Page 37 of Wretched Soul
I stopped what I was doing to turn on the lighting and check her expression. The anxiety I’d heard in her voice was written on her face too, but giving Lily my itinerary wasn’t a good move. “What kind of stalker would I be if I told you that?”
She huffed. “The kind that played nice?”
I hooked my finger onto her dress, slipping between the valley of her breasts as I tugged her closer. “I don’t play nice. You should know that by now.”
My lips were almost on hers when her hand sliced between us. She pressed her fingers to my mouth. “Then I’m not playing nice either,” she said. “You’ve taken your prize, so you’ll have to catch me again, Shade. If you want more?”
It had been posed as a question, as if there were any doubt. “I don’t want more, Lily,” I’d told her. “I want it all.”
She’d asked me what I meant, but I’m not sure I could explain it to myself. I just know I’m in too damned deep, but that thought doesn’t worry me as much as it should.
I’m smiling to myself as I glance up from my laptop to find eyes on me. Ash has his head tilted to the side so he has a clear view of me down the aisle. He shakes his head, and I can hear his sigh echo off the curved walls of the jet. He knows I’m fucked too.
As well as making sure Lily doesn’t discover my identity, I need to work just as hard keeping her existence from my brothers. Ash had tried to break up Hunter and Maddie, and he might have succeeded if she hadn’t turned out to be such a badass. Lily has proven more than once that she can stand up for herself too, but unlike Maddie, my girl doesn’t even know there’s a fight to be had, let alone if she’d want to enter the ring.
A flight attendant moves down the plane, and the moment she shields me from my brother’s hard stare, I focus on my laptop. I spend the next hour prepping for our breakfast meeting with Killian, gathering all the latest information on Poulton Springs. I don’t want to give Ash more reason to question what’s been distracting me lately.
When my work’s done, I sit back with a coffee and croissant, and finally give into temptation. I have a pared down version ofLily’s dashboard on my laptop, but it’s enough to see that the only new messages on her phone are with Kaitlyn. Her friend left the club at two, and Lily had sent her a message to make sure she got home safe.
Kaitlyn: Simon ordered me a cab. If only I could get him to come home with me, my life would be complete.
Lily: I know that problem all too well.
Kaitlyn: Please don’t tell me you didn’t get your hot stalker into bed!
Lily: We had fun in the limo…
Kaitlyn: Fun?? I’d expect someone who looked like that to leave you a quivering mess.
Lily: Believe me, this mess is STILL quivering. He had a flight to catch.
Kaitlyn: Ah, so it was a goodbye fuck?
Lily: Don’t! I refuse to accept that I’m only ever going to be good enough for the Connors of this world.
Kaitlyn: You deserve way better than that cockroach. Screw Connor!
Lily: In case you’ve forgotten, he’s the one who screwed me, in more ways than one. Is it too much to ask for a good guy this time? Correction. A bad guy with a good heart.
Kaitlyn: Sounds like my Simon (swoon). We need a movie night in. Some mushy romance that keeps our dreams alive. Your place at 7 tomorrow? Today? I need my bed.
I rub my jaw to force my teeth to unclench. I like that she made sure her friend was OK, and that she’ll be staying home tonight. I also like that she isn’t fooling herself that I’m a good guy. I’m not too sure she’s right about me having a good heart. Not when I’m feeling murderous because another man had invaded her thoughts last night. Who the fuck is Connor? Is it his t-shirt she’s been wearing?
“Where are we at?”
I look up. “What?” I snap.
Ash stands in front of me with a smug look on his face. He’d been biding his time to catch me slacking. “Poulton Springs,” he says dryly. “We need to give Killian our latest intel, and I don’t want any nasty surprises.”
Lily and Kaitlyn’s messages glow from the screen Ash can’t see unless he decides to move in closer. I’m going to have to shelve any plans to track down Connor and gut him like the slippery eel he is, but I keep hold of the burning anger. I snap my laptop shut. Fuck you, Ash.
“The building work is on schedule to complete just after Thanksgiving,” I say with barely disguised contempt. “Barrett is in New York. He took his mother to an appointment with her oncologist yesterday. Do you need me to check her doctor’s notes?”
“Do you want to?”
“Doesn’t concern me either way.” I haven’t given Alice much thought at all. It’s less complicated that way. Lily is my one and only distraction.
“It might be useful to know her prognosis,” Reid suggests, appearing in our big brother’s shadow.
