Page 36 of Seize the Night

“Sure. Of course. Oh, you mean fiveconsecutivedays?”

“It’s ridiculous. This isn’t medieval England or Renaissance Italy. Families shouldn’t be feuding.”

“Tell that to Steve Harvey.” Merrick asked, sitting on her desk in front of her. “It must be awful for you. Julien’s forbidden fruit. Taboo. Off the menu. Verboten. The scandal? The lies? The sneaking around? Terrible.”

“Awful,” Remi said.

“Horrible.”

“Shameful.”

“It’s hot, isn’t it?” Merrick asked.

“So fucking hot.” Remi dropped her head to her desk and groaned. Merrick, knowing what was good for him, didn’t laugh at her. Not too much anyway.

Remi knew she’d tear Julien’s clothes off the second she saw him again but when that would be she didn’t know. Salena was still working out her end of the plan. Remi didn’t want to rush things, but if she didn’t see Julien again soon, she couldn’t be held responsible for her actions. When she texted Merrick at midnight on Thursday, she knew that was a symptom she’d reached the end of her rope.

You awake?she wrote him.

No. I’m dead.

I’m thinking about the plan,she wrote him.

Stop thinking. Just go fuck him and let me sleep,Merrick wrote. And then for some reason added emoticons of a grey alien, a skull, a bee, the flag of Japan, and seventeen eggplants. She should never have let him download the Emoji app on his work phone.

But it wasn’t a terrible idea, sneaking over to Julien’s for an hour or so. Well, no. It was a terrible idea and she knew it.

She wrote Merrick back.

What if I get caught at his house?

Merrick replied with a ghost and a Santa Claus.

WTF?

Be quiet as a ghost,he explained.Get in and out like Santa.

I was supposed to get that message from two emoticons?

Duh, he wrote back.Go get it.

And he punctuated his text with a rather phallic-looking banana emoticon, and that was logic that neither she nor her vagina could argue with.

She threw on her clothes again and got into her car.

Capitol Hills, Julien’s family’s horse farm, constituted twelve-hundred acres near Frankfort, the state capital. This late at night with no traffic to contend with, Remi made it to the outside of the farm gates in thirty minutes. She parked her car on a side road and carefully climbed over the white wooden fence.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this…” she whispered to herself as she crossed the dark manicured lawn. Julien had said his family only alarmed the house when no one was at home. She hoped he was right about that. “How horny am I?”

Horny enough to risk a B&E conviction obviously.

“Julien, Julien…” she breathed, “where the hell are you, Julien?” The windows of the three story colonial mansion were mostly darkened, but light glowed from two second-floor windows.

Did you get a fancy corner bedroom?she typed on her phone.

What?Julien replied.Yes. Why?

I’m looking at your window,she wrote back.

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