I grabbed the duffel and looked at Rosie. “The movers should be here soon. They’ll put the furniture in storage.” Another way I planned to hedge my bets. “The nurse will be waiting for you at the new apartment. I arranged for a taxi to pick you up in an hour. Oh, and your medicine is in your backpack.” I jerked my chin to the bag I’d packed for her.

Rosie offered another eye roll and threw a pillow in my direction. I dodged it.

“Try not to piss the nurse off,” I suggested with a straight face.

“Sorry. I piss everyone off. It’s the way I’m wired.” She shrugged helplessly.

“Don’t forget to take your medicine, and there’s a list of restaurants that deliver in your backpack. I put some cash in your wallet, too.”

“Jesus, dude. Thank God you’re not trying to wipe my ass.”

Rosie could mock me all she wanted. I didn’t care if I annoyed her.

But she was going to be okay.

And I was going to see our parents. It’d been two years. Lord, I’d missed them.

“Please tell Mama I got fat and that I’m dating a forty-year-old biker who goes by the name Rat.” Rosie sniffled, patting her nose with the wad of toilet paper.

“Okay. That will soften the blow when I tell her I’m knocked up with twins and have no idea who the father is.”

Rosie giggled, coughed and slapped her hand over her mouth, feigning an oops. “I think Mama would like that, actually.” She blew a strand of her toffee-colored hair out of her eyes. “Have fun, okay?”

“Hey, it’s Vicious. Fun is his middle name.”

“No, honey. Asshole is his middle name.”

We both laughed.

I grabbed the strap of my duffle and descended the stairs, smiling to myself. I could do this. I could survive a business trip with Vicious without letting him into my pants, and more importantly—my heart. I just had to keep my eyes on the prize.

The money. The means. The key to financial freedom.

How hard could that be?

I met him at the airport.

He wore a long dark-gray pea coat, charcoal slacks, a cashmere sweater, and his usual scowl. He was standing outside, the freezing New York weather staining his cheekbones a dark shade of pink while he puffed on a blunt.

On the sidewalk of the airport.

I was a little surprised to see he was still smoking weed. He had when we were teenagers, but he was twenty-eight now, a workaholic, and a control freak. Granted, he’d always been a control freak. He just had less things to control when we were kids.

I jogged the short distance from the limo to him, rubbing my arms against the cold. I’d thrown an army jacket on over my thin pink sweater, but my thrift shop jacket didn’t stand a chance against December on the East Coast. I stopped a few feet from him and started swaying from side to side to warm up. He noticed, but didn’t offer his coat.

“You’re getting a little old for that,” I remarked, slanting my eyes to his joint.

“I’ll remember that next time I give two shits about what you think.” He blew a cloud of smoke into the air.

I knew that the HotHoles had always viewed me as the naïve goody-two-shoes girl from the South. They weren’t wrong. Even New York couldn’t harden me all the way. I’d still never smoked weed or tried any other type of drug. I still didn’t use words like “fuck.” I still blushed and looked away when people talked about sex in an explicit way.

“You could get arrested,” I continued, nagging. Not that I particularly cared. I just knew it annoyed him, and I liked irritating him. It gave me the false notion that I had some kind of control over him.

“So can you,” he replied.

“Get arrested?” I asked. “For what? Standing next to an ass?”

He stubbed out his blunt against a garbage can, his fingers so white they were almost blue, and flicked the butt to the sidewalk. A luggage cart wheeled by and crushed the remains of the weed into the concrete. Vicious leaned down toward me, and I held my breath, my lungs burning, anything to protect me from his addictive scent.

“If I answer your question,” he said, his body close, “you’ll get all feisty again. You blush every time you look directly at my face, so I’d advise against asking me about what I have in mind. Don’t tempt me, Help. I’d be happy to help you stain your pristine criminal record with a public indecency charge.”

Good. Lord.

“For a lawyer, you seem to be begging for a sexual harassment lawsuit. Why?” I rubbed my hands over my thighs. I started to remember why I’d wanted to slap him half the time when I lived so close to him.

“I’m not sure.” His thick, dark eyebrows pulled together. He headed toward the entrance of the terminal. I followed. “Maybe because I know you’ll never have the balls to go against me. To fight me, Help.”

And it was high school all over again.

I should’ve known.

After security, we turned toward the airline’s executive lounge, with me carrying my own duffel and Vicious luggageless except for a laptop bag. I tried to keep up, but he was taller and faster, and the weight of my bag was slowing me down. He didn’t like it.

Vicious glanced at my duffel before groaning and snatching it from my hand.

This wasn’t him being a gentleman. He just wanted to make sure we caught our flight.

JFK was packed with people. Snow was settling on the runways, and there were flight delays, white letters flashing on the blue electronic screens around us. The crowd was thick, the security people tired and aggravated, but still, Christmas was approaching and the air was sweet and hopeful.

Seeing my parents this time of the year would be nice, even if we weren’t going to spend the holidays together.

I glanced at Vicious. “I feel like we should set some ground rules here. I’m not going to date you, and I expect you to stop threatening men who talk to me. Floyd, for instance.”

“First of all, no one wants to date you, Help. I want to fuck you, and by the way you look at me, I know the feeling is mutual. Second, it’s my company, so I make it my business to know when my employees are porking each other in the bathroom.”

As we breezed into the executive lounge, I blushed so hard I felt as if my cheeks were going to burst into flames. He was being crass again, deliberately so.

“Third, I did you a huge favor. The guy is a piece of crap of the worst variety.” He directed us both straight to two plush recliners arranged to face one another.

We both took a seat. There was plenty of food and coffee around, even alcohol—I’d never been in an airport lounge or flown first class, so this was new to me—but neither of us opted for anything. I assumed he was used to this kind of luxury. Me, I was too stunned to make a move. It felt like entering a universe where I didn’t speak the language or know the social codes.

“Fourth, you don’t want a last name like Hanningham,” Vicious finished.

It was so ridiculous I started laughing. Actually, I might’ve also laughed because I was so nervous to board a flight headed back to Todos Santos. I wanted to see my parents but dreaded seeing anyone else.

A troubling thought stabbed at me. “Will Dean be there? Is he still living in Todos Santos?”

Vicious’s jaw twitched the way it did when he was unhappy about something. His grip on the arms of the recliner tightened.

“Dean’s in Los Angeles,” he answered, glancing at his Rolex.

I was glad I didn’t have to see my ex-boyfriend after everything that went down. I eased further into my comfortable seat, closing my eyes. I wondered if I could catch up on some sleep on the plane. I’d worked a shift at McCoy’s last night—I was hedging more bets, not willing to hand in my notice yet.

I felt his eyes on me, but he didn’t utter a word.

I liked when he watched me, and that bothered me.

And he was right about sex, and that bothered me even more.

I did want to sleep with him. It was worse than those butterflies that take flight in your chest the first moment your eyes lock on your crush. When I was around Vicious, they flew all the time. But I also knew that I was not a one-night stand kind of girl. And even though I wasn’t morally opposed to casual sex, starting something up with Vicious was an absolute no-no.

We shared a history.

I had feelings for him.

Bad feelings, good feelings…in short, too many feeling.

“Where are the rest of the guys?” I murmured, my eyes still closed.

Yesterday, I’d done my homework. I knew they were all partners in FHH, and knew the branches of their company were scattered around the world, but I didn’t know who lived where. And Dean living in Los Angeles? That was a surprise. Dean loved New York, talked about living there even when we were teenagers. It was Vicious who always preferred the glitz and plastic, the masks and pretense of Los Angeles. For a cynical person, he really seemed to hate the stark, naked honesty that was a city like Manhattan. In LA, he was another beautiful, empty mask passing for a human being.

“Dean was in New York until about two weeks ago, then I took over. I’m not sure when we’re switching back, but when it happens, I’ll go back to LA. Trent is in Chicago, and Jaime is in London.”

“You switch branches often?”