Sin With Me

6

His arm still around Kat, who’s attached to his side like a barnacle, he laughs. “Yeah, that boy’s got a big appetite. You should see him put away my hush puppies. I have to make an extra batch just for him.”

Because life is entirely unfair, not only is Nico Nyx gorgeous, talented, loyal, and sexy, he can also cook. Kat had to step up her exercise routine from three to five days a week just to keep her weight the same after she moved in with him.

Suspiciously casually, Nico adds, “And I just got off the phone with Brody.”

Act natural. Act disinterested. Don’t look at Kat.

Busying myself with sitting in a chair, slipping off my heels, and digging through my handbag as if I’m in search of something important, I say, “Oh?”

“Mm-hmm. He’s comin’ now.” Pause. “He said to tell you to call him if you need him to pick up anything on the way.” Startled, I abandon my fake rummaging. “What?”

Nico has these ridiculously disarming dimples that flash in his cheeks whenever he smiles, or is trying not to smile, as he’s doing now. “You heard me.”

Kat sends me her thousand-yard-expert-sniper stare. I know I’m in for some serious interrogating the minute we’re alone together. To mitigate the damage, I laugh.

I aim for carefree, but unfortunately it comes out sounding a little panicked. “Oh, he’s just playing with you. I don’t even have his phone number.”

Like the statement about hating the smell of hospitals, this is another suspicion-deflecting gem that also happens to be true. I don’t have Brody’s phone number.

Forget about the fact that he’s tried to give it to me several times, I don’t have it because I’ve refused.

“Are you seriously trying to pretend there’s nothing going on between the two of you?” Kat straightens her spine and glares daggers at me. “I saw you at the house, Grace.”

When I blink innocently, she rolls her eyes.

“After you said you were going to the bathroom and Brody followed you and then you both disappeared for like fifteen minutes and then you came back all red-faced and flustered and Brody came back looking like the cat that ate the canary?”

Nico whistles. “Ooo, she went there!”

“Yes, I did! And I will not have you keeping secrets from me!”

Kat stamps her foot. On anyone else that would look ridiculous, but somehow she pulls it off. Probably on account of her being exotically beautiful, which imbues most of the ridiculous things she does with effortless chic.

I say to Nico, “Is it me, or is she unusually bossy today?”

In his slow, Southern drawl, Nico deadpans, “Darlin’, if you think I’m goin’ anywhere near an answer to that question, you’re crazy.”

Fortunately the gods of distraction are on my side, because at that moment the guys stroll back into the waiting room. Chris and Ethan—dressed like twins in alligator cowboy boots, ripped jeans, and white T-shirts, their arms covered in tattoos—sprawl into a pair of chintz chairs opposite me and start chomping on cafeteria hamburgers while Barney, holding a sub sandwich in one hand and a Coke in the other, directs a question to Kat.

“Everything good?”

Kat nods. “She’s all checked in. They’re in the maternity suite now. Her contractions are already coming pretty close together, so we should get an update soon about how long they think it will be before the baby comes.”

Barney looks satisfied. He takes a huge bite of the sub. He’s wearing his standard-issue black Armani suit and white dress shirt open at the collar—the only outfit I’ve ever seen him in—and the gold Rolex that was a birthday present from Nico. He’s got a perfectly groomed goatee and a full head of dark hair cropped short with military precision. Combined with his linebacker shoulders and piercing dark eyes, he’s always struck me as what a proper mafia hitman would look like: dangerous.

He’s also dangerously hot, if you like guys who wear guns under their suits and are named after purple dinosaurs.

Then Nico turns his head and breaks into a grin. He says to someone out of my line of sight, “Glad you could make it, slowpoke.”

It’s interesting the way my pulse spikes when I realize he must be speaking to Brody. Interesting and annoying, because I’m not the kind of woman whose pulse is easily spiked. I was once robbed at gunpoint by a crackhead and my reaction was to look at him and calmly say, “I’m happy to give you money for drugs, but what you really need is a hot meal, a hot bath, and a hug.”

He took the money.

“You guys ran out so fast you left tire marks on the driveway.” Brody rounds the row of chairs I’m sitting in, trades a back-slapping hug with Nico and a nod to the other guys, and then asks Kat, “How’s Chloe?”

I’m too busy staring at him to hear the answer.

There’s just something about him that’s so . . . cool. I don’t know how else to describe it. He’s very good-looking, but in an approachable, boy-next-door sort of way. Unlike Nico, whose body looks carved by Michelangelo from a perfect piece of granite, or A.J., who’s the size of The Hulk, Brody is slim and graceful like a runway model.