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I give all my attention to Elise, letting Andries continue to stew in his anger. “I clarified everything, but he’s not happy.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Andries grits out.
Now Elise whips around to her brother. “Let me guess, you’ve been here freaking out on Dan, even after all he’s done for you?”
“…what?” he asks, clearly caught off guard by the rapid change in subject.
Elise approaches him and pokes one of her small fingers into his chest. “Dan has been the best friend you could ever ask for. Always. Just because he and I have a thing going on shouldn’t change that. Honestly? It makes you look like a bad friend, not him.”
“But you’re mysister,” he sputters, his frustration growing at each passing second.
“Yeah, I am, but right now you’re being immature and childish, Andries. I’m a grown woman now and I can make my own decisions. I don’t need you hovering over my shoulder all the time, telling me what I can and can’t do.” Since Elise is shorter than her brother, she has to tilt her head back to glare into his face, but she’s pretty intimidating, nevertheless. “It’s not like you ever take my advice, anyway, so why should I take yours?”
“Just because you’re being stupid about this doesn’t mean that Dan gets a free pass. This thing between you two isnothappening.” Andries rakes a hand through his hair, obviously uncomfortable arguing against two people now and not just one.
“It’s already happening, and you have no say in it. Or anything else I do,” Elise points out, crossing her arms.
Andries takes a deep breath like he has a lot more to say, but just then we all can hear Roxanne laughing at something on the terrace through the open windows. My friend shakes his head, his shoulders falling, and it’s clear he’s done with all of this for now. He wants to be with his fiancée, not argue with his sister and me, but I’m not so deluded that I believe that this is over.
“I feel like I don’t even know the two of you anymore,” he sighs. “I never thought you guys would collude against me like this, but here we are. Here’s the thing; Johanisstaying with us,” he shifts his gaze to me. “You’re the one who is in the wrong here, not me. He didn’t do anything to make you be an asshole to him like that. If you want to try to salvage this friendship at all, then you need to at the very least behave while our guest is here.”
He gently puts his hand on Elise’s shoulder and moves her aside so he can leave. I know I should say something, insist that this is my villa and I’ll behave however I see fit, but I don’t want to continue this argument without having some time to gather my thoughts, so I just let him go. When he’s in the doorway, he looks back over his shoulder at us.
“Oh, and Johan is also flying back to Amsterdam with us since he’ll be attending the wedding.”
With that, Andries disappears. Elise walks over and shuts the study door again, and leaning against it, she heaves a sigh of relief. “Well, I guess that went as well as can be expected, considering you’re still alive.”
“We’d never have been put in this position if Tatiana hadn’t opened her big mouth,” I grumble.
Elise hums in agreement. “Yes. She and I are going to have a talk once we’re back in Amsterdam, that’s for sure…”
She moves to the seat her brother was in and sinks into it, rubbing her temples. I follow suit, wishing that this was my own study back in Amsterdam so I could pull out my hidden bottle of whiskey. “I almost feel sorry for her,” I hear myself saying as I picture Andries asking her to keep an eye on his sister. “Part of me thinks she didn’t do it with any ill intent, but it still made things quite a bit worse.”
“Speaking of making things worse… why were you so rude to Johan earlier? I get not loving someone else staying at the villa you paid for without being told, but people have been in and out the entire time we’ve been here.”
I snort at this. She really isn’t going to like what I have to say next. “Actually, I already knew who he was, so I hated him on principle. I saw the picture of you two all snuggled up when I was hiding from Andries in your study.”
Elise rolls her eyes. “Of course you did.”
“You can’t blame me, considering that we'd just come back from our beach date to find your ex waiting for us,” I point out, but Elise doesn’t agree.
“That doesn’t give you the right to be rude to him!” she rebukes, slamming her small hands down on the armrests of the chair.
Her annoyance is bleeding over to me, no matter how much I want to be calm. There is no denying that I’m pissed about Johan’s presence, but Andries has backed me into a corner and there is nothing for me to do about it except ruin the entire trip by throwing Johan out on his ass. That doesn’t mean I have to be a good host, though.
“I don’t have to be nice to your ex, okay?” I seethe. “He isn’t even supposed to be here!”
“But he is, so––”
“I can’t believe what your brother did. Fuck!” I lower my head into my hands, at the edge of losing control. First there was admitting to Andries that I was in love with his sister, and now I have to face the reality that I’m no longer the only one here after her heart.
I’ve got my eyes clenched shut, so when I feel her soft touch on my shoulder as she lowers her body into my lap, my eyes jolt open. She’s so close that I can smell the salt of the sea on her from our sojourn to the private cove and her own sweet scent. I stiffen, wanting to tell her to get off me, but she’s too intoxicating, so instead my hands land on her legs where they are flung over the side of the chair. There are still grains of sand on her sun-warmed skin and I can feel them beneath my fingertips.
“Dan,” she breathes, “It’s been three years. I moved on from Johan a long time ago. I’m with you now, remember?”
Her hands stroke my face and the bare skin of my neck, making my body relax into her even as my thoughts are still racing. Then, while Elise is looking softly into my eyes, I can’t help but ask, “What happened between the two of you? I see how he looks at you, and it isn’t the look of a man that has totally moved on.”
Her eyes drift away from mine, looking elsewhere while she nibbles her lip. “It was just normal teenage stuff…”
