conversation back on track. “Okay, I know you would never be careless with my privacy or indifferent to my feelings—it just took me by surprise.” Like so many things that evening. “But from now on can we agree—?”
Maeve waved her off with a shake of her head. “I swear. Never again. Not another word about your sexual experience to him.”
Nichole arched a brow. “How about you just leave me out of the conversation completely?”
Maeve’s mouth squinched up and she cocked her head. “Yeah, that’s probably not entirely realistic. This is Garrett we’re talking about. And now that you’re on his radar I imagine he’s going to feel a little protective of you. Which means I’m probably going to be answering some questions from time to time.”
Nichole’s mouth popped open, but Maeve just shrugged. “He kind of can’t help himself. So … welcome to my world!”
“Maeve!”
Her friend sprang up from her slump at the couch and hustled right up in front of her laptop, resting her chin in the vee of her palms. “So now that we’re back to being besties again … on a scale of skim milk to heavy whipping cream….”
Garrett pried one eyelid open, scowling hard as the screeching of a tiny banshee emanating from down the hall reached his ears.
“I know you’re there, Garrett Carter. You pick up this phone right now or so help me….”
So help her, what? She was going to fly home and jab her little finger at his chest? Scowl up at him with those eyes that said he’d betrayed her in the most fundamental way and she was both hurt and disappointed?
Garrett’s other eye was open and his feet were swinging over the side of the bed in a second flat. Reaching for the extension at his nightstand with one hand, he rubbed at his morning stubble with the other.
“A little early, isn’t it, Maeve?”
“You’re alone?”
He blew his breath out with a good deal of his patience. “It’s only been …” squinting at the clock, he noted it was just after five “… a few hours since I left her apartment. Do you really think I’d stop and pick up someone else on the way back?”
The answering silence said she wouldn’t put it past him.
“Geez, yes, I’m alone. And, for what it’s worth, I had no idea who she was.”
A little hiss sounded through the line. “Yeah, but everyone else did. What were you even doing at Sam’s party?”
“It was a party for his brother. You know Jesse? My oldest friend? Artist? Touring for the past two years? Any of this ringing a bell? So, Nikki’s close with Sam?”
“We’re out with him, like, once a week at least. He’s part of the core crowd.”
Garrett’s brows dropped down, the fog of sleep clearing faster now. “Wait. He hangs out with that old crowd from my class—”
“Give me a break, Garrett. I see Sam and the guys all the time. These days they’re more my friends than yours.”
What the—?
“I’m not surprised you don’t know. Aside from the fact you’ve been AWOL for the last few years, doing your twenty-two-hours-a-day summa-cum-look-at-Superman-earning-top-honors-while-running-his-company thing, you’ve got a reputation as kind of a psycho when it comes to your sisters. I wasn’t about to tell you, and it doesn’t surprise me no one else had the guts to do it either.”
This time the deafening silence was booming out of his corner as he let that little gem sink in.
Maeve.
Hanging out with his friends.
A pack of low-life scum who thought the nickname Panty Whisperer bad-ass enough to ooh and aah at its inception, giving high-fives and back-slaps as though going home with whomever it had been back then hadn’t simply been some callow escape, but a conquest worth celebration.
They’d been hanging out with his little sister.
And lying to him about it.
“Oh, wait. Before you flip. I’m not talking about Joey and those guys. Mostly Sam. Once in a while Rafe and Mitch show up. And, to be clear, I don’t date any of them. Ever.”
A relieved breath hissed through his teeth and a few seconds later his jaw unlocked too.
“Helloo? Earth to Panty Whisperer, betrayer of sisters’ trust everywhere.”
Wow. Little Maeve with the one-two punch. The girl knew how to drop a bomb and then turn the tables in a heartbeat. God help the guy who landed her.
“Maeve, just give me a minute to catch up. To wake up, okay?”
He could hear her tongue clucking through the line. Could practically see that impatient posture and pouty scowl. The same one she’d been pulling since she was six years old. Of course back then it wouldn’t have been directed at him. Back then he’d been her hero. The one to intervene on her behalf with older sisters who didn’t want clumsy hands breaking their stuff.
“Ready yet?”
“Yeah, why not? Go ahead and give it to me.” He pushed up from the bed, figuring there wouldn’t be any getting back to it after this, and headed in search of sustenance of the coffee-and-cookies variety.
“I can’t believe you told Nikki you knew how long it had been since she had sex. I can’t believe, after you figured out who she was, you would be so thoughtless as to violate my trust like that. And you didn’t just stop at …
Pushing the start button on the coffeepot, he grunted his acknowledgment of wrongdoing, knowing it would be a move just short of suicide to interrupt the rant in progress for the petty satisfaction of pointing out that she’d broken Nichole’s trust first.
Garrett was halfway through his first cup of coffee when the quiet from the other end of the line hit a point where it was clear this wasn’t just Maeve taking a breath, but she was waiting for a response.
Setting the mug aside, Garrett rubbed a palm over the smooth finish of his kitchen table. “So, aside from being pissed you’d told me about her dating history, did she sound okay?”
There was another silence from across the miles, though this one Garrett wasn’t quite sure how to read.
Then, “She was fine. Why wouldn’t she be?”
“You know. Because she’s a commitment girl.” He still didn’t know how they’d gotten their lines crossed so badly. In all these years he’d never made such a mess—
“Oh, that. Yeah. Get over yourself, Garrett. She wasn’t looking for serious with you. Which I’m pretty sure she actually told you already.”
Yeah, she had. But maybe he just hadn’t liked the sound of it. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to believe it was true because for some reason he didn’t like the idea
