Page 19 of Filthy Rich Brother's Best Friends

My focus locks on the woman standing by the kitchen counter.

She’s not dressed to impress like her roommates. No, she’s dressed for comfort. Her feet are bare and she has on ripped jean shorts. The cropped tank she’s wearing stops just below her ribs, and the neckline dips far enough to make my thoughts short out for half a second.

She doesn’t see me yet.

She’s focused on cutting up a tomato. She moves with an easy, grounded confidence that hasn’t changed since the first day I met her.

She starts to slice the tomato, and then she glances up. And freezes.

For a second, we just stare at each other. My brain stalls, caught between disbelief and that low-grade annoyance that always comes with her presence. The last place I expected to see her was here. But there she is.

Lola.

And she’s just as beautiful as I remember.

Her ponytail is messy with a few strands stuck to the side of her neck. I want to brush them back. I want…no.

Blaire doesn’t notice the shift. Or maybe she does and pretends she doesn’t. She reaches for a bowl on the counter and speaks with an airy lilt. “This is Lola. She runs a Pilates studio or something. I forget the details.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she spits out.

She lifts her chin slightly. Her expression doesn’t give much away, but I know that look. I’ve earned it more times than I can count.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asks. She’s placed the knife down and has her hands on her hips.

“I was invited.”

“You’rethe new neighbor?”

“Looks that way.”

“Wow,” she says. “They’re just letting anyone into the neighborhood these days.”

I laugh, a humorless sound with a bite at the end of it. “Still bitter?”

“Still full of yourself?”

She exhales hard through her nose and turns away, reaching for the knife again. Of course she’s going to act like I’m not standing here. She slices clean through a tomato, the blade landing with a hard thunk that makes me wonder if she’s picturing a vulnerable part of my anatomy instead of the tomato.

“You two know each other, I take it?” Blaire interjects.

We both ignore her.

“Didn’t take you for the domestic type,” I say.

She grabs another tomato and lines it up on the board. “Didn’t take you for the neighborly type.”

She lets the knife land with a dull thud. “I thought you moved to Chicago.”

“I did.”

“And now you’re here.”

“Observant.”

She sets the knife down and wipes her hands again.

“Let me guess,” she says. “They kicked you out.”