Her Collateral Bride: A Lesbian Age Gap Romance

Claire

Claire was exhausted when she pulled into the first bay of

the three-car garage. She killed the engine, grabbed her purse

from the passenger seat, and stalked into the house. Her mom

had an emergency in the city that turned out to be a fight she’d

had with Claire’s sister, Gia, because Gia had cancelled on

their dinner plans last minute. It was a big deal for Claire’s

mom, and it had taken hours to calm her down.

She was mentally wrung out from listening to her mom’s

ranting and crying and stomping around the room for the past

three hours. If only Gia could be more responsible. She was

thirty-two, but she acted like she was eighteen, flitting around

from guy to guy, spending more than her share of the family

money, always so ready to ask everyone to bail her out. Claire

had a solution for it. Cut Gia off. Her mom wouldn’t hear of it.

It was nearly nine and she was ready to crawl into bed, shut

off the light, and forget the day had happened. Forgetting.

She’d been getting good at that. Her ability to jam all her

feelings and emotions into tiny, tight boxes and keep the lid on

them had served her well over the past few days. Snake was

better and he’d taken Haley to her classes again on Monday

and Claire assumed today as well. She hadn’t been home, and

when she’d left to drive to her mom’s, Haley still wasn’t back.

She trusted Snake, and he hadn’t texted about there being an

emergency, so Claire assumed Haley was late at the college.

She told herself she didn’t care, but she knew that was a lie.

She’d been in agony all weekend, listening to Haley play

that damned piano. She was practicing, or maybe she was just

playing whatever she liked, but the sound carried all over the

house. Haley played like the angel she was, but she could also