Page 50 of A Villain's Kiss

“Who is it?”

“Are you expecting someone else?” I freeze at my husband’s voice. “Oriana.” Why, when he says my name now, does it annoy me? “I know you can hear me.”

“I can,” I confirm. “I’m busy. I have plans.”

“This can’t wait.”

“I’m sure it can,” I say, still not opening the door.

“Oriana.” Releasing a breath, I open the door slowly. His eyes find mine and then instantly look me up and down.

“What’s so important it can’t wait?” I ask.

As he steps in without invitation, I step back, my hand still on the door. Kyler walks into my brother’s place like he has been here hundreds of times. He hasn’t because he hated visiting family and especially mine.

“Do you have a date?” he asks.

I pull the towel even tighter, huffing, not wanting to answer his questions

“Do you?” I fire back at him. “Pamela, wasn’t it?” I refer to the woman he kissed in the picture that’s splashed on every magazine front page. “How is she?”

I met her once. Pamela’s a model, and she is absolutely beautiful. If I could put two women next to one another and call them opposites, it would be the two of us.

“That was just for press,” he says, not so convincingly.

“I’m sure it was.”

“Can you say the same? Can you say you are seeing Jake for pictures in a magazine?” He steps closer to where I stand, still holding the door open.

“You should leave. I have to get ready.”

“For a date?”

“Yes, actually.”

That voice—it instantly has my stomach flipping.

We both turn to see Jake standing on the front stoop. He is dressed in blue slacks and a white button-up shirt with a couple of buttons undone at the top, and his sleeves rolled up.

“We have a date….” Jake’s eyes lock on me, “and you aren’t dressed.”

I nod, my body warming as his gaze travels the length of me.

“We were talking,” Kyler says. “You have some nerve. You know that, right?”

“Do I?” Jake asks incredibly casually. “It was you who let her walk away. Or am I mistaken?” Jake’s eyes flick to mine.

“You were my friend,” Kyler says angrily.

“Correction, Kyler, we were acquainted.”

“You were at our wedding.”

My eyes go wide at that statement.

He was?

How did I not know this?

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