me.
“If I hear a word about this on the sites, it won’t just be me who hunts you down!” I called after her, knowing Langley and Persephone would use all their resources to bring down any lies she may try and post about Jansen. “I have eyes everywhere!”
The girls upped their pace toward the elevator bank around the corner, but the adrenaline in my blood had my hands shaking.
“Well, that may have been the sexiest and most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Jansen said, his voice all calm tease.
I brought my eyes to his, and something inside me tensed and went loose at the same time. The coldness was still there, but above it laid a layer of intrigue and…something else I couldn’t place.
“Adorable?” I almost hissed. “That woman was planning to slander your name if you didn’t fuck her.” Trash. Absolute trash.
He cocked a brow at me and pushed his back against the door to fully open it. “You look like you could use a drink.”
I gaped up at him, shocked that he hadn’t immediately been offended by the threat from the woman, or at least surprised.
The wind rushed out of me. I wasn’t new to the celebrity athlete lifestyle, but was it such a commonplace occurrence that he wasn’t even fazed by it anymore? God, how hard would that be to deal with? The constant knowledge of if you do the right thing, you still might be damned by the media, by jilted fans.
I pushed past him, fire still in my blood over the entire situation. He huffed a laugh, closing the door behind him.
“Thought you were going out with Maxim tonight,” he said, leaning against the door, his eyes flickering with amusement and intrigue and…want.
I scrunched my brow, holding my arms out horizontally to indicate the room in which I now stood. “How about that drink?”
9
Sterling
London walked into my room with her head held high and threw her purse on my dresser. Tension wafted off the woman in waves. If I hadn’t known better, I would have called it jealousy.
I shut the door and leaned back against it, enjoying the sight of her bent over to root through the mini fridge. That ass deserved to have songs written about it, and it was currently covered by a pencil skirt that screamed sexy librarian. Add her buttoned-up blouse and twisted-up hair, and she was a walking, talking fantasy.
“Apple juice. Orange juice,” she muttered, pushing bottles around. “Water.” Her head popped up, and she glared in my direction. “Where is this drink you offered?”
“You think I drink alcohol during the actual season? That’s cute.” The corner of my mouth lifted into a smirk.
Her mouth opened and shut a few times, but eventually, she shook her head and took an apple juice out of the fridge. “I don’t know how you’re just…calm about all that?”
I folded my arms over my chest. “Calm about what? The fact that I had to spend a half-hour posing for pictures next to an asshole I happen to share some genes with, or the women at my door who were hoping to fuck me?”
She considered her answer for a few seconds as she opened the bottle of juice. “Yes. All of it.”
“I tolerate Maxim because you asked me to. It’s as plain and simple as that.” My stomach churned every fucking minute of it, but I did it.
“Is it really that hard?” She slumped back, perching on the edge of the desk. “I’m going to break my own rule here for a second, but he’s been Caspian’s best friend for two years. He’s not that bad of a guy.”
“Not that bad of a guy,” I repeated slowly, reminding myself that our family dynamic wasn’t exactly something that most people understood, mostly because we didn’t have a family.
“He’s not! Okay, maybe he’s arrogant and a little aloof until you know him”—she cocked her head to the side— “and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him with the same woman twice, but you might actually like him if you got to know him.”
I scoffed. “Not happening.”
“Jansen…” She sighed like I was disappointing her or some shit.
“London, you don’t know the first fucking thing about my family, which, by the way, consists of my mom, grandparents, and me.” My forehead puckered. “And fine, Greg, my stepfather, whom my mom married my junior year in college. But that’s it. Maxim isn’t my family, I don’t care how much you like him.”
“He’s your brother!”
“No,