Page 23 of The Parent Trap

Turn something upside down, and then upside down again, does that make it upside right? In my case, not even close.

My head is spinning along a dozen different axes. So, I do what I’ve always done in the face of such emotional tumult: ignore it and go to work.

Chapter Seven

Matthais

I holdmy shit together through the rest of the meeting. Barely, and by the hairs of my chinny-chin-chin. Or some shit. I’m not even sure what that’s supposed to mean.

It means I’m fucking dizzy.

It means this was a very massively enormously horribly colossally shit-tastic idea.

Not because I can’t do the job—I can.

Why?

Because Delia McKenna pulled one hell of a Longbottom transformation in the decade since I saw her last.

She was far from ugly, growing up. No matter how much I mocked her—and I was absolutely merciless—she was, by the time we graduated …hot. She was curvier than the blond cheerleader size-nothing bimbos I tended to hook up with. She wasn’t what anyone would call fat or heavy. She was just…curvy. As a kid, she was what you’d have called kinda chunky, and she was seriously self-conscious about it. And I, being the complete tool I was, drilled into that self-consciousness as hard as I could, at every opportunity.

Then, as she got into middle school and high school and she got taller and went through puberty, that chunkiness translated to thick hips and ass and a more than generous portion of tits. Yeah, I noticed. Still made fun of her and called her shitty names, but I noticed.

Maybe I even made fun of herbecauseI noticed. It bothered me, that she was so hot, that I noticed. Maybe that was why I was such a jackass to her, why I was so unbelievably mean. God, the things I called her: Donuts Delia, Dino Delia, shit like that. I mean, they weren’t even original or intelligent insults—they were childish as all fuck. Maybe they cut her more deeply because of that. And maybe…maybe I was a classic case of an immature boy mocking someone he actually liked because he didn’t know how to express himself.

Ten years later, she’s a fully mature woman, and she clearly has worked her ass off to achieve and maintain her body.

Which is, in a word, fucking incredible. Two words, but whatever.

Back in high school, there was just this little bit of…extra, I guess. Some padding around the curves.

Now? All curve, and no extra.

She’d been wearing a peach sheath dress with a jean jacket, the sleeves pushed up past her elbows, with some seriously killer black heels. Her raven’s wing hair was longer than ever, in a thick, complicated braid and twisted up on top of her head. When she’d stormed out of the board room, it had taken every last particle of willpower I possessed to not stare at that magnificent ass.

Her eyes were…pure blue fire. Wild and fierce and electric blue. If I were to only see her in a photograph, I’d assume they were Photoshopped to be that hue.

They sparked, and spat flame, especially when she looked at me.

Honestly, that fire in her eyes was…hot. Ha ha ha. Pun intended, I guess.

But it is, though. She’s a challenge.

One I’m not sure what to do with.

She hates me, and with good reason.

She’s so fucking gorgeous now that it was legitimately difficult to be in the room with her and not ogle her like a horny teenager with his first lust.

She’s dominating—in an in-charge and full of well-earned and -deserved authority. She’s wicked smart. Competent and capable.

Which is also hot.

My mind has been wanderingduring the meeting, so I’m taken by surprise when…what’s his name? Boy? Billy? Boyd? Boyd, I’m pretty sure. Anyway, he adjourns the meeting, and everyone begins filing out. Within a moment, I’m the only one at the table.

I have to come up with a plan for catching myself up. I need to know not only how THIS business runs, but how the home-building trade works in general.

I have a lot of work to do.