Page 60 of Love Thy Brother
“Yup.”
“Why?”
“Because health is wealth, and beige is boring.”
River dragged his lips across the nape of my neck. A brush of sensation that made my head spin. “You couldn’t be boring if you tried.”
A knock at the front door saved me from the strangled groan caught in my chest.
River moved to answer it.
I snatched his wrist. “No.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Irritation replaced the easy demeanour River had brought downstairs. “It’s my house.”
“Someone just tried to kill you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know that they didn’t.” I dumped the pan I was holding into the sink. “Are you expecting someone?”
By his grimace, I deduced that he wasn’t. I scanned the counter for my phone. No brother was in Porth Luck that I knew of, but Alexei was unpredictable. For all I knew, he was in the safehouse watching the door.Or hiding in the attic. Picturing that gave me a grim dose of humour, but it was short-lived as I realised I’d left my phone in the bathroom and there was zero chance of River waiting for me to dash upstairs before he opened the fucking door.
Goddamn it. I slalomed my body around him and set my hand on his chest, pushing him back as he moved forward. “Where are your downstairs weapons?”
“My downstairs weapons? Fuck off. A kid lives here.”
I cocked a brow and waited, applying my road-tested and patented O’Brian theory for the second time in ten minutes. A game of chicken that ended with River’s noisy huff and a screwdriver being pressed into my hand. “Ta. Wait here.”
River tossed a second weapon—a heavy spanner—from one hand to the other. “Go fuck yourself.”
Nice. But realistic. The best I could hope was that he stayed behind me long enough to figure out if this was an ambush, but it was a thready dream. River was lethal in a fight and harder to control than fucking Embry.
I shifted my ambition to at least getting to the door before him and sidestepped into the hallway, reaching for the latch with one hand, the other at my side, clutching the screwdriver. There was no peep hole in the door, just a tiny window with privacy glass so fucking hazy all I could see was the outline of a tall dude dressed in black.
A dude with wavy dark hair and olive skin. Aggressive, set shoulders, and a riding jacket with a torn white patch on the arm.
I relaxed and wrenched the door open.
Mateo scowled back at me, scarred face twisted and mean. “You lose your phone?”
“It’s upstairs.” Tension flooded me. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“That’s what I came to find out. Liliana said you were hurt.”
“I’m not hurt.”
Mateo gave me a long stare, then his gaze drifted over my shoulder. “Sure about that? Lili saw blood.”
Behind me, I sensed River come closer, filling the space at my back. He flicked the doorstep light on, illuminating his grazed face. “It was mine.”
Mateo’s amber gaze was hard to read. He pulled a trick from Saint’s arsenal and tilted his head. “You okay?”
River snorted into a humourless laugh. “Mortally wounded, clearly. Are you scaring my neighbours or coming in?”
Mateo shrugged. “I’m gonna scare your neighbours a little longer, then off I’ll fuck. Be like I was never here.”
River grunted and disappeared.
