Page 45 of Darling Venom
My nose was level with her head. She smelled like sugar cookies and cypress. Maybe even coconut.
More importantly—not like stale piss.
“None of your business.”
“Cute name. Artsy parents?”
“Dead parents,” she gritted out. “You’re bothering me.”
I told myself her parents were not really dead, so I could keep pestering her with a clear conscience.
“Give me what I want, and I’ll leave you alone.”
Her head snapped in my direction, her dramatic eyebrows pinched together in anger. “Kellan was right.”
It hit like a bullet to the gut, but I smiled through the pain. Cocky and unaffected and everything I was known for. The aloof, charming ob-gyn with the bronze heart.
She stormed to the platform.
I tailed her.
My patience, already a rare commodity, evaporated.
Her train arrived, and Miss Richards stepped in. I did the same. I had no idea where we were headed. Hopefully Hell, so I could have the home-field advantage.
I realized on the train that, excluding the month after Kellan’s death, I hadn’t done anything out of character or off my schedule for at least a decade. Yet, I took the seat next to her.
She tugged a stack of papers from her leather briefcase. A manuscript. She uncapped a yellow highlighter with her teeth and struck a line on the page in her lap.
“If I were you, I would cooperate,” I said through a tight-lipped smile, aware of the fact that people were watching us.
Getting arrested for harassment would be the kiss of death to my career. Living without answers, however, seemed like a bigger punishment.
She flipped a page in the manuscript, forcing me to switch to the not-so-nice method. Clearly, I should have gone that route the minute I’d found her. There were not a lot of opportunities to salvage a relationship that began with you staring into a woman’s eyes while coming deep inside another.
“I guess you leave me no choice but to tell your boss you flung my door open yesterday, caught me having sex, and decided to make yourself comfortable and watch.” I took out my phone and began texting Reagan Rothschild.
Miss Richards snapped her head up in horror. “Wait.”
Bingo.
My thumbs kept flying across my iPhone.
She should have knocked on my door as soon as I’d lost him. No one had come to talk to me and Terry, other than Principal Brooks and a couple of guilt-ridden teachers who’d hardly even remembered anything significant about my brother.
Kellan had died, and not one of his peers came to offer their condolences.
She slapped her hand over my phone. I dragged my eyes up to meet hers. She averted her gaze.
Guilty.
“Where can we talk?” I demanded.
She flinched.
I wanted to shake the answers out of her. I didn’t even know why I cared so much. Finding out what made him do this wouldn’t bring him back.
A part of me just wanted to punish her for not offering her condolences.
