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“Last year can suck my dick.” I growled. I hated thinking about how close we’d been to a championship the year before. “We’re going all the way this year.”
The guy said something else but I missed it. I’d been clocking the tables and when I got to the one in the back, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I did a literal double-take and then searched the rest of the shop to see if I’d missed the real Ella Rae somewhere.
“Here you go.”
The last time I’d seen Ella Rae Daughton, she was just a weird kid with features that didn’t work together, but the woman staring back at me with the pained smile was a far cry from that little girl. This woman was sinfully hot with a perfectly proportionate head size and features that not only worked together, they fucking sang.
“Bro?”
I jerked my gaze back to the guy behind the counter and cleared my throat. I saw that he was holding my coffee out to me and took it with a little too much gusto. A bit spilled on my hand but I just wiped it on my pants and thanked the guy before heading towards Ella.
She looked up at me with wide green eyes and the poutiest mouth I’d ever seen. It made me think things I had no damn business thinking about a girl who was once my step sister. She was wearing a sundress that clung to her tits and from where I stood, taller than her, I could just see down the front of it. Again, shit I shouldn’t have been looking at.
Ella swept her long brown hair over her shoulder and stood up. “Vaughn… Thanks for meeting me.”
I still stared down at her. Despite the growth spurt she’d had since I’d last seen her, she was still almost a foot shorter than me. She’d filled out, though. Gone was the skinny kid. In front of me was a woman with curves that made my mouth water. That sundress stopped mid-thigh and I could see a lot of tan leg that felt too interesting.
I shook my head and forced my brain to get real. Ella had been family. Looking at her like she hadn’t been was fucked up. “Of course. It’s not every day a ghost from the past calls you up.”
She pulled a sweater off the back of her seat and pulled it on before sitting back down. It covered most of her curves like a bad magic trick. “I don’t know about ghost…”
I pulled out the chair across from her and sat down. My knee bumped hers and my fucking stomach reacted like I was a pre-teen trying to kiss a girl for the first time. Grinding my teeth together, I spoke a little gruffer than I meant to. “What else do you call someone you haven’t spoken to in…seven years?”
She wrapped the sweater around herself tighter and rested her elbows on the table. Looking at her closer, it looked like she’d been crying. There was also a degree of crazy to her hair, like she’d been running her hands through it a ton. “If I had any other options, I wouldn’t have called you. I don’t mean that in a rude way… I just… We’re not friends. I know you don’t owe me anything. I hope that you can help me despite that.”
“We’re not friends? We shared a bathroom during your most awkward years, Ella Rae. We go way back. Doesn’t that automatically mean a friendship exists?”
Those forest green eyes flashed and I felt a lick of flame up my spine. She adjusted her face as soon as the annoyance showed, though. “I’m serious, Vaughn.”
Forcing out a breath, I sat back in my chair and then realized with a jolt of annoyance that I’d forgotten all about my coffee as soon as I’d seen her. “What do you want, Ella Rae, and why do you want it?”
She looked away and then stood up suddenly. “I’m sorry. Give me just a minute, please.”
I stared after her as she disappeared into the bathroom behind her. I knew she was crying and it felt like shit. I chocked it up to having been like a big brother to her for three years. Some of those familial feelings must’ve still existed. By the time she’d come back to the table, I’d already decided to help her with whatever she needed. I was an asshole, but I wasn’t a monster.
She sat down and dabbed her nose before looking up at me again. Her eyes were red and it somehow made the green glow. Her bottom lip quivered before she sank her teeth into it and bit down hard. She took a deep breath and nodded to herself. “I moved here to be with my boyfriend and I found him cheating on me this morning. Campus housing is full and I just had to run out of a house where I’m pretty sure a woman wanted me to be her doll. She offered me a bed in her closet and pillow fights for a thousand dollars a month. I checked into a motel and I’ve already seen a few drug deals and it’s the middle of the day, Vaughn. I need somewhere to stay. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t desperate.”
I traveled on that rollercoaster of a story with her, but where her voice dipped with an emotion that sounded like sadness, I felt rage. I pushed my coffee away from me and tapped my knuckles on the table. “Who’s the guy?”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over.”
I felt like it mattered. “You don’t have anywhere else to go?”
She shot me a look that I instantly understood. I was the guy who’d driven her crazy for three years. There was no way in hell she would’ve come to me if she had anyone else to ask.
I thought about the empty bedroom in the house I shared with my best friends and tilted my head as I studied her. That time it was more clinical than perverted. “You still got all your cleaning supplies, Cinderella?”
Her face shifted with another flash of her anger but she fought it back. “Just tell me what you want.”
I felt bad for her but I was still the same asshole she’d known before. If I was going to rush in and save her, she was going to pay for the rescue. “You can stay with me but I don’t just need another roommate messing up the place. We need someone to clean up. The house gets disgusting and the maid service Fisher brings in is full of women who bitch at us the entire time they’re cleaning. You clean the house, and I mean all of the house, and you can stay for free.”
Her eyes narrowed in fury and she sat back in her chair. I could see the anger radiating through her. She hated me. “You want me to clean your house.”
“I don’t call you Cinderella for no reason.” I smirked as the tops of her cheeks turned red. Making her angry had always been fun and nothing had changed. “So, Cinderella. Are you going to be my maid?”
4
***Ella***
