Liam didn’t get the chance to answer, because a woman in her late twenties, dark-haired, slim, and toned, wearing tightly fitting gym clothes that left nothing to the imagination, stood up from where she’d been flipping through an architectural magazine on one of the sofas in reception and walked directly over to them. Liam, quite literally, stopped in his tracks as she closed in on them, her dark eyes glinting. She was there to yell at him, Max decided. Perhaps she was pissed off because she’d come out of her way to see him, and he’d not been here. Max had always been able to tell just what she was thinking through those eyes, and she claimed the same about him. They’d become so good at reading each other’s minds growing up that their mother had on more than one occasion said that there must be something supernatural going on, and that maybe there was a way they were actually twins—something about an egg separating and remaining in her womb for the four years between them, though the idea had been sufficiently gross to him as a kid, thinking about his mother having eggs and a womb, that he’d tuned out the specifics whenever she went into that rambling theory. They looked nothing alike, though, despite the twin theory. While not short, per se, his sister was petite, and there had always been speculation over why she’d turned out as such, given both Max and their parents were all a bit taller than average. Given she was all dark hair and eyes to his lighter tones, you wouldn’t really be able to tell they were related at first glance.
She came to an abrupt stop in front of them, tilting her head up at Max in a way that made the angles in her face even more pronounced—all sharp cheekbones and pointy chin. She’d amped up the look recently by cutting her dark hair short, though Max was pretty sure that she’d done it in part to annoy their mother, who had immediately complained that it made her look boyish. But there was no way you could look at Chloe and think her boyish, whatever she did to her hair—if anything, it had made her looks even more striking. One quick glance at Liam told Max he was thinking along the same lines right now. The narrowed eyes came automatically to Max, and caused Liam to cough and quickly rearrange his expression.
Max could sympathize, to be fair. Chloe had this effect on men, something which had caused him to get into some difficult fights over the years, in order to defend her honor or punish heartbreak, as was the expectation of the big brother. This had culminated in a big argument where he told her to stop putting him in situations where he had to keep confronting people, and her telling him it was their honor that he should be worried about. A tacit agreement had then been reached where he looked the other way while she made it through streams of men, leaving a trail of heartbroken bodies in her wake when she declared that they just weren’t what she was looking for.
“Hello, Chloe,” he said evenly, swigging the last of his coffee. “Nice of you to drop by.”
She jabbed a finger toward his chest. “It is bloody nice of me, I’ll have you know. I came by ages ago, and when you wouldn’t answer your phone I had to hang around waiting, didn’t I?” Max frowned and slipped out his phone. He saw that she’d rung him—barely twenty minutes ago. “Luckily,” Chloe continued, gesturing toward the reception desk and the college kid who was currently seated there, “Steve here was nice enough to let me wait for you down here, though he had no idea who you were—you must not have made much of an impression.”
Next to him, Liam bit his lip, and Max got the distinct impression he was trying not to smile. “Better than your alternative,” Max said, keeping his tone deliberately light to combat her rage, well used to the mini-tantrums that inevitably cooled down as quickly as they flared up. “The only reason people remember you is because you make the wrong impression—hardly something to celebrate.” She waved a hand in the air as if to say “whatever” and Max sighed. He grabbed her elbow to maneuver her to the side and away from the doorway. “What are you doing here, Chloe?”
She huffed. “I’m here because Mum has been trying to get hold of you for, and I quote, ‘the whole damn morning’ and you refuse to answer her, so she bribed me with a free spin class at one of those fancy Tribeca studios near here. And so here I am. Doing the loving, daughterly thing and coming to check that a） you are still alive and nothing terrible has befallen you—that’s a direct quote again, she actually said ‘befallen’—being as how she couldn’t get you on your mobile and the office told her you weren’t there when she called them and—”