Page 17 of Enemy Ex's Secret Baby

I frown incredulously. “Tell him what?!”

“You know, everything going on. With Gillian.”

God, she doesn’t even know what she’s saying. “Everything going on with Gillian” includes a lot more than she could possibly begin to imagine. “Jeremiah doesn’t want to hear about that,” I say, clicking my tongue.

“Course I do. What’s going on in the luxury property development game?” Jeremiah says with a cheeky waggle of his eyebrows. “You know, sometimes I miss it.”

“Your nose just grew two feet.”

Jeremiah grabs the end of his nose and laughs. “You’re right. I’m lying. Now tell me, what’s Gillian got to do with anything?”

I sigh heavily. Lola…the youngest. The most trouble. God love her. “Well, the basic gist is we have some condos we’re trying to build in Silver Lake.”

“By the bakery,” Lola says. “You need to stop by while you’re in town, we’ve got a vegan éclair on the menu now that I want you to try.”

“More importantly, it’s by Gillian’s daughter’s school and it’s apparently got all of this ‘community heritage’. So, even though we own it–”

“She’s protesting,” Jeremiah finishes my sentence.

“Don’t smile at that!”

His lips turn further up at the corners. “I’m not smiling!”

“Boys, please,” Lola says in a calming tone. “Axel, keep going.”

I close my eyes. I have explicitly told myself no more thoughts of Gillian, and yet, here I am, being forced to give a play by play of everything that’s happened with her in the past two months. Well, almost everything. “She’s not the only one protesting. She’s got the whole neighborhood. People are down there nearly all hours of the day.”

“Good for her.”

“Whose side are you on?”

Jeremiah shrugs.

I grunt. He’s such an ass when he wants to be. “We were supposed to break ground a month ago, and yet, here we are, stalled. Now the city council is all over it and–”

“Dad is up your ass to get it fixed.”

“Stop doing that,” I snap.

“What?!”

“Taking the words out of my mouth!”

“Guys!” Lola grabs each of us by the wrist this time. “Stop it!”

I glare at Jeremiah.

He holds up his hand in surrender. “I just know what that’s like. Being the right-hand man. It might have only been a few years, but…”

I sigh. Maybe Dad’s gone a bit easier on me than he did on Jeremiah. That says a lot considering Dad is a complete tyrant. But he’s already lost one son to his temper. I know he misses Jeremiah, even if he doesn’t say it. He’d have him back in his life in a heartbeat. Just…his pride is too powerful.

Guess I’m learning from the best.

“Anyway, you can only imagine how this is tearing me up,” Lola pipes up, folding her arms over her chest.

“You and Gillian are good, though, right?” Jeremiah asks.

“As good as we can be when he’s at her throat all the time.”

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