Page 36 of Undeniably Corrupt (Boston’s Irresistible Billionaires #7)

“Here. You look like you could use this.” Kenna pours me a large glass of red wine that I gratefully accept. I haven’t had alcohol in a million years but screw it. She’s right. I could use it.

“Thank you.”

“Sorry,” Tinsley apologizes with a sheepish grin. “We’re just excited. You’re the only woman Vander’s ever brought to meet us.”

“Probably because he keeps the others locked in his basement,” I quip as I take a sip. “But it’s not like that. I work for him, and he saw us in the park.”

“If I weren’t married to Mason and didn’t have a baby sucking on my nipples, I would have let Vander lock me in his basement.”

I snort into my wine, and Sorel smiles at me.

“I remember those days. The new baby nursing all the time and lack of sleep thing.”

“Right?” Katy agrees. “Why I want to do it again is a mystery.”

“Because it’s the best,” I admit. It wasn’t easy for me when I had Hazel, but I wouldn’t change it. Not any of it.

“Shh!” Tinsley cries. “You’re going to make my ovaries pop, and I am in no place to have my ovaries doing that.”

“How are you doing with the newborn?” I ask Sorel.

“Great, actually,” she says. “I sleep more than I was expecting to since Mason and I have been trading off getting up with Nolan. ”

“That’s amazing. My ex did nothing when Hazel was born.”

“That had to be rough,” Katy states with a frown.

I shrug. “I guess.”

“Had you been together long?”

I shake my head at Kenna. “No. We’d only been dating a little more than a month when we found out I was pregnant. Far from ideal.”

“Well, she looks exactly like you. Absolutely beautiful.”

I smile at Keegan. “Yes. Thanks. She is.”

“Wait, Katy told me you want to be an OB nurse, right? I’m the OB.” Keegan waves her arms in the air. “Ignore the brace. I broke my wrist and get this puppy off next week. When is your OB rotation?”

“I already had it. That was my second rotation. I only have another year left.”

“Awesome!” Wren is just as excited. “I graduate this spring. It’s so wild how fast it goes.”

I smile, but for me, it doesn’t feel fast enough.

“When you graduate, find me and I’ll get you a job,” Keegan tells me, then waves me away. “Wait, you’re living with Vander. I mean, you’re here with him. We’ll definitely see you.”

Cue that damn blush and an odd nervous giggle I swear I’ve never made before in my life.

“Oh, shit. What’s that?”

It would be nice if Katy didn’t see everything.

“Just sounds weird saying that. I mean, it’s not like we’re living together living together and it’s not like I’m here with him here with him. I was in the park, and he saw me. Besides, I’m hoping to move out next month once I get a few more paychecks under my belt.”

And that was way too much information.

I’m getting a lot of sets of eyes all looking at me as if they can see right through me. Which they probably can .

A point they prove when Wren asks, “Be honest now. Is he as amazing in bed as he looks like he’d be?”

“Oh my god!” I screech and cover my face with my hands. “I am not answering that.”

“So is this new or old info?” Kenna picks up.

“I’m thinking it’s new by all of this.” Sorel swirls a finger around me. “But I never want to assume.”

“I’m gonna assume and I’m also gonna say that’s a hell yes he is,” Tinsley quips, and I want to die. Like I want the floor to open up and swallow me whole. How did this happen?

“Girl, none of us blame you,” Estlin states, sipping on a bourbon and twirling a colorful strand of hair around her finger.

“He’s sexy and mysterious. Like Sorel said, if I weren’t married to Owen and totally in love with him, I’d let him lock me in his basement. He seems like a red room kind of guy.”

“Oh my God!” Wren cackles. “Totally.”

I start gulping down my wine and shove a raspberry oatmeal bar into my mouth. They’re really freaking good, and I immediately grab another.

“It’s all good, you know,” Katy continues, propping her elbows on the table. “We like you and like you being with him. We want him to be happy.”

“For sure,” Kenna agrees. “He doesn’t do anything without thinking it through, so this is good.”

“Yes. Vander wouldn’t have, you know , with you if he weren’t crazy about you,” Sorel states as if it’s fact while she takes the baby off her breast, covers herself up, and brings him up to her shoulder so she can burp him.

That stops me short. “No.” I’m impersonating a goldfish. “That’s not how it is. Trust me. There’s not a lot of anything other than animosity between us.”

But even as I say that, I know it’s not true. Vander has been different since Sunday night when he caught me in his closet. And the things he’s been saying to me …

Estlin snorts. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s how things started with me and Owen.”

“And all that animosity comes with heat,” Wren declares, fanning her face.

“You’d know,” Tinsley teases.

Wren shrugs. “Clearly I’m not the only one. As memory serves, that’s how you and Stone began too.”

“Whatever. Ignore them.” Katy turns back to me. “I just know Vander, but more than that, I remember him with you, and if things are already picking back up?—”

I shake my head, cutting her off, but it’s tough to deny that.

Moreover, I’m still a little stuck on their comments about Vander being crazy about me.

Even when I know that’s impossible. He wants me physically.

That much is obvious. As anything more than a roommates-with-benefits thing? No. That’s even the term he used.

“Don’t believe us?” Sorel comments. “See for yourself.” She juts her chin up over my shoulder, and I turn to look and instantly lock eyes with him.

He doesn’t smile, but there’s a burning in his eyes.

A something extra he’s only giving me. Something that makes butterflies flutter in my belly and chest and my skin feel hot and tight.

I’m not sure what I’m doing and what I’m not with him, but my head and my heart are fighting a freaking duel to the death right now, and neither wants the other to win. Only in the end, I know this can only go one way, and no matter what, I’ll lose.