“I didn’t know that was discernible from the outside.”
“Well, it’s not! Obviously! Because here I am in a building that shouldn’t have any one-bedroom apartments, in a one-bedroom apartment. Your house in Vegas has multiple bedrooms, Flynn. Why doesn’t this have multiple bedrooms?”
“Because this isn’t Vegas. This is New York. And I’ve only ever been able to sleep in one bed at a time.”
“You’re not funny right now. This isn’t funny. Where am I supposed to sleep?”
I glance to the bed and back at her, and her eyes spin like flying UFOs. “In the bed with you? Every night?”
“Only the nights you want to be in a bed.”
“This isn’t funny, Flynn!”
“Listen, Dais, it is what it is. It’s not a big deal. It’s not like we haven’t slept in a bed together before.”
“We didn’t sleep in that bed at all, Flynn.”
No, we definitely didn’t sleep, and it was fucking glorious.
I grin, and she practically chokes on her own saliva.
“Come on,” I tell her, leaving the room. “Let’s go. You can worry about the bed later.”
“What? Go? Where are we going?”
I don’t answer. No. I don’t dare answer.
Daisy
Flynn pulls to a stop in front of a gorgeous Uptown brownstone that makes me believe in the movie version of New York. The trees are large and mature, and the street is calm. I can practically picture Tom Hanks asking Meg Ryan what would have happened with them if they hadn’t been enemies from the start.
I don’t know why we’re here, though, and the anticipation has me on edge. Does Flynn have another house here? Perhaps with more than one bedroom?
I nearly laugh aloud at myself, but Flynn opening my door and holding out a hand to help me climb out of his Range Rover seems to startle it right out of me.
“Where are we?”
He doesn’t answer, instead guiding me across the sidewalk and up the steps to ring the doorbell. You don’t ring the doorbell at your own house. “Uh…” I look around in confusion. “Are we at someone’s house?”
“Yeah,” he answers matter-of-factly. “My sister Winnie’s.”
“What?!” I question, but he’s already added knocking to his arrival alert system, apparently unsatisfied with the speed of response from the bell. “Flynn. This is your family’s house?”
He nods, completely at ease with the insane situation. “It’s family dinner night.”
“Are you kidding me?” I retort as quietly as I can, but it’s hard to have volume control when your heart is pounding in your damn ears. “You didn’t think I needed time to prepare? I barely know you. You barely know me! I mean, what are we even going to tell them? What if they ask—”
“Shoot!” Flynn says suddenly, tapping me on the back and turning around. “I forgot the cookies in the car. Be right back.”
I swing my hips hard and lunge for his wrist as he retreats, but it’s too late. He’s down the steps and passing the couple of spots to the car and walking around to the trunk in no time.
The front door swings open, and my nervous jaw clamps closed like a Venus flytrap.
“Uh, hey,” an attractive, dark-haired man I’ve never seen before says, looking around me curiously. “Can I help you?”
Everything inside me tries to speak, but I’m, for all intents and purposes, mute for the foreseeable future. My throat feels thick and my vocal cords paralyzed. I don’t know what to say, so I hope Flynn hurries the fuck up or something.
The door swings open behind the now narrow-eyed man with a little puff of spring wind, revealing another man I actually know, walking down the hallway toward us.
The five-hundred-dollar casino chip gifter. Flynn’s brother Ty.
When my eyes lock on him with what must be recognition, the man at the door turns toward him and groans loudly. “Oh. She’s with you. I should have fucking known.”
Without another word or even a hello, the man retreats back down the hallway, smacking Ty on the shoulder as he goes. Ty approaches the door and me, his eyebrows drawn together curiously.
With a long look up and down my body and face, he finally shrugs. “Well, you certainly are my type. Did I ask you to come here tonight?”
“No,” I manage to murmur with a shake of my head. God, apparently, he was so drunk that day, he doesn’t even remember me. “I’m—”