Page 108 of Bargain With the Boss

“It’s not bullshit.” I was about to stand up again when she gave me a hard stare. I collapsed back against the cushion.

Was it?

“Xavier, you’ve got baggage. We all do. You think it was easy when I hooked up with Caleb?”

“From what you said that part was easy as hell.” I winced. “Please don’t elaborate.”

She laughed and swiped up all the cards and started shuffling again. “Sex is easy and natural. And fun.” She waggled her eyebrows. “It’s those pesky emotions that come up. Our parents fucked us both up in different ways. Me, because they didn’t accept me. You, because you had to live up to all those expectations. Then, Sarah.”

I gripped the arm of the couch.

“If you don’t let it go, that is going to follow you forever, you know.” She set the deck down, stood, then came around the table to sit beside me. “You and Sarah weren’t right for each other. We weren’t talking a lot back then, but even I knew that.”

“It was just the lie. And Syd lied to me the same way.”

“Did she?” She touched my arm and the instant balm of calm that hit me always threw me off. I didn’t really understand my sister or the gifts she had. “Was it really the same?”

“She came here to ruin things for Jude. All with an end goal of getting him to tuck tail and go back to Seattle. She had her fingers in all of our files. In our money, for fuck’s sake. We have enough problems with Maitland, we don’t need someone sabotaging us from the inside. For God’s sake she even made friends with the enemy.”

“The enemy?”

“She’s friends with Claire Maitland, Arthur’s daughter.”

“Do you even hear yourself?”

“I know it sounds insane, but what else am I supposed to think? Her mother wants some big merger to go through and the only way it’ll happen is if they show a united family front for the marketing shit. I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

I was quiet for a second, knowing it was going to sound bad. “I overheard her telling Jude about it.”

“Oh, you idiot.”She smacked me in the back of the head.

“Hey.”

She got up and left me alone. She came back with the drinks and pushed one at me. “Eavesdropping never ends well. Did you listen to the whole conversation or just run off half-cocked?”

“I don’t do anything half-cocked.”

She gave me a hard stare.

“Impulsive is different.”

“Sure it is.” She took a long drink from her glass. “Give me the whole story. Even the embarrassing parts.”

As I told her about how we worked together for the last few weeks, my sister laid cards on her table. She made little humming sounds to let me know she was listening. Gave me alittle smirk when I told her I drove hours to see Syd in Lake George. And finally, the first lie that sent me into this rage.

At the admission that she lied about birth control, Luna looked up.

“Okay, I understand why that would freak you out.”

“If she would have just told me, we could have handled it together.”

“Why would she think that?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You knew each other for what? Two weeks? She’s got this monster of a mother who sent her to do her dirty work, and she is obviously hyper independent. Sure, she’d expect the impulsive hot dude she slept with to help solve her problems.”