Page 48 of Feast

“Well, normally I wouldn’t, sweetie, but it’s not like she’s a stranger,” Heather chirped. “Madison is family.”

I’m in hell, he thought. This is what hell is like. “Mom, this really isn’t a good time for me.”

“Nonsense,” she said briskly. “You always do paperwork on Sunday afternoons, so it’s perfect timing. Now, you be nice to her. You barely said a word to her during the wedding. Remember, she’s your sister now.”

Correction, he thought.NowI’m in hell.“Listen, Mom—”

“I’m sorry darling, there’s Stephen beeping in. I have to go. Come up for dinner soon, all right? I worry you’re not eating well.”

“Mom—”

“I love you!” she said and blew him a noisy kiss just before the phone went dead.

“I love you too, you meddling, interfering, conniving, manipulative—”

His tirade was cut off by a sharp rap on his front door, and for a moment, he thought about just pretending he wasn’t home. But his truck was in the drive, and it wasn’t snowing hard enough to have covered up his footprints leading up the stairs.

So he got up, yanked on the flannel shirt, and stalked to the front door.

He jerked it open, a ready scowl on his face. “I don’t need an accountant.”

“That’s not what Mom says,” Madison said cheerfully.

His winceof discomfort quickly morphed into another scowl. “Don’t,” he ground out, “call her that.”

“Okay,” Maddie said agreeably. “Are you going to invite me in or what? It’s cold out here.”

“Shit,” he muttered and turned to stomp away.

Taking that as a come-on-in, Maddie stepped over the threshold and stomped the snow from her boots. “I hope it stops snowing soon. I hate shoveling.”

Setting down the messenger bag she’d brought with her, she tugged off her gloves, shoved them into her pockets, and peeled out of her coat. Seeing no place to hang it up—there was one hook, and there was a big pea coat already hanging on it—she draped it across the low bench and sat to toe off her boots.

“Cute apartment,” she said, glancing around. She was in a kind of alcove just off the front door and couldn’t see much, just a small dining table with a single chair and a galley-style kitchen that took up the back wall. It looked new and efficient and barely used. “One bedroom or two?”

“Planning on moving in?” he asked.

“Just making conversation,” she said blithely and set the first boot aside. He was standing next to the dining table, glaring at her, and she tried not to notice how good he looked in jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt as she went to work on her second boot.

She took it off and set it beside its mate, then stood. “Look,” she said, picking up her messenger bag. “This doesn’t have to be awkward.”

“Wanna bet?” he muttered.

“So, you fucked your stepsister,” she said and bit her lip to keep from smiling when he winced. “It’s not like you knew who I was. I fucked my little stepbrother, and while it’s regrettable, I’m not losing sleep over it.”

“What do you mean, regrettable?” he asked, scowling so hard his face looked like it was going to fold in on itself, then he blinked. “Wait.Littlestepbrother?”

“You’re two months younger than I am,” she informed him cheerfully, and since he’d closed his eyes—probably trying to pretend she wasn’t there—let the grin loose. “And I only meant ‘regrettable’ in the sense that if I’d known who you were, I wouldn’t have picked you up.”

He opened his eyes and spotted her grin. “You think this is funny.”

“I think this is hilarious,” she said. “Come on. If this had happened to someone else—to one of your buddies—you’d be laughing your ass off.”

Maddie plunked her bag down on the table. “It was an honest mistake. And I’ll take at least seventy percent of the blame for it, because it was my idea not to share names.”

He ignored that and crossed his arms across his half-naked and very distracting chest. “Who knows?”

“Besides you and me?” she asked just to fuck with him. “Halley, but that’s just because she was there.”

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