Page 13 of The Defender

I side-eyed him as I led him to his room. The corners of his mouth twitched, but I refused to respond to his double entendre.

Besides, he wasn’t going to be so amused when he saw what I’d prepared for him.

I bit back a grin as I opened the bedroom door. “I took the liberty of redecorating for you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“You didn’t have to—” Vincent stopped dead in the doorway. His duffel hit the floor with a thud as he took in his new home for the foreseeable future.

Up until last night, I’d used the spare bedroom as extra storage space for my clothes and workout equipment. All those things had been cleared out. In their place were stuffed animals—dozens and dozens of them. Pink pigs, purple horses, giant pandas and little dolphins. Plushies of every shape, size, and category crowded the small space like a kid’s estate sale gone wild, and a one-eyed doll that may or may not have been haunted sat on the shelf opposite the bed.

I’d gotten the toys courtesy of my neighbor. As luck would have it, she was a collector whose therapist recently convinced her to “release her attachments to the past.” When I saw her post offering the plushies at a discount in the building’s group chat, I immediately jumped at the opportunity.

I tied the look together with sparkly fuchsia sheets and lace-trimmed pillows.

“Do you like it?” I asked, the picture of innocence. “I read somewhere that stuffed animals can make a place feel homier, and I really want you to be comfortable here.”

Vincent may have manipulated me into letting him move in, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a little fun at his expense.

He picked up the nearest stuffed animal and examined it. A minute later, he set it back down with exquisite care and looked me straight in the eyes.

I held my breath, my chest ballooning with anticipation.

“Iloveit,” he said. He radiated so much sincerity, my teeth ached. “I can’t believe you went to all this trouble for me. I’m honored.”

My gaze narrowed. Not a hint of sarcasm in his voice; not a trace of irritation on his face.Bastard.

“I’m nothing if not a good host.” It was time to switch tactics. “Since you’ll be staying here for a while, we should go over the house rules.”

Vincent leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms, the picture of insouciance.

“Let’s hear ‘em,” he drawled. Despite growing up in Paris, he didn’t have a strong French accent. It was probably because he’d attended international school and spent every other summer in the UK. But there were certain moments, like these, when a flicker of it slipped in so smoothly it was like it’d been there all along.

My spine tingled again, this time more insistently.

I ignored it and ticked off the rules on my fingers. “No smoking indoors.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“No hogging the bathroom, TV, or other communal amenities. The hot water runs out quickly, so don’t, you know, spend too much time in the shower.” I emphasized the last part.

I wasn’t an idiot; I knew what guys were doing when they took more than ten minutes in the shower.

Vincent’s eyes gleamed with laughter. “Noted.”

I ran through a handful of other rules before I reached the grand finale. “And…” I paused for dramatic effect. “No bringing girls over. Ever. I don’t want random people coming in and out of my flat.”

Thathadto be a dealbreaker for him. He was good-looking, single, and famous. Women threw themselves at him every day, and according to the tabloids, he didn’t exactly resist their advances. There was no way he could resist bringing someone over.

Vincent’s brow creased.

Triumph sparked until he spoke again.

“Brooklyn,” he said, “I have absolutely zero interest in bringing other girls over.”

There it was again—the subtle change in his tone, followed by a tiny swoop in my stomach. His reply sounded innocuous at first, but his faint emphasis on the wordothersent my mind cartwheeling in a dozen directions, each more dangerous than the last.

Was the emphasis pure semantics, in that I was already a girl living here so anyone else he brought over would be an “other” by default?

Or did he mean he had zero interest in bringing other girls over because…