the Friday night traffic and be the good brother.
I headed back to Daisy with my game face on. Negotiating with a jilted ex was the last thing I’d had on my agenda for this evening. A nice cold beer had been in my future. A quiet evening fighting jet lag and catching up. Anything but having to deal with this.
“Hi.” I smiled at her warmly. “Nick sends his apologies for leaving.”
She looked surprised. “I think Morgan took a photo of me.”
“Nick had her delete it.”
“He did?”
“I made sure of it.” I gestured to Carl. “Can you wait in the car, please?”
We watched him get comfortable in the driver’s seat.
“Carl’s a bit overzealous, I’m afraid. Your glasses…perhaps I can give you something for them?”
She gave me a thin smile. “You must not visit often? I’ve never met you before.”
I visited frequently—every few months, at least. But Nick had kept Daisy a secret from me, even though they apparently had been living together. It made me wonder why he’d not introduced us. My mother would certainly have mentioned her.
She seemed nice enough for our family.
I glanced at my watch. There was enough time to get back to the hotel and put in a few hours of work.
“I’m so embarrassed,” Daisy said softly.
“No one saw.”
“Everyone saw.”
Not that it mattered now, but I still decided to ask. “Why did you come here?”
“I needed to talk with Nick.”
“About?” I suddenly realized she might be a little more challenging to handle. “Are you wanting money?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re following my brother.”
She let out an irritated sigh. “Well, it’s been fun, Max, but I think I’ll call it a night.”
“How are you getting home?”
“Same way I got here.”
“By Tube?”
She looked over at a blue Mini Cooper parked on the curb across the street. “My car’s over there.”
“Let me give you a ride home. Can you even drive without your glasses?”
“Probably not. Now, if you’re quite finished accosting young women…”
Quite the sucker punch after I’d been the only who’d been decent to her. Daisy had this annoyingly cute pouty mouth. I wanted to give it a good hard kiss as punishment for her attitude toward me.
“Daisy, may I advise you to stop finding yourself in the same place as my brother. These things can get out of hand.”
She gave me a what the fuck look that may have scorched a lesser man, and pulled her broken glasses out of her purse.
When she put them on, I pointed at the spider-webbed lenses. “Surely you can’t see through those?”
She pivoted away from me and headed off.
And then walked right into a lamppost, smashing her face against the pole.
“Can I get you anything else?” asked Max.
He sat beside me in the back of his SUV, throwing glances of quiet contempt my way—unless I was misreading his broodiness.
“I’m fine, thank you.” The driver had found a cold pack in their first aid kit and it was making my face numb.
The humiliation was endless.
I should never have had the brief thought earlier, after seeing my boyfriend at Isobel’s with Morgan Hawtry, that things couldn’t get any worse.
Things had gone downhill so fast I was still spiraling. Having to be driven home by Nick’s arrogant brother had rounded out the evening’s fuckery quite nicely.
Nick had mentioned he had a Brazilian half brother. Though he’d not shared how dreamy he was. This man was so hot I could feel the burn coming off him. His foreign accent was doing strange things to me. Making me all flustered. Or maybe it was because Max had asked the driver to turn the heat all the way up.
I’d had to peel off my coat and set it aside.
Max may be devastatingly attractive, but I could never fancy someone who acted this formal and stuffy.
“You’ll be home soon,” he muttered more to himself than me.
Other than the ache in my throbbing nose from hitting that lamppost at warp speed, I was actually feeling better. Max was a pleasant distraction—even if he was distant and cold and obviously hating every second of doing the right thing.
He was doing his brother’s dirty work by getting me out of the way, so I didn’t make a bad scene worse.
He’d been right about my glasses. They were toast thanks to his driver thinking he’d stepped out of a Keanu Reeves film.
But my pride had suffered the most, seeing Nick with her. I was still trying to ignore the crushing pain in my chest.
I lowered the cold pack and