Page 205 of Morally Black Betrothal
The bathroom door opened.
Please be bad. Please be bad. Please be bad.
“Honey, if I’d known you gave head like a Hoover, I would have done this years ago,” Daniel said with a chuckle.
Dammit.
“God, Daniel, you are such a lush. Wediddo this years ago, or have you forgotten Jemma and Oliver’s wedding?”
“Oh, right… Well, that’s what an open bar of grappa does to my brain. Won’t be forgetting this time, I promise.”
“We should probably get going.” The woman sniffed, sounding unimpressed.
How dare she? After the way he had obviously blown her mind?
Frankly, I was miffed on Daniel’s behalf.
He didn’t seem to notice. “So soon? I was thinking round two was in order.”
I shoved my face into my hands. Oh, God, please,no.
“Maybe later. Robbie’s party starts at eleven. Do you think your mother will be mad if we ditch her birthday?”
“Mom’s three sheets to the wind. She wouldn’t notice if I drove the Rolls through the great room windows right now. Hold on, babe. I need to change.”
I froze. Holy crap, he was coming inhere. A post-coital Daniel Lyons was about to find the assistant cook, with whom he’d shared maybe five whole conversations, buried in his closet and clutching his towel like a stalker.
Out of instinct, I threw the towel over my head. Because that would hide me.
“No, don’t,” the woman was saying. “I want you to smell like me all night. Just like I’m going to smell like you. Like sex.”
Under the towel, I made a face. Gross.
“You really are a dirty girl,” Daniel told her. It didn’t sound like he disapproved.
Thankfully, the door to the closet remained closed, and when I pulled the towel off my head, the sounds of more sloppy kisses permeated through the door. With a fervent cross over my chest, I prayed to every saint I could remember that the kisses would not turn into Daniel’s desired second round.
“Come on, let’s go,” said the girl. “If we leave now, I’ll go down on you on the drive over.”
Oh, thank you, Jesus.
But wait. People did that? Talk about a driving hazard. Daniel would never?—
“Well, you’ve got me convinced.”
It sounded as if they were getting dressed before I heard the telltale sound of his bedroom door opening and closing, then the taps of their shoes on the oak floors gradually fading away. I remained in the dark closet for what seemed like hours, even if it was just fifteen minutes. To make sure no one was coming back up, I told myself. But also possibly contemplating throwing myself out the window out of shame and self-pity.
Unsurprisingly, I did not have the guts to do that. I did, however, manage to lug myself off the floor and stumble through the bedroom in the pitch dark.
“Christ, Daniel. When are you going to grow up?”
Just as I was rounding Daniel’s king-sized bed, the door opened, the light flipped on, and I ran smack into Lucas Lyons, Daniel’s older brother and the family’s de facto patriarch.
“Ah!” I fell back onto the bed with a shriek, and then, after realizing what kinds of “remnants” might have been left on its mussed linens, scrambled off just as quickly, a black tumbleweed of skirt and sweater.
“What the—Marie?”
I managed to get back up without my skirt being tucked into my underwear or something equally embarrassing, though I was spitting hair out of my mouth from where it had escaped its bun. I straightened my glasses and stood as tall as I possibly could. Which was still more than a foot below my looming boss’s bewildered expression.
