Page 37 of Indecent Lies

“I’ll grab a shower and order dinner, what do you fancy?”

“Got my dinner right here, you eat though.” Her words all slurred together. So the little girl couldn’t handle her liquor. So noted.

“Poppy, you wanna go easy on the booze, we’re at altitude.”

“Is that meant to mean something to me?”

“Yeah, it means you're not used to the altitude, so take it easy guzzling on adult pop.”

“Oh, whatever. I’m tired of dumb men telling me what I can and can’t do.”

“Fine. But you puke on my floor and you clean it up yourself.”

“I’m the guest, that’s your job.” She huffed.

Poppy hadn’t looked at him yet—and though it had only been a few days, he was used to her watchful gaze on him.

Strange that he’d become accustomed to her presence in just a few days.

Stranger still that he wasn’t a man who fell into addictions but the compulsion to fall into her goodness was strong.

He liked her around, watching her clean up the kitchen and stack their shoes by the door. He liked smelling the shampoo in the bathroom and seeing the folded towels she left for him.

He scowled on the way to the bathroom and all through his rushed shower, he didn’t even stop for any hand to dick relaxation because he figured the longer Poppy was alone, the more she’d drink.

Coming back in twenty, dressed in fresh sweatpants, he put an order in for Korean food then went to find what state she was in.

He parked it three seats away from her, but the way she was sprawled in the corner, her left foot touched his thigh. He reached down and curled his fingers around her delicate ankle.

That got her looking at him.

But no smile.

He liked her smiles. They always reached her eyes, making her incredibly prettier.

“What’s with the drinking?”

“Celebrating.”

“The new job?”

“Yeah, let’s go with that, to me and my new job, the first one I’ve ever been allowed to have, yay me.” She said way too loudly and lifted the drink in the air as a toast.

Man, she really was white girl wasted, more than evident a girl her size couldn’t hold her liquor. There was no way her daddy would let her drink, that was a fact.

He knew that life, how the females were treated differently to the boys.

He had half a mind to let her go on, live some rebellion, but he circled back to the puke he’d have to clean up and he didn’t fancy that, so he moved the half empty bottle out of reach and heard her grumbling under her breath.

Sprawled out the way she was, all her hair fanned across her shoulders and her eyes unfocused yet still pissed off, it was easy for Texas to picture the little girl she used to be.

He even remembered the first day he saw her at his house. She’d come over with her parents and nanny. She might have been around six, because he’d just celebrated his tenth birthday not long before.

For years she would light up when she saw him and come charging toward him.

She was exuberant back then to say the least so while he thought she was a nice kid; he wasn’t all that excited for her shadowing him. Especially when Mal started to tease him about it, which only started Addison’s catty remarks.

Now Texas was seeing her adolescence with whole new eyes.