Page 29 of The Parent Trap

My temper flares at that—I don’t care to examine my own hypocrisy too closely. “You knownothingabout me, Thai—don’t act like you do.”

“And you know so much about me?” He’s maddeningly impossible to get a reaction out of—even as he retorts, he’s even-keeled and sports that cocky smirk.

“I just have a hard time picturing you doing the domestic thing. Buying a girl flowers, taking her to dinner and a movie…learning her name, sticking around after sex. Little things like that.” My knives are out, but this is Thai—he’s earned every last ounce of my enmity and vindictiveness a thousand times over.

He nods, but it seems less like agreement and more like he’s saying,So that’s how you want to play it?“Yeah, you’ve definitely got the inside track on my sex life, Delia. Must have been spying on me.” He stands up. Shoves his hand in his pocket, turns to go but glances back over his shoulder for one last parting shot. “But hey, at least Ihavea sex life. I don’t claim to know what goes on in yours, but something tells me when youdoquit working long enough to engage in sexual intercourse, it’s with a clipboard and a checklist. Probably with guys who have three first names, and they probably wear suspenders, and loafers barefoot with jeans and have well-rounded stock portfolios and drive BMWs.”

I flush with rage…and embarrassment: the last guy I had sex with was named Robert Michael Duncan. And he wore loafers barefoot with jeans…and drove a BMW.

It was awful.

The sex, I mean. Quick, and awful.

“I don’t evenhavea clipboard,” I mutter, knowing the response is only playing more fully into his hands.

He laughs—out loud, and with genuine humor, shaking his head as he walks out. “Oh man, Delia. What a comeback.” He spins on his heel, shaking head again and grinning at me. “You are too funny.”

I just glare. “Asshole.”

He just winks at me and shoots me double finger guns. “You know it, babycakes.”

He’s gone before I could come up with a suitably venomous retort to being called babycakes.

He hasn’t changedthatmuch, clearly.

Chapter Nine

Matthais

Ohhhhh man,I must have nailed that one right on the head.

I don’t evenhavea clipboard, she said.

Meaning, the rest must have been fairly accurate. I’d been making it up—I had no idea what her type was. Honestly, I hadn’t really thought about her much over the past ten years. Her sex and dating life are a complete mystery to me; I have no memory of her dating anyone in high school. I mean, logically I know she’s a normal woman with the usual needs and desires. But I just can’t picture what her type would be. What I said to her was just me being a dick, trying to goad her into one of those adorably vicious temper tantrums. Apparently, however, I’d inadvertently hit upon the actual truth—her sexual partners are boring, straitlaced, and probably selfish and shitty in the sack.

I am none of those things.

Based entirely on that interaction, I’d be willing to bet the title to my McLaren that Delia McKenna has never had an orgasm she didn’t give herself.

Say what you want about me—entitled, arrogant, narcissistic, whatever. True, not true, whatever. But what I’m certifiablynot? Bad in bed, quick, or unaware of what my partner wants and needs.

Delia strikes me as someone who doesn’t know how to loosen up. How to unwind. How to stop controlling everything and just let someone make her feel good.

She probably has sex with her bra on, and the lights off.

I shake myself like a wet dog—why thefuckam I thinking about how Delia McKenna has sex? That is the absolute last thing on the planet I should spend mental energy thinking about.

Even if I wanted to, Delia would never get anywhere near me. Not like that. She’s more likely to stab me with a pen than let me go down on her.

I’m not even aware of having driven, yet somehow I find myself parking and heading up to my condo. It’s dark, and quiet, and lonely, and empty.

I genuinely hate this part of being perpetually single: the empty apartment. It’s not like I’m not used to it, and it’s not like I want a live-in girlfriend getting on my shit about coming home at a certain time andkeep it in your pants, Thaiand put the toilet seat up and all that shit.

But Idoget lonely, sometimes.

Yeah, fuck this.

I have no interest in being here alone.