AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You’re being awfully rude, Dan.” I scowled, not that my younger brother could care any less about hurting my feelings, especially when he’d spent most of our childhood trying to get under my skin. “Didn’t Mom teach you any manners?”
“I’m not being rude if it’s true.” He relaxed his arm, placing it back on the rest where lovely Gloria was going to tend to his fingernails when she came back in a few minutes.
“Besides, Mom gave up on me after you.”
“You were always a lost cause.”
“Born that way,” he agreed and studied his nails. They were perfectly trimmed, just like the rest of him. Danny took great care in his appearance. His face was always cleanly shaved— he had the loveliest cheekbones, Ed Westwick kind of cheekbones—and his nails were always clipped and manicured. He also only wore designer clothes—Salvatore Ferragamoshoes,Canali shirts, andBrunello Cucinellipants—and spent a fortune on skin products, half of which he shared with me.
“Well, if you must know, I’m glad you were born. Life would be extremely boring without you.”
“As you should be.” He grinned.
“Who else is going to treat me to a spa day and pay for everything?” I added, still not a hundred percent sure the whole outing was a treat. But considering Danny made triple, possibly quadruple my salary as a divorce lawyer, I was prepared to force the bill on him.
Besides, he was the one who had shown up on my doorstep this morning promising a lovely surprise, which had in fact turned out far better than I could’ve imagined.
A date at the local spa in St. Helena.
The universe knew I needed it. My body was a tight ball of nerves. I needed someone strong and relentless to scrape out the knots in my neck, pummel out the trigger points in my back, and stretch me apart like taffy before putting me back together again.
So far, I was feeling as light as a cloud after Gloria’s delectable beating.
Danny chuckled, lifted a bare foot out of the lavender water, and wriggled his toes. “I’m glad I’m good for something. If not good advice, then definitely treating my sister—don’t worry,
I am paying—, especially when she’s looking old and haggard.”
“Hey,” I frowned, ready to pinch him again. “We’re only a year apart, and I’m not even thirty yet.”
He laughed, tilting his head back against the headrest. His Adam’s apple was prominent.
“Well, you look much older. At least a decade.”
I was just about to jump up and wrestle my brother to the ground—last time I won, I had been two years old, and Danny could barely hold up his head. Instead, I took a breath in, like my mom had taught me to do whenever Danny reached a new height of annoyance, and said, “Don’t be such an ass, Dan. It’s been a hard week of work, alright? I’ve been seeing a ton of patients every day. I’m exhausted.”
“Or maybe it’s not because of the patient load that you’re so tired. Maybe you’re having sleepless nights because of the hottie from the seminar?”
“For your information, I’ve been sleeping as soundly as a baby.” It was a lie. A big fat lie. Alex’s face had interrupted my dreams more times than I could count.
And it wasn’t just during sleep that his golden-brown eyes forced their way into my mind. It happened at the most inopportune of times, like yesterday when I was assisting a patient with a below-knee amputation through the parallel bars. Alex’s face slipped through the cracks of the wall I’d tried to put up in my mind—to keephimout of course—and I swore I heard his laugh down the hallway. The lovely, airy, carefree laugh I had heard for the first time under that pergola. A laugh that wasn’t in any way as controlled as he presented himself.
There were even moments when I could still feel the lean ridges of his muscles beneath my fingertips. And whenever that happened, goose bumps ran over my skin, as if I’d just passed through a ghost.
Danny reached a hand across the divide and poked my wrist. “Also, Soph, why only tell me about him now? It was over a month ago. I thought we told each other everything.”
“You’ve been busy.”
“Notthatbusy,” he said, pressing two fingers to his neck where dear Harriet—Gloria’s partner—had kneaded him to splinters. “So, will you see him again?”
“Of course not!” I shouted. “Why would you even ask that? You of all people should know that you never contact a one-night stand again.”
It was the truth. I hadn’t contacted Alex at all. But the same couldn’t be said of him.
He had sent a message three days after the seminar asking how I was doing, which I had obviously ignored and deleted straight away, thankful when he didn’t follow up. And then once more at the beginning of last week to let me know that his insurance company had contacted mine. Again, an unnecessary text considering that my company had already emailed me to let me know that the damages would be paid for.
“Me, of all people?” gasped Danny, turning his body so that he was facing me completely. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Well,” I started, not sure if I was on a slippery slope. “You’ve slept with a ton of women—”
