14. Bree

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Gray's wolfwhistles make me blush and laugh.

"We're married, it's not like it's scandalous," I argue, sitting down at the dinner table, and Gray grins.

"Was it all chaste and pure, with half your clothes still on?" He's clearly joking, but I'm not about to let him get away with that.

"Sometimes, we managed to get all our clothes off," I tease back, and Paige makes a face and Lara dramatically gags.

"Sorry." I chuckle.

"I hope you two had a good time," Patrick says. "I heard that you did some gambling."

"Oh yeah! I learned how to play Blackjack! Sean and Finn taught me."

The two men in question must have gone home, because they're nowhere to be found.

"She beat me a couple of hands."

Patrick laughs out loud. "I knew she was a little spitfire."

"Not like she comes from good stock," Gray mutters, and Declan gives him a death glare.

Just when I was starting to feel at home here, feel accepted, Gray has to go and ruin it. He's the one member of the family who I can't quite get a read on.

He doesn't outwardly hate me, mostly teasing me the way a big brother would, but he clearly still thinks of me as lesser, as someone that shouldn't belong to the Burke family.

"Neither do you," I shoot back, and Patrick stares at me for a long moment before he bursts out into raucous laughter.

Looking over at Declan, he looks furious at his brother and oddly proud of me for talking back to Gray.

"She's good." Patrick wipes tears of mirth from his eyes. "Very quick, aren't you, girl?"

"I do my best. My mother always said I was bright" I flush slightly at Patrick's praise.

I've never received a lot of praise from my father. He often tells me I'm pretty, pretty like my mother, but since my mother left, I've never known if that was a compliment or a slight.

"There's something I've always been curious about," Patrick says quietly, and I look up at him, my good mood fading.

"What? You can ask me anything."

"Your mother," he starts. "What happened to her?"

I stare at him. "That's really none of your business."

"You said I could ask you anything."

"I don't like to talk about my mother. Do you like to talk about your wife?"

Patrick's face goes suddenly blank. "Fair enough."

Now everything's awkward, and I guess I've made it that way. I just don't like to tell everyone that she abandoned me when I was a kid.

Declan puts an arm around my shoulders. "Bree won a lot at slots, too," he says, even though I'd only won that first little bit.

"I told you the slots were amazing!" Paige says. "Lara won fifteen grand in one pull once."

Lara beams. "I did. It was that big one, you know, the one right by the door? They say it never hits, but it certainly hit that night."

I smile and listen, nodding, as they tell me about their last Vegas trip. It's fun to hear their stories, and eventually Patrick loosens up.

"You want to hear the one where Declan got arrested?"

Declan chokes on his wine.

"Da—"

But Patrick continues, "He'd won nearly eighty thousand at Blackjack. And I keep telling him, boyo, go around the tables. Different dealers. They'll think you're cheating. But he wouldn't listen. So, what do you think happened?"

I look at Declan, grinning and remembering the night that the guards came after us.

"They accused him of cheating?"

"Absolutely! Threw him in the casino jail, but the cops didn't have any proof, so they let him go. He was banned from Caesar's Palace by twenty-one."

"Then how did we?—"

"An alias, princess."

"What's your alias?" I ask, and then blink. "Do I have an alias?"

"Eliza," Declan answers. "And I'm James."

"James and Eliza." I giggle at the strange sounding names. "What about our last name?"

"Smith."

I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it.

"Mr. and Mrs. Smith? Really?"

"I told you it was hackneyed," Gray pipes in, and I'm laughing even harder as Declan pouts in my general direction.

It's a fun dinner, and we're all laughing and talking until dessert is over.

Paige clears her throat. "I have an announcement to make."

All eyes turn to her.

"So… um… I want to find my own place."

"What? Absolutely not!" Patrick is so red I'm waiting for fumes to come out of his ears.

"Come on, Da. I'm an adult, but most of the time, I feel like everyone around here forgets. I just want to try it. Please? On a trial basis?"

"Paige…" Patrick sighs. The silence around the table is so heavy it is almost palpable.

"Dad, I need to know if I can survive out there without being sheltered all the time. Please!"

Gray's phone rings. When he looks at it, he excuses himself from the table, walking into his father's office.

"We'll talk about this another time. I really need to think about it, Paige. I promise I'll look at it with an open mind." Patrick excuses himself, as well, and then it's just me, Declan, and the girls.

"Well, that went well."

Lara sighs. "You did kind of dumped it on him, what did you expect?"

Paige just shrugs. "I don't know. I just wanted to get that over with. But now I need a sisterly sleepover," Paige whines. "Are you in, Bree?"

My heart melts for her. She considers me a sister?

"Not tonight, Paige," Lara hisses.

"Why not?"

"Because they're just home from their honeymoon. You heard Declan, he can't sleep without her."

"I can," Declan argues in a mutter, but I look at him, wondering if that's true. "Besides, I'll be up for a while. Took that late nap."

"Maybe I'll come hang out for a few hours?" I suggest. "And then go back to bed late at night."

"Aren't you tired from your trip?" Lara asks.

I shake my head. "No, I fell asleep with Declan. I feel kind of wired."

"Good." Paige grins. "Let's do makeovers and look at houses and watch movies."

Lara smirks. "Horror movies."

Paige pouts. "Okay, but only slashers."

"Fair enough."

I look back and forth between the two of them, having a hard time keeping up with their conversation. They seem to nearly be telepathic, knowing what the other is thinking.

Paige and Lara stand up, and I walk with them, looking back at Declan who's now eating my portion of dessert.

I smile at him, and he smiles back, and my heart seems to skip several beats.

I've got to get it together. It's like I've forgotten about my plan to get out of here. In Vegas, I got so caught up in Declan and all the attention that he was giving me that I hadn't even thought about escaping.

Now I'm back in this admittedly beautiful prison of a mansion, and I'm having a sleepover with his sisters. That apparently think of me as a sister too. At least Paige does. And I love that.

What am I doing?

My head's all messed up. Half of me is still angry about the way this came about, but the other half—it"s like I'm actually enjoying myself.

I let out a long breath and follow Paige and Lara.

They're not going upstairs, though, but down toward the pool house.

"Are we going swimming?" I ask, and Paige laughs.

"No," Lara says. "You'll see."

"Da gave us special permission to take you here," Paige says excitedly, and we walk past the pool house into a building I've never noticed before. I guess I've been so much in the main house, I didn't realize the scope of the estate.

Lara uses a keycode to get in, and when the lights come up, I look around with awe.

It's like a movie theater. There's a projector in the back, and a an actual cinema screen on the far wall. There's also a bar, foosball tables, pool tables, and a couple of arcade games. It's less ornate than the main house, more comfortable, almost like a den with lounge furniture that's focused on comfort more than aesthetics.

"Wow. What is this place?" I look around in wonder.

"It's Da's den." Paige bounces like a little puppy.

I can't help but smile at her.

She touches everything as she goes by as if she is showing affection. "We haven't been allowed in here since Kael and Declan nearly wrecked the place in high school."

"Who's Kael?" I can't help myself from wanting to know more about Declan.

"Declan's best friend," Lara explains. "He's been out of town for a while."

Huh. I didn't know Declan had a best friend. I've never seen him hang out with anyone but his family and his father's men. I guess everyone has friends, but I never thought about a mafia boss having them. I assumed that Declan was too focused on work to socialize.

"What do we do first?" Paige wears a slight look of annoyance on her face, and I wonder what that's about, but decide not to ask.

We're having fun, and I don't want to bring up anything that will stop that.

She heads over to the bar area, pulling out various bottles of liquor.

"Da usually has his own bartender." Lara sounds almost disappointed.

"I can make drinks." I walk behind the bar. "I do it all the time for my father and his friends."

Paige raises an eyebrow. "Your father doesn't have staff?"

I shrug. "A maid, a cook, things like that. But he doesn't hire many people for that kind of thing. He likes to keep to himself." I grin as I take out a martini shaker. "What'll it be, ladies?"

"A dirty martini." Lara smiles. "Extra olives."

"A sex on the beach!" Paige claps her hands.

"Coming right up."

I hum as I put the two fairly simple drinks together, shaking one in each shaker and pouring the sex on the beach over ice and the martini chilled in a martini glass.

I make myself a vodka tonic and then slide the drinks over to the sisters.

Lara takes a hesitant sip, and her eyes widen. "Paige, this is delicious!"

Paige gulps half of hers before gasping. "You're so talented!"

I flush. "Not really. It's just something I've been doing since I was about twelve."

"I could never make a drink this well." Paige pouts. "Da doesn't even like the way I pour his scotch."

I snort out a laugh. It's pretty hard to mess up pouring scotch, but since Paige is so bubbly and a little scatter-brained, it makes sense. Usually, people like that annoy me, but not Paige. She's just cute, like a little sister.

Like a sister-in-law, I remind myself. A forced sister-in-law, no less.

And if she moves out, it might be easier to remember that.

My smile wants to fade but I keep it on, not wanting the girls to know about the dark cloud that has descended over me. It's easy to forget that these people, who've been so kind to me, also kidnapped me. It's easy to forget that Declan isn't my chosen husband, and this isn't my chosen family.

To be honest, it kind of hurts to think about.

Ever since I was twelve, it's just been me and my father. And he never gave me much affection or praise, just expected me to do well without much guidance.

A family, a normal one, is something that I've always craved, and the Burkes are just that—a real, loving family. The thing I've always wanted.

"Penny for your thoughts," Lara says quietly, and I glance at her, blinking.

"Oh, it's nothing," I mumble, looking down into my drink.

"Let's watch a movie!" Paige suggests, and twenty minutes later, Lara has made us popcorn, and we're sitting with our feet up on one of the big couches, looking up at the giant screen. There are theater-style seats in front of the projector, but Paige insists these are the best seats in the house.

She turns out to be right. We squeal at all the scary parts of the slasher movie we put on, a part six of something. It's cheesy but the gore is extreme, and Lara can't stop laughing at Paige hiding her eyes.

I can't keep the grin off my face. I've been having a wonderful time the past couple of weeks, probably more fun than I've had in years. Between the fun and the alcohol, I'm not even thinking about Declan or how confused I am by the Vegas trip.

By the time the movie is over, and we looked at a few house options for Paige, we're all a little tipsy, and we decide to take a dip in the pool.

I'm floating, face-up, wearing one of my new bikinis, when Paige cannonballs into the pool, spraying water everywhere and knocking me off balance.

I sputter as I come up, but I'm laughing, and Lara helps me to the edge of the pool.

I look at the clock, and I'm shocked to see it's nearly two in the morning.

"I should get to bed," I announce, wrapping a towel around myself.

"Gotta get back to hubby," Paige teases with a grin, treading water as Lara sits down on one of the lounge chairs.

I scoff, but my cheeks flush. It's true. I do want to see Declan a bit before he falls asleep, and I may already be too late.

I say my goodbyes and thank them for the wonderful night, heading into the main house and walking upstairs to the bedroom.

When I open the door, Declan's sitting on the bed in his boxer briefs, the sheets tangled around his legs and bare, tight abdomen. He leans back against the headboard, and he's reading a book that he holds in one hand.

My breath catches in my throat as he looks up at me with a soft smile.

"I'm gonna grab a shower." I pause with my hand on the doorknob of the bathroom. "You'll be awake when I get out?"

"If that's what you want, princess," Declan croons, and I don't know if he's serious or if he's teasing me, so I huff out a breath and go into the bathroom, turning on the water as hot as it will go.

I close my eyes as the spray hits my back.

Maybe part of me hopes that Declan will be asleep when I get out.

Then, I won't have to deal with the complicated way I'm feeling about him.