Page 51 of Winning Brynn

He brought the cat back, after all.

"Okay, I have a question," I declare abruptly, making Leo jolt in surprise where he sits beside me on the sofa as we dig into containers of Chinese takeout.

Salem has been asleep for hours now, and he ordered the food while I was putting her down for the night. Not that he had a choice. The poor baby passed out cold on my chest with a fistful of squished banana.

"Why do you pronounce the 'h' inherbs,but notvehicle?"

His expression twists into something that makes me feel like he's calling me an idiot with just his eyes. "Because it makes sense."

I tap my chin in thought. "It doesn't, though."

Twirling noodles around on his chopsticks, he lifts them to his mouth. Ugh. Of course he can use chopsticks. The man is annoyingly adept at everything.

"I mean, you say the 'h' inherbivore,so why wouldn't you say it inherb?"

Eh. He's got a point there.

"Alright, fine." I can bite the bullet and concede this argument, but only because I'm being nice. "But what aboutvehicle?"

He lifts another mouthful of noodles to his lips with perfect precision, while I stab at mine with a fork. "It follows a vowel, so it's not a hard 'h.' Every time you pronounce it that way, it just sounds like you're doing a hiccup." He pauses, his thick brows pulling tight until three straight lines appear between them. "Why are we even talking about this?"

"I was just wondering. You talk kind of stupid is all."

He laughs then. And it's this deep, loud sound that bubbles from the deepest parts of him and spills out into the space like sunlight. Fuck, I shouldn't like that sound so much. I shouldn't want to make him do it again.

I'm his nanny.

My brother would murder him.

He's an asshole.

"Baby, my country invented the language. You just borrowed it and fucked it up."

My breath catches.

Baby.

Did he just call me baby?

And now I'm freaking out because I'm pretty sure he did, indeed, just call me baby, and I don't know if he meant it in a sexy, flirty kind of way, or if it's just something he calls every woman he talks to. Hell, I don't even know if he realizes he said it at all. His expression is relaxed, and casual, and not at all reflective of the nervous breakdown I'm currently experiencing.

So, I do what I do best.

I twist the conversation into something I'm far more comfortable with.

A fight.

Stabbing at a piece of kung pao chicken with my fork, I grumble, "I'm angry."

"At me?" He lifts an eyebrow but doesn't even raise his eyes to look at me.

I scoff. "Obviously."

Setting his box of chow mein on the coffee table, he turns to me with a sigh. His black tee tightens around his bicep as he leans his arm on the back of the sofa. It really shouldn't be fair for a man to be so hot, but I've learned the hard way that Leo doesn't give two shits about fairness. "Is this about the vehicle thing or something else?"

"I just remembered that you were gonna kill my cat."

His lips twitch as he fights a smile. He knows what I'm doing, I can see it in the sparkle of his eyes, and yet he lets me do it anyway. "But I didn't."

---