before I know it, I’m through the door, the wood swinging shut behind me.
“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone would be in here,” I say, startled. Shit, I’m in a fucking bathrobe and nothing else.
To make matters worse, it’s not Grant’s haughty but slightly rheumy eyes that turn to look back at me. That’d be way too fucking easy. No, it’s Caleb’s intelligent glare that greets me.
“Well, I do live here.”
My eyes widen, and I hurriedly pull my borrowed robe a little tighter, cinching the belt in place. “You do?”
He smirks and points at me though he holds a wide green mug in his hand. “No, but you’d think you, of all people, would be better at knowing when someone is lying. Or acting, Emma.”
My arms cross over my chest, my hips rocking to the side, and my eyes narrowing. I’m a study of posture posing to show my emotions, just like my improv professor once gave us a painfully long lesson about.
My snark, anger, and defensiveness are so obvious, they could be read from the back row of the highest balcony.
“So you know who, and what, I am. Is that supposed to be an accusation, a warning, or what?”
Caleb snarls, moving closer, halving the distance between us and almost coming into my personal space bubble, obviously trying to intimidate me.
I lean back but refuse to take even a small step backward. When Nathan is this close to me, his dark heat calls to me, wrapping its silken tendrils about my body and soul.
Caleb, for all his charming good looks and frat-boy sense of humor, feels jagged and icy, dangerous in an entirely different way.
A way that’s perhaps more threatening than even Nikolai.
“I don’t like liars,” Caleb says softly, his voice even and laced with danger. “I don’t like women who worm their way into places they shouldn’t be. I don’t like questionable motives, especially when they concern my brother.” His every word lashes at my skin, the insults hitting home just as he intends.
“And you think I am all of those things?” I ask it as a question even though the answer is obvious. “I lied, but I’m not a liar. I am in a place I shouldn’t be, but it’s just as much a surprise to me as it is to Nathan, and it sounds like to you too. My motives . . .”
I pause, remembering the stalled moment in the hallway. Opportunity presented, but I chose not to follow that path.
“My motives are simply to be close to Nathan.”
It’s the truth, both at the start of this mess and now.
He snarls in my face, looking me up and down angrily. “Bull fucking shit. Is this about money? If it is, name your price and I’ll have it to you in an hour. Then you can just walk away. Leave my brother the fuck alone.”
I flinch as if he’d slapped me and then bow up to battle the utter disgust in his eyes. “Fuck you! I’m not a whore.”
His grin is feral, but he doesn’t raise his voice. “Oh, but aren’t we all whores for the right price? And I do recall that your first visit to this house was under the guise of playing hostess for the right price. That ended with you on your knees.”
He glances down at my legs, exposed only minorly because of Nathan’s oversized robe, but for all its coverage, I feel naked under Caleb’s gaze. “I’m merely asking what your price is now. And know that I already figure it’ll be a higher rate than your hostess fee. I’m prepared to make it worth your while to get the fuck out and never come back.”
Every word is filthier than the last, making me feel like a dirty slut. And not in a fun, naughty way but in a degraded, shameful way that infuriates me.
A flame burns hot and white in my core, incinerating the insults into ash that I fling back.
“I am not a fucking whore,” I say again, this time with more attitude. “So put your fucking checkbook away before I shove it up your conceited ass.”
I whirl, intending to stomp my way out of the room and already letting a good bird fly as a parting shot.
But I run into a problem, a brick wall blocking my dramatic exit.
Nathan.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he yells, all peace and boyishness wiped from his face as his brows knit together and his chest heaves beneath my hands.