Page 89 of Feast

“But I’d jazz it up,” he continued, enjoying her temper. “Personalize it some.”

“How?” she asked, irritation turning to curiosity.

“I’d add some cherry cola red to the black.”

She lifted a hand to the cascade of ink-black waves she’d pulled back into a tail, where the cherry cola stripes winged back from her temples. “You think I should add a stripe so it looks like my hair?”

“You could do a stripe,” he allowed and set aside the coiled straps. “But I was thinking of something more like a chameleon paint job. It would look black in most light, but in certain light, or at a certain angle—"

“It’ll be cherry cola,” she finished and beamed at him. “Do you think he’d like it?”

“I think it’ll remind him of his beautiful wife, so yeah. He’ll love it.”

Her eyes went soft. “Spence. That’s so romantic.”

“That’s me,” he said sourly. “Mr. Fucking Romance.”

Her eyebrows winged up. “Wow. Where did that come from?”

“Sorry.” He dragged a hand through his hair, fatigue and frustration dragging at him. “I haven’t been sleeping that great lately.”

“Well, that explains why you look like death,” she said. “Is anything wrong?”

He shrugged and avoided her gaze. “Just busy.”

“Busy, huh?”

“Business is good,” he said with forced cheer, hoping she’d drop it.

He should’ve known better.

“And the fact that your personal life has gone to shit has nothing to do with it?”

Panicked, and telling himself she was just fishing, he tried to brazen it out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I talked to Maddie,” she said bluntly. “She said you dumped her.”

He cursed under his breath. “I did not dump her. She’s the one who left.”

“And why did she do that, Spence?” she asked in a sweet, lilting voice that made his gut clench with dread.

To counter it, he worked up a scowl that would’ve had a lesser woman heading for cover. “None of your business.”

Uncowed, she met his scowl with a ball-shriveling glare. “Could it be, oh, I don’t know, the fact that you told her she was just a fuck buddy?”

“I did not tell her that,” he began heatedly.

“But you didn’t tell her she wasn’t when she asked,” she shot back.

“Goddammit,” he muttered and picked up a wrench from his workbench. It felt good in his hand, solid and heavy, and he would have followed through on the urge to heave it through a window if he wasn’t the one who’d have to replace it.

Not trusting himself, he put the wrench down. “Look, she knew I didn’t want to tell my mom about it. I was very clear on that.”

“You didn’t want to tell your mom about a random hookup in Vegas with a woman who turned out to be your new stepsister,” she corrected. “And that was entirely reasonable.”

Suspicious by her easy agreement, he nodded cautiously. “Thank you.”

“However.”

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