Dangerous Play

4 » exes and uh ohs

"I can't just enjoy a nice lunch with a pretty girl who happens to be my best friend's sister?" He was definitely deflecting now, his eyes flicking to the door behind me as if he was waiting for something.

My heart skipped a beat at the compliment, but I refused to take the bait. "No, you can't." I fixed a steely glare on him. "Spill."

"Alright, fine! I brought you here to make a point," he grumbled.

"What point, and to who, exactly?"

He hesitated. The urge to throttle him, which had temporarily dissipated with the gift of the brownie, had returned full-force and was growing steadily stronger. I was half a second away from either demanding an answer or just directly lunging across the table at him, when the bell above the entrance to Homer's chimed. Kieran inhaled sharply as his eyes locked on whoever had just entered. I craned my neck to look.

Marissa Willingham strode in the café, school-dress-code-breaking skirt swishing around her legs. Her golden blonde hair sat in perfect curls around her deceptively angelic face. How did she manage to make a school uniform look good? Life was so unfair.

I swiveled back around to face Kieran angrily. Finally, things were starting to make sense. "You're shitting me. You brought me here to piss off your girlfriend?" I stole another glance in her direction and noticed the inky black hair of the girl who'd walked in behind her. "Great. She brought her minion."

"Ex-girlfriend," he corrected. At least he had the decency to look somewhat sheepish. "Please, do me a favor and just play along."

"Play along? No way in hell am I—"

"Babe, I think our food's ready," he said loudly. He slid casually out of the booth and grabbed my hand, tugging me to my feet as the sound of heels clicking on the hardwood floor grew louder. His arm reached behind me and wrapped itself around my waist.

I had half a second to compose my expression before my mortal enemies appeared in front of us. It gave me an immense amount of satisfaction to note that I towered over both girls, despite the tall heels they wore. Marissa's icy blue eyes swept over the scene in front of her, dainty nose wrinkled in disgust. "Kieran, what on Earth is going on here?" Eden stood silently beside her, bored disdain written in every line of her face.

"I'm having lunch with my girlfriend," Kieran said casually. I had to give it to him; he was a convincing actor. The only crack in his indifferent façade was the tension in his body, which I only noticed because we were standing so close.

I, on the other hand, was resisting the urge to wriggle out of his grasp and let him fend for himself against the two she-devils. His arm tightened imperceptibly around my waist, as if he knew instinctively that I was moments from bolting.

Marissa barely spared me a second glance before bursting into laughter. "That's so cute. I didn't realize you were taking charity cases now, even if they are your best friend's twin."

Oh hell no. "The charity case has a name," I grumbled.

"I wasn't talking to you, so shut the hell up," she snapped.

I saw Kieran's mouth open out of the corner of my eye, but I beat him to the punch. My hands curled into fists at my side. I was still annoyed at Kieran for dragging me into his mess, but now that we were here, well, I could hardly pass up an opportunity to bitch at my arch-nemesis. "No, you shut up. You're in no position to come here and make demands like you still belong in Kieran's life, when he's clearly over you and has moved on. There's nothing else you can say to him that he would want to hear."

She turned a wide-eyed gaze on him. "Really, Kier? You're choosing her over me? Over us?"

He sighed, a bone-deep weariness conveyed in the fine lines of his face. "There is no us, Marissa. You saw to that when you cheated on me."