Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 49943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 250(@200wpm)___ 200(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 250(@200wpm)___ 200(@250wpm)___ 166(@300wpm)
Oh yeah, I was jumping back into the whirlwind with them headfirst. My spine tingled in anticipation…along with, well, other places. I was ready. I’d been shut up in that damn apartment for too long.
More than ready. Especially after the disaster last time we’d all gone out together. I was young, I was out with gorgeous men, and it was officially time to make and stack up some good memories. We’d come a long way, baby. Well—I bit my lip as I let myself be led inside the Michelin star restaurant by the guys—thinking of the actual baby inside me, I certainly hoped we had.
“Watch out,” Leander said from in front of me, turning back and grasping me by my arm and around my back at my waist. “There’s a step here. Be careful.”
I blinked, hypersensitive from how Janus had been touching me and—
I glanced up at Leander. I wasn’t sure what I read in his gray-silver eyes. But we paused there a moment. I thought I detected a slight frown on his forehead. Because we were touching? Was he feeling the same electricity?
I nodded. “I-I-I’ll be careful.” Then I ducked my head, stepping forward, embarrassed by my stutter. I hated that it showed my emotions like that.
Had to admit, though. This was certainly a different Leander than the one who’d been chaining me to a bed a month and a half. So maybe we really had made progress?
“Hope.”
I stopped, turning around. Leander stood there in the foyer of the restaurant, the walls a burnished Tuscan gold. There was a halo of light behind his hair. It was as if the man always took studio lighting around with him wherever he went. So damn annoying.
But the earnest look on his face had my heart softening and opening to whatever he was about to say—
Which was naturally interrupted when a woman suddenly came banging in the door of the restaurant. She was older but fit, with badly dyed blonde hair and clothing that my best friend Mikayla would have described as… tacky, to be polite.
“Signora, you must have a reservation!” The hostess tried to step in front of her but she wasn’t having it.
The woman just fluttered her manicured hand in the air like a butterfly and pranced right past the stunned hostess, heading straight for Leander.
“Leander. Honey. How hard is it to pick up the phone and call your mother?”
Mother?!?!
I couldn’t help the squeak that came out of my throat as I clenched around the balls still tucked up inside my cooch.
TWELVE
HOPE
The hostess looked towards Leander and Janus, confusion on her face. She sputtered out in beautifully accented English, “She is… with you?”
“Yes,” Janus said at the same time Leander spat, “No.”
Then they both glared at each other.
“We agreed last time,” Leander growled.
“But the—” Janus broke off but looked my way.
I could hear what he hadn’t said. The baby. Their adoptive mother—Milo’s bio mom—looked at me, and her face brightened. Janus wanted the baby to know their grandmother. My heart squeezed. Along with the muscles in my sex. Dear God, what if I somehow lost grip on the glass balls and they slipped out? I was embarrassingly wet at the moment. I clenched all my muscles.
“Is it right for a mother to hear about her son’s engagement from the tabloids instead of a phone call?” She shook a finger at Janus and then smiled at me, bleached white teeth gleaming even in the dim foyer lighting. “And you must be Hope, the woman who finally got one of my boys to grow up and commit.”
Her attention ping-ponged back to Leander. “Although maybe wedding bells will be catching? Everywhere I go online all I read about is Lender this and Lender that.” Then she looked around. “Is Lena here with you now? I heard she was vacationing nearby so the two of you could canoodle while you worked on the new movie.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Leander swore, pulling away from her and yanking out his phone. “Hope,” he barked.
I already had my phone out too. “I’m on it.” We’d been monitoring the Lena rumors and trying to control the narrative, mostly successfully. Our spin: yes, Leander and Lena liked to flirt for the cameras but that was all just in good fun. Really, they were only close friends, not romantically involved anymore.
But I hadn’t heard Lena was vacationing in Italy. Just because we were trying to control the narrative didn’t mean Lena liked it. I didn’t put it past her to try to stir shit up if she was anywhere in a hundred-mile radius.
I’d barely started hunting any info down when their mother said, “Well, what are we all doing here standing around? Aren’t we going to eat dinner? I’ve come all this way.”
“We have a reservation,” Leander said coldly. “You don’t.”
“Leander,” Janus said, grabbing his brother’s arm. “Don’t you think family might be more important now than ever?”