Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
“Your brother agrees?”
Her brows drew down, she tipped her head to the side, and she drawled a highly sardonic, “Dear.”
Hang on.
Was Battle…genuinely into me?
I. Am. Not. Playing. Games.
Oh God.
Maybe he was into me.
God!
Now what did I do with that?
Not that I would have, but I still didn’t get the chance to ask Temperance.
She patted her leg, and again unlike any feline behavior I’d ever seen, Soot reappeared from wherever Soot was exploring, and he pranced at her side as she walked out.
This was when I saw she had a little train at the end of her gown, and her back was completely bare.
When I heard the door of the bedroom close, I whispered, “Damn, that woman is the shit.”
Then I grabbed my compact, my lip liner, my lippie and took one last look at my hair before I took another moment to pull my courage together.
And I got up to follow her.
I found the drawer in the vanity was littered with tubes of lipstick and mascara, lip liners, compacts, dress tape, tampons, panty liners and anything else a lady might need for touchups or emergencies.
Once I made my deposit, I hit the plum parlor.
The women were in the seating area, Prue and Chassie on one couch, Tempie and Courtney on another, Chelsea in a chair.
The men were huddled at the drinks cabinet, including Fitzgibbons.
Bartholomew lifted his head when I arrived. He was lying between the other two chairs.
In fact, everyone looked at me when I arrived, Chelsea’s expression shifting to one like she’d sucked hard at a lemon, and oh yeah.
My dress was better than hers.
But it was Battle whose gaze raked the length of me, his face got lazy in a way that made the gusset of my panties need to get busy, so of course, I shot him a dirty look.
He smiled.
My gusset got busier.
Okay.
Shit.
Maybe the Duke of Burleigh was into me.
“Miss Vivienne, drink?” Fitzgibbons called.
I came prepared.
“White Russian.”
That would get him.
No one kept cream in their drinks cabinet.
“Coming right up,” Fitzgibbons said with a twinkle in his eye, turning to his task.
“That’s rather sweet for a predinner drink, isn’t it?” Chelsea asked.
“Vivienne enjoys challenging Fitzy’s bartending skills,” Battle answered for me, doing so sharing the heretofore unknown knowledge that he was on to me. “What she doesn’t know is that Fitzy was a bartender in a club in London for five years.”
And there it was.
No bartender worth his salt was ever without a needed ingredient.
“That’s where I met my Patsy,” Fitzgibbons shared. “She was a waitress. Prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Then and now.”
“I love that story,” Prue declared on a contented sigh.
I sat in a chair not in Chelsea’s grouping and leaned over the arm to give Bartholomew some love.
He rolled to his side and exposed his belly.
I could take direction, so I did.
I only stopped when my drink was in front of my face.
I looked at it, and up, to see Battle was handing it to me.
I took it with a mumbled, “Thank you,” as he bent close, closer, closest, so his mouth was at my ear.
Obviously, this meant I turned my head, and he was so close, the skin of my cheek grazed the skin of his, I got a nose full of his attractive cologne, and we were almost lips to lips.
I ignored what all of that did to my gusset (and it was getting busy down there), stared in his brown and gold-star eyes and warned, “Don’t.”
“Don’t tell you you look lovely?”
“Yeah. That.”
“All right, I won’t tell you you look lovely.”
I rolled my eyes.
He dipped back to my ear and whispered, “Good enough to eat.”
I jerked my head back and stared murder at him.
Okay, so yes.
Maybe he was into me.
But we were in company!
His gorgeous lips curled up before he straightened away, walked in front of me and angled into the chair beside mine.
My attention went to Prue, scared she’d be upset by this, but I found her smiling dreamily into her old fashioned.
With Prue, that could mean she was in her own little dreamworld, or it could mean she didn’t have an issue with Battle openly flirting with me.
Unfortunately, I was probably going to have to have a conversation with her to ascertain where she was with that.
More unfortunately, it was seeming likely I was going to have to have a chat with Battle before I did that.
Even though I wasn’t thrilled with the shit Battle was pulling, I couldn’t say I didn’t love and adore the infuriated expression it put on Chelsea’s face.
One could say this weekend she’d finagled was not going her way at all.
“So,” I said into the utter silence that was another result of Battle’s shenanigans, since everyone (but Chelsea) was doing a version of Prue smiling into her drink. I aimed my next at Courtney and Rally. “It’s my understanding you two are getting married?”