Page 54 of Feast

He shook his head. “Regret is the wrong word.”

“What’s the right word?”

“I don’t know.” He chewed thoughtfully. “Is there a word that means ‘happy to have had great sex with you but not thrilled that you ended up being my stepsister because my mom would be pissed’?”

“If there is, it’s probably German,” she said. “Why would your mom be pissed?”

“Because she’s a mom. Wouldn’t your dad be pissed?”

“Possibly.” She peeled a string of cheese off her breadstick. “But he has a firm policy of non-involvement when it comes to his daughters’ personal lives.”

“How did you make that happen?” he wondered. “And can you teach me?”

“You can’t teach it,” she said soberly. “You can either do it, or you can’t.”

He scowled. “That’s just petty.”

“I know,” she said smugly.

His lips twitched in reluctant amusement, and then he sighed. “Well, my mom would be. Pissed, I mean.”

“Why?” She wondered. “You’re a grown man, I’m a grown woman. We had a good time, and except for not being able to sit for a couple of days, nobody got hurt.”

“You mean aside from the incest?”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s a stretch, isn’t it? We’re not related by blood, and we didn’t grow up together.”

“Tell that to Heather,” he said drily. “Anyway, incest aside, she doesn’t think I should be having nameless, random stranger sex.”

“Excuse me,” she said, lifting a finger. “It may have been nameless stranger sex, but it was far from random.”

Amusement eased into his eyes. “Yeah, you came gunning for me.”

“You’re welcome. What kind of sex does she think you should be having?”

“The serious, baby-making kind.”

“Ah.”

“And I should warn you, she really wants to be a Grandma, so you can expect her to start leaning on you and Halley for that soon.”

Maddie nearly choked on her breadstick. “Yeah, she’s going to have to talk to Halley about that.”

He frowned, as though a sudden thought had occurred to him. “She won’t say anything, will she? About Vegas?”

“Halley’s got too much on her plate to be worried about us,” Maddie said and shook her head. “No, she won’t say anything.”

Concern darkened his eyes for a moment. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Maddie assured him, and didn’t mention the pregnancy. That wasn’t her secret to tell. “Just a lot going on with the move, looking for a new job.”

“That’s happening this week?”

“Next weekend, actually. She’s packing up the apartment in Mt. Pleasant this week, and I’m driving up on Friday to help her haul everything out. She’s not bringing any furniture, so she thinks we can get everything in the two cars.”

“Not even a bed?”

Maddie shook her head. “She bought a new one, it’s getting delivered to my place on Saturday.”

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