Page 43 of Nothing to Beat

On a smile, she opened the front door to go into the hallway.It may not be complete privacy, but she’d prefer to keep as much sense as possible.

“Am I not good enough?Did you need your beloved brother for something specific?”

“Yeah,” Breck said.“Tracking down my roommate.”

Right.Roommate.

And if anyone needed to know something, Tripp was the guy to call.Maybe bringing him wasn’t the smartest move.

Best to go with a tease.“We ran away together.”

“Uh huh.You tell me it’s not a problem to stay here, then disappear.”

So he was at her place?Good.Hopefully he’d think straighter there… but not too straight.

“I didn’t disappear, don’t be dramatic,” she droned.“Something came up.I have to… handle it.That’s all.No big deal.”

“And you called my brother?Is it illegal?”

She scoffed, keeping the tease going.“Why would you ask that?”

“That’s the only reason you’d call Tripp instead of me.”

“You’d do illegal things for me…” Resting against the wall, she flattened one hand between it and her coccyx and lowered her chin.“Wouldn’t you, baby?”

“Hard to be an active parent to our child if I’m in prison.”

“There’s no baby, I told you that.And maybe I called Tripp because he still has access to his trust fund.He didn’t take crazy pills like someone else I know.”

“If you needed money, you’d call my dad, and I didn’t cancel your credit card.”

No, because he’d never do something like that.Whoa but wait, who exactly would be making payments if the guy on the hook for it didn’t have a job?

“It’s not about money.Tripp’s just here.He has a habit of it.”

Thank you, Roxie.The woman wasn’t wrong.

“Tell me where you are and I’ll have a habit of it too.”

“You’re good on the phone.I love how you tease me.”

Though it was conversations like this that made living together a risky proposition.Thank God she’d left the state.If they started having sex again…

“Think you can flirt me into submission?”

“It’s worked before.”

“Your phone’s going straight to voicemail, which means you turned it off.”Specifically so he couldn’t track her.He’d noticed that, huh?“Doesn’t support your theory.You’re avoiding me, which means you don’t trust yourself to lie to me.”

“I’m not lying, and my phone is elsewhere right now.”It was in her purse in the apartment above… and, yes, off, a minor, irrelevant detail.“But you found me.No harm done.”

“There’s harm done if you’re keeping something from me.”Now there was an accusation.“The money matter that much to you?”

When her mouth opened, a squeak of offense followed.“I’m going to pretend that was a bad joke.”He needled her to provoke a reaction and she fell for it every time.“How dare you say that to me, Stat.”The guy was under pressure and he was right, she was withholding.Except she couldn’t fill him in, not yet.Time to flip the mood.“Now if you’d asked me if the sex mattered that much…”

“Come home and you can have it.”

Home.Her guy.Her apartment.The proposition was tempting.Her yearning come to life.