Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 100277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Whatever he saw in my face made him clear his throat. “Gigi, why didn’t you bring the intern you’re banging to dinner?”
Hugo choked on the food he’d just put in his mouth.
“Rafe,” Pippa scolded, shooting her daughter a meaningful look.
Charmaine stared between them, confused. “What does ‘banging’ mean?”
Rafe had the decency to look sheepish as he lied and said it was a form of dancing. That knot in my chest eased and if he’d looked at me in that moment, he might have seen more than gratitude in my gaze.
Gigi glowered at her brother. “You’re awful.”
He grinned at her, a slight dimple I’d never noticed before creasing his left cheek, and an explosion of tingles awoke between my legs.
Whoa.
The man had the sexiest smile ever. Of course he did. Maybe that was why he didn’t smile a lot, because of its arousing effect? Or he was just a grumpy bastard. One or the other.
“What intern?” Greg’s tone was light but his expression was rigid.
“He’s legal,” she assured her father, shooting Rafe another death glare. “He’s twenty-three and it’s nothing. That’s why I didn’t bring him to dinner. But thanks.”
Rafe’s lips twitched with laughter before he mouthed I’m sorry.
“You owe me,” she muttered back before stabbing her salad with her fork as if she was imagining stabbing Rafe instead.
“If it isn’t serious, then I suggest you end it.” Jen gave her daughter a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Life is too short to be fooling around.”
Gigi cut her brother another dark look.
“Although those relationships can certainly lead to more. Who knows?” I attempted to save her.
“Yes.” Jen considered this and then asked me, “Have your parents been married long?”
Rafe relaxed back in his seat, but his biceps seemed to deliberately brush mine as if reminding me he was there.
“They’re not married.”
“No?” Jen was visibly perturbed. “Why not?”
“They believe that marriage and monogamy are the foolish trappings of an unimaginative, delusional, and uptight hierarchal society.” I said the words by heart; I’d heard them so many times. “They’re devoted to each other, but they also had several lovers when I was growing up. I called them my aunts and uncles.” I added the last because it was true, but also because I enjoyed people’s reactions to this facet of our family history.
Utter silence.
That was the reaction at the Whitman family dinner.
Jen peered at me, and I could tell I’d lost her. Was I like my parents? Would I insist her darling son share me with other men? She gave Rafe a pointed look and I could almost hear her telling him No, she will not do.
And for some reason, that knot in my chest made me agitated enough to add fuel to the fire. “Oh, I think more and more people are coming around to that way of thinking. My three best friends are in a polyamorous relationship.”
More silence and gaping awkwardly at each other.
“What’s a polmoros relationship?” Charmaine asked, mispronouncing the word.
And I blanched, having forgotten an eight-year-old was at the table. I gave Pippa an apologetic look.
She gave me a strained it’s okay smile and distracted Charmaine with a quiet question of her own.
It was later, when Pippa had taken Charmaine for a walk around the grounds after dinner and the rest of us had moved down a terrace to a large comfortable outdoor corner sofa and chairs, that Hugo peered at me. “Your friends are really in a polyamorous relationship? A functioning one?”
I heard the judgment in his voice and stiffened. “Yes. And I don’t know any three people who are happier.”
“I hope you don’t think you’ll be dragging my brother into a situation like that?”
“Hugo,” Greg admonished.
Gigi threw a peanut at him.
Jen remained silent, watching.
Rafe . . . well, Rafe shocked me once more.
Sitting next to me on the sofa, he shifted close enough that our bodies pressed together, the heat of him licking up my side as he slid his arm around my shoulders and drew me against him. “Oh, Star already knows I’m not a man who shares.”
And while my reaction appalled the feminist in me, my cavewoman brain kicked in and I felt an aroused squeeze low in my belly at the claiming.
Oh boy.
At that moment, it started to dawn on me that I was in trouble and couldn’t forget it was all pretend between us.
Chapter Nine
The Whitmans bid me a friendly goodbye, but it was far less warm than my reception, except for Gigi, who took my hands in hers. “Please come back. You’re the most interesting person anyone has brought home in a while. I think you’re going to be so good for Rafe.”
Guilt flared to life. These were nice people. Hugo was kind of an ass, but I had a feeling he was just doing the overprotective big brother thing. Greg was difficult to read, but Jen, I think, just knew what she wanted for her son, and someone like me wasn’t it. That made her an overprotective mom, and that was better than the mom I had. Now that I’d met Rafe’s family, it felt wrong to deceive them.