HIS CLAIM

54

"But we had a feeling you were already on to us the moment we bumped into you."

"I did have my suspicions but I wasn't too sure. And when you asked me if I had a boyfriend and I said no, you kind of looked surprised in a way as if you already knew the answer." I pointed out to her and she looked impressed by my answer.

"Shit, you're good! And here I thought you would be easy to trick, I totally underestimated you." Ava shook her head a little in amusement.

"I did learn from the best." I winked with a smile. Cecilia decided to make an appearance in the living room with her apron covered in flour.

"I thought I heard your voice! I had my headphones in while baking because Ava wouldn't shut up about being bored." She glared at Ava, who gave her a sour look in return.

"I guess I haven't given you much to do lately." I said a bit awkwardly. I had stayed inside most of the time except when I went out to do some shopping for the house and Kiki.

"Which is a good thing but Ava seems to forget that." She kept scolding her, and Ava just rolled her eyes at her while mumbling something under her breath.

"By the way, this is for you guys." I said, coming to Ava's rescue and holding up the basket.

"I just wanted to thank you for watching Kiki that day." I smiled softly at them to which they returned.

"Well, I'm not about to turn down that bottle of wine! I will get the glasses." Ava turned around and made her way to the kitchen.

"I made a chocolate cake for you, I heard it's your favorite." Cecilia smiled.

"Chocolate cake or not, I'm not going to say no to whatever you've baked." I said, which made her face brighten before she followed Ava to the kitchen.

I placed the basket on the coffee table and decided to look around in the living room. They had made it look like they had been living here for a while, and had many personal touches to it with many frames of pictures of them around the living room. They really did think of everything to make things as believable as possible.

A vibrating sound caught my attention and I looked over to see it was a phone ringing on the couch. I grabbed the to hand it over to either of them but stopped in my tracks when I saw the name flashing on the screen, having my heart pounding.

Nicholas

Nicholas was calling, making me stand still and just stare at the phone. Fuck, I really wanted to answer the call, just to hear his voice for a second. My finger hovered over to accept the call, but Arianna's words stopped me. Still, I kept debating whether I should answer the call or not but it was already decided for me when the call ended for taking too long.

I let out a breath, my heart squeezing as I placed the phone down on the couch again. The phone buzzed again but this time it was a text message. From him. I couldn't help myself and looked at the screen to see what it said but before I could read it, I heard Ava and Cecilia making their way back to the living room, and I quickly moved away from the phone and sat down on the other couch.

"There you go." Cecilia handed me a plate with a big piece of chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, and some cut-up strawberries on the side.

"This looks amazing, thank you!" I said excitedly, truly happy about the dessert. Cecilia always looked pleased with my reaction whenever she handed me a plate of her heavenly baked goodies.

"No wine for me." I told Ava when she was about to pour me a glass.

"Why not?"

"Wine and sugar knock me out in a second, and I'm planning on having a second plate of this." I said just as I dug into the chocolate cake. Ava just shrugged her shoulders and picked up her glass and took a sip. I noticed Cecilia had taken a look at the phone on the couch and quickly sent a text back. It didn't go unnoticed that she rolled her eyes at whatever Nicholas had texted her.