Page 58 of Windlass

“We needed an adjustment period.”Period. Her period wasn’t about to start anytime soon, was it? That was the last thing she needed. Sure, she could work around it, but she’d rather not.

“She keeping Lana out of the house?”

“So far,” said Stevie. Not even the mention of Lana’s name cooled her down.

“Good. You don’t need that.”

“Angie doesn’t need that.”

“Also true. Hey, did you check your email?”

“Why would I check my email? Don’t answer that. I’ll do it now.” She dug out her phone. A notification from Angie waited on the screen. Her heart would have jumped if it had ever stopped pounding, but Angie’s tongue had also broken its speedometer. Checking email could wait a moment. Concentrating was extraordinarily difficult anyway. She slid the notification open and stifled whatever damning noise had been about to slip past her lips.

Angie had sent a photo. In it, her breasts spilled obscenely from her hands, raising questions about where the hell she’d positioned her phone to take the shot, but those were not questions Stevie was currently prepared to consider. Angie’s nipples were concealed, but only barely. The darker skin around them peeked through.

“Got the email?”

“Almost. Checking something else real quick.” She downloaded the photo to her phone and spent another few seconds staring, then typed out a reply.

SW:Brutal. Gorgeous. Bet you’d feel bad if I’d been driving.

There was more she wanted to say, but Angie shrank from sentiment. Telling her she was beautiful would earn an eye roll if said with too much genuine emotion, and buying her flowers? Might as well buy them for herself with a card that read,Condolences, you lost the girl immediately. She looked at the photo one more time before regretfully navigating away from Angie’s absolutely glorious tits and to her historically tits-free email.

“What am I looking for?”

“It’s from Ivy.”

“Ivy? Okay, Ivy, Ivy, Ivy . . . aha.” She clicked. “‘Lawn games, cocktails—’ Morgan what the fuck is this?” Stevie knew, of course, what the fuck it was (Ivy putting the ‘gay’ in ‘engagement’) but she could not say that, and she knew how a Stevie-in-the-dark-about-a-secret would react.

“Ivy’s idea of a low-key weekend.”

“Why do I feel like by lawn games, she doesn’t mean cornhole?”

“Because you’ve met Ivy Holden, and we’ve both seen her lose at cornhole.”

“And . . .” She read further. “Cocktail attire? Is she serious?”

“It’s a nice island. She’s probably serious.”

“I don’towncocktail attire.” She hadn’t thought she’d needed to make ‘casual attire only’ part of the conditions of her assistance. An amateur mistake in retrospect.

“Have Ange take you shopping. She loves that shit.” Morgan turned down a side road. “Or see if your brothers have a nice shirt or something.”

“You’ve met my brothers, right? About twenty million times?”

“I might have something I shrank by accident. Unless you want to borrow a dress, and then you’re better off with Ange. She’s closer to your size than anyone else. Ivy probably has a shirt, too. You’ve got nice slacks. Or wear a polo—it’s not like any of us care, and we’re the only ones who will be there.”

“Then why am I going shopping?”

“Because you said you didn’t have anything. I’m notmakingyou. Keep reading.”

“Full weekend of activities, looks like. Could be fun.”

“Keep reading.”

“I don’t know what—oh.” She zoomed in. “Is that a typo?”

“You tell me.”

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