction.

It’s too much.

The man. The marriage. My life.

“You want to tell him or should I?” Coraline asks, and I think I finally truly understand what I mean when I say one of my characters growls. Because the sound that vibrates deep in my chest is threatening.

Can I kill my sister?

Fine. I know I can’t. But the brat is going to pay for this...eventually.

No time like the present to pull up the big-girl panties because the post-baby-number-two panties definitely got bigger.

Sonofabitch.

I hold Leo’s eyes and force my shoulders back for the hit that’s likely coming fast and hard. “Our parents are Gregory and Felicity James.”

It takes about sixty seconds before he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, then as if in slow motion, I watch the shock wash over him before understanding takes its place. “Like the owner of the Boston Bay Hawks, Greg James?”

I nod, desperately wanting to know what he’s thinking.

Knowing your parents weren’t the greatest is one thing. Having someone else say it is something else entirely.

“Damn, Addie. I was really sorry to hear about their plane going down. To lose one of them like that had to be hard. But both of them...” he trails off and runs a hand down my arm and squeezes my hand while balancing Lennox. It’s smooth and natural, like he’s done it a thousand times. Impressive and not at all what I’d expect from a bachelor in his mid-twenties.

I’m not sure my ex was ever that good with Izzy when she was a baby, and I’m even less sure that I should keep comparing the two.

“Thank you.” I swallow. “It wasn’t easy. But we survived,” I admit, and Coraline agrees.

“Let’s just say Mom and Dad were as controlling in life as they are in death, and they rarely approved of either of our choices,” Cori adds, and Leo looks from her to me.

---