Chapter 6

six

Tav

“The little demon from the past is a knockout.” My eyes slide to Ian as a scowl tugs at my mouth.

“She’s a child.”

“You said she was nineteen, two months shy of twenty,” Kane points out. “That’s a woman.”

“I’m twenty-eight, pretending she’s my girlfriend.” I scrub my brow, still not believing the shit turn my life has taken. “Fuck me.”

Cash chuckles. “You never know, she just might.”

My gaze slices to him as something hot spears inside my chest. “No. There’s nothing real about what I’m doing with her. It’s fake.”

“Yeah?” Kane chuckles. “You know how fake turned out for me and Cash.”

“The two of you had intentions for things to turn real. I don’t.” Fixing my attention on Ian, I demand, “Any closer to finding what I asked for?”

“You called me last night, in the middle of the damn night.”

Olympia laughs, her head tipping back as full lips stretch in a smile that—shit. Shoving my fisted hands into my pockets, I turn my scowl on Ian. “I know how you work.”

“Candace was home last night.”

“So?” Even as I say it, I know it’s irrational. Ian puts nothing above Candace. Not even the band.

His brows lift. “You think I’m leaving my bed when that woman’s got her ass tucked in close?” He nods to Candace, who’s currently chatting it up with the woman of my nightmares come to fucking life, like she’s the best thing to come into our lives since Nevaeh.

My eyes slide to Nevaeh, who already has stars in her eyes. She’s in love with the little demon, too, by the way she throws her head back and laughs at something my fake girlfriend says. Or maybe it’s the way my fake girlfriend laughed so openly, so innocently exposed, just moments before. She’s manipulative.

Innocent, my fake girlfriend, is definitely not.

Frustration bubbles inside me, because Nevaeh doesn’t make friends quickly or easily. She doesn’t let people, women especially, in. I don’t want her to let Olympia in only for me to kick her out whenever Ian does his damn job and finds what I need him to find.

“This is important.”

“So is snuggling that ass on the rare nights it’s pressed against me.”

Cash chuckles again. “She’s really taking night shifts seriously, eh?”

“She’s talking about going back to school to become a doctor.” Ian sighs, eyes fixed on his woman.

“She is?” I look back at Candace. The woman’s got a head on her shoulders, and a care for people that a lot of people today lack. She’d make a good doctor.

“Don’t know if she’ll do it, but she’s talking about it,” Ian admits. “Also talking about babies, now that she’s in love with yours.”

Love and pride fill Cash’s eyes. The man’s a sucker for his twins, and I get it. They’re awesome. “That right?”

“That’s a big commitment for Candy,” Kane interjects, brows furrowed. Far as I know, Kane and Nevaeh have been trying for a baby for some time without success. Nevaeh has her niece and nephew as often as Wrenlee will allow, so she’s getting her baby fix, as Kane likes to call it, but we all know it’s not the same.

Ian shrugs. “I figure med school will win out in the end.”

“What do you want?” I can’t help myself from asking.

“I want her,” Ian says simply. “Whatever makes her happy, makes me happy.”

The man is the definition of patience when it comes to Candace. I think I’d have cut my losses and walked away. But not Ian. He loves her in a way I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone, not even Ophelia.

The thought of her instantly sours my mood. Considering I’ve been staring at her baby sister all damn night in that tight as sin, floor-length blue suede dress with the slit all the way up to one curvy hip, well, one could say I haven’t been in a good mood at all.

A hand slaps me on the back and I glare at Kane, who is grinning like the maniac he is. “You know,” he pauses, tapping my shoulder to a rhythm that has me grinding my jaw. “The way you look at her spells a whole lot of things. None of them is fake.”

“She’s a manipulative liar.”

He tears his eyes away from the women long enough to pin me with that cold gaze. “Or maybe there’s more to it. Maybe you really are the only way she could think to save herself from a life of misery.”

I’d told the guys everything. I’d had to after Ian blabbed his mouth about my frantic mid-night call, begging him to look into Peter Green, the lawyer who handled my mother’s will—the lawyer, if what Olympia says is true—betrayed my mother.

“Darius might play both sides to his benefit, but he’s not a sadist like she claims.” Tension coils tight along my spine when I catch the look that passes between Kane and Ian.

Cash just makes a noise in the back of his throat before he mutters, “I need another drink.”

Kane gives me another hard slap on the back that’s about to earn him a fist to the gut when he says, “Let’s get you another.”

“I’m driving.”

He swings his head back. “You’ve got a room booked.”

“I’m not using it.”

“Why not?”

I look at my daft friend like he’s exactly that. “Because I have no intention of spending the night locked in a room with one bed and that woman.”

Kane laughs. Loud, obnoxious, fool. “Man, I’ve had some of the best nights with Nevaeh in hotel rooms.”

I’m strung too tight for this conversation. I’m thankful when he moves to follow Cash to the bar. Left alone with Ian, I don’t take my eyes off the woman the world is supposed to think is mine as I say soberly, “It’s important you find what I asked you to find.”

“Is it so you’ll have what you need to take them down sooner, or because you want to get rid of her?”

This time, I give him my gaze, and my honesty. “Both.”

“What happens to the girl when you toss her out?”

My gaze travels back to her like my eyes have a mind of their own, locking on her as she smiles that smile that slays men left and right. It won’t slay me. “Don’t care.”

“You’d give her back to her family after she ran to you like she did?”

“She ran because she’s afraid of a life without money. If what she claims about her father’s gambling is true, then they’re on the verge of losing everything. Like a true Laurier, she doesn’t want to be around when that happens.”

“If that was really her reason, don’t you think she’d have just married Darius?”

The idea of the little woman on the other side of the room marrying my brother fills me with a feeling I can’t decipher. It twists in my gut like a blade coated in hot acid.

With effort, I tear my eyes from her again. “Just find what I asked you to find, Ian.”

He nods, even as he gives me a look of disappointment.

I ignore it.