Love and Neckties - Lacey Black Page 0,36

sure. We’re doing a different take on the father/daughter dance, Samuel. Come dance with me,” she insists, as she places her hands on my shoulders and slowly sways to the music.

The moment our dessert dishes were collected, our dinner party moved to the dance club attached to the hotel. Harper and Latham were able to have their first dance as husband and wife, and now he’s dancing with his mom, while I’m trying to spin my sister around the packed dance floor. It’s a seductive number. Couples are practically making out like teenagers as they sway—err, grind—inappropriately to the music.

And here I am, dancing with my sister.

“You and Free seemed awfully cozy at dinner,” she says, a knowing smile on her face.

“It was nothing,” I insist, hating how my heart starts to gallop wildly in my chest when I recall the whole cheesecake incident after dinner. Usually, I’d be appalled by her actions, the concept of dirty fingers in my food making me gag, but for some crazy reason, it was a bit…arousing.

“Mmhmm. Sure didn’t look like nothing.”

I reach up and pull on my tie. “You know how Freedom is.” I’m deflecting, sure, but honestly, I don’t know what to say. The entire situation is so very foreign to me, let alone the fact I seemed to actually enjoy our playful banter.

“I do. She’s the best,” Harper says as the song comes to an end. “Listen, Samuel, I don’t know what happened last night and I don’t really need the details, but I want you to know we’d all support you. You know, if you were to actually tell everyone that you two. Got. Married.”

Again, my heart is starting a little freak-out in my chest. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

She stops moving and just looks up at me. “Probably not, but it did. And that’s okay. You two are actually great together.”

I can’t help but gape at my sister. Great together? We’re not even…together.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m being serious. She might be just what you need,” she says with a shrug.

“Need for what?” I ask, unsure where she’s going with this.

“Need in life.”

Now I know I’m just staring at my sister. I know she just got married and thinks everyone should be as happy as she is right now, but the concept of Freedom and myself being…well, that, is a little farfetched. “I think you’re just deliriously happy right now and not thinking straight.”

She lifts a single shoulder. “I am deliriously happy, but I’m not blind. You two have been dancing around this for years.”

“We’ve been dancing around nothing,” I insist, hating the tightening in my gut that calls out my lie.

Harper just smiles. “Whatever, big brother. I just want you to be happy, okay? And if that’s with Free, then I’m even more ecstatic because she’s amazing.”

I swallow over the large lump in my throat and start to move to the music again. When the song ends, she leans up on her tiptoes and kisses my cheek. “She brings out something different in you, Samuel. Don’t ignore that.” Then she steps back and turns, finding her husband on the dance floor.

I’m left dumbfounded by her comments. Sure, she brings out something different. She drives me crazy, and not always in the good way. She’s maddening, frankly. No one gets under my skin the way Freedom Rayne can, and that’s saying something, considering I have younger siblings. But even when we were children, I had an abundance of patience for Harper, Jensen, and Marissa. Especially Marissa. Yet Freedom just walks into the room and suddenly, I’m like a caged animal on the defense.

Speaking of, I glance to the side of the club and find her talking to a man. He’s tall and bulky, like he spends way too much time in the gym. Hell, he probably works in a gym and spends all day long flexing in the mirror. His hair is longer on top and his smile alarmingly white as the neon lights flash off them.

I hate him.

I hate the way she laughs, so easily and free.

I hate the way he puts his hand on her arm and motions to the dance floor.

I hate the way she seems to actually be considering his offer, even though she shakes her head.

I hate the way this jealousy reappears, much like it did last night.

I’ve never been jealous, let alone of someone like this gym rat, who’s showing way too much interest in Freedom.

In my wife.

His eyes scan her