Page 156 of Broken Brothers

The door to the apartment opened seconds later, and in stepped Layla, in the same outfit she had worn the first day I ever saw her. The sight brought back a rush of memories, taking me all the way to when I’d first laid eyes on her and knew that I had to have her. Though it had only happened maybe a couple of months ago, that whole experience felt a lifetime away, like I had experienced it in an alternate dimension.

Still, the feelings were quite so far fetched, and when I saw her in her garb, I couldn’t help but think of the way her pants curved around her ass… how her breasts both seemed to pop way out of her chest, yet seemed “respectfully” restrained by the business outfit… how her smile just somehow seemed too perfect for that outfit, even though she didn’t flash it nearly as much these days and I knew when she had given it to me then, it came under the guise of extreme pressure from her uncle.

No, I wasn’t about to get up, kiss her, and lead her to the bedroom. But yes, the outfit she wore made it pretty damn difficult not to think about doing that.

“Hey,” she said, sounding tired but subtly invigorated by what may have been a great job interview. “What have you been up to?”

“Not much.”

“Not much?” she said, suspicion in her voice. “Surely you must have done something.”

It wasn’t an aggressive suspicion. It wasn’t like she was accusing me of doing nothing when I should have done something. But it was certainly a suspicion that wouldn’t let me off the hook so easily.

“Well, saw Mom and Claire.”

“Mom?” she said.

She picked up on it too. That I only would call her Mrs. Hunt before.

“Yeah, you’ve met her before, right?”

“Yeah, at a couple of gala events. Edwin and my uncle are close, remember?”

“True. Anyways, apparently, she’s getting a divorce.”

“Really.”

That was not the tone of voice someone took when they had just heard a long-married couple was getting divorced afterdecades of marriage. That was the tone of voice someone had when they knew from beforehand what had happened.

“Did you know?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You don’t sound very surprised by it.”

Layla shrugged as she dropped her purse off on her kitchen table and sat on the other end of the couch from me, also putting her feet up—very close to touching mine, as they were. It was almost like she knew nothing was going to happen, but there was absolutely no harm in making apparent her desire for me. It wasn’t so much flirting as it was pushing the boundaries of what we both knew our limits to be.

“I knew that Edwin and Melanie were never that close,” she said. “It was like watching an arranged marriage play out until the day someone could break free, and the second that they did, no one was surprised.”

“I see.”

I didn’t think that was all there was to it. I started to suspect that the source my mother was getting her information from was Layla, which… well, it was helping me, wasn’t it? My mom had taken the news Layla—or whoever—had given her and decided to give me a million bucks and the news of the divorce before Morgan or even Edwin himself… so it wasn’t like her being a source to my mother was a bad thing, per se.

But there was something potentially dangerous about it. I couldn’t pin my finger on it, other than to say that the idea of someone feeding my mom information behind my back felt like a game that could go bad very quickly.

There wasn’t anything to say about it so far, though, especially considering that it had only benefited me so far. I decided to play dumb and drop the subject with all that I had known.

“And the job hunt?”

“It’s OK, I guess,” she said.

“OK?”

“Yeah, just OK. Nothing big yet.”

“That outfit should help some,” I said, the closest thing I had come to flirtation since stepping through her apartment doors.

But instead of eliciting a pleasant reaction as I had expected—perhaps even hoped—it instead just seemed to fluster Layla, who crouched up and faced her body forward.