Shane (Mallick Brothers 1)

Especially because there wasn’t much I could talk about. My past, pretty much from birth until a couple weeks before I started at Fee’s place, was pretty much off-limits.

Maybe it was good that I had some time to freak out. That gave me the chance to come up with ways to tell the partial truth in a clever enough way that it wouldn’t come across as part false.

It wasn’t exactly a great way to approach a date, but it was the only option I had.

My past had to stay in my past.

If I tried to let even the story of it leak into my present, yeah, I figured it would come charging back in and would no longer be my past anymore.

That, well, it wasn’t an option.

Because if I lived through that happening, I would live to regret it.

Living, that is.

I’d be made to be really, really sorry that I still had breath in my lungs.

There wasn’t even a question about that.

So I had just under three days to figure out how to become a really good liar.EIGHTLeaSaturday morning meant waking up tired because I didn’t sleep well, then drowning the tiredness in enough coffee to make a college kid cramming for finals cringe. Then I fumbled around my apartment unsure what I was supposed to do with the whole of my day. Normally, I’d just veg out for a while then run errands. But, nerves like a live wire inside, I didn’t feel up to going in and out of stores. Instead, I took every last item of clothing out of my closet and hemmed and hawed exactly how dressed up I was supposed to get for the date.

It was around three when I heard a knock at my door, immediately making my heart fly into my throat until I reminded myself that none of the ghosts from my past would knock gently; they would tear down the fucking door.

I moved through my apartment a little tentatively, sure it was one of two people. One, Barney. But he usually announced himself when he knocked. Or, possibly, it was Shane. And I had an irrational surge of insecurity and indignation at that. He wasn’t supposed to show up when I still had half-up, half-down hair and yesterday’s smudged eyeliner that didn’t want to come off thanks to way too much setting spray. He was supposed to see me all dolled up at five to eight and not a freaking minute before then.

“My arms are breaking out here!” Fee’s voice called through the door, making me jerk back, a slow and confused smile toying at my lips.

“Fiona?” I asked, slipping the locks and pulling open the door.

And, sure enough, there she was. Her arms were breaking because I was pretty sure she had the entirety of her wardrobe in her hands along with a giant rolling suitcase on the floor beside her. “So I heard that you have a date tonight,” she said with a sly smile.

“Word travels fast in this town,” I said, reaching for the rolling bag as she moved into my apartment.

“In this family,” she corrected. “I didn’t, however, get the details. Hunter said it was none of my business. But, well, when does any self-respecting woman ever settle for an answer like that?” she asked, dumping all of the clothes on the pile I already had on my bed. “The problem is, the Mallick men are stubborn and stick together in shit like this so I left Hunt with the girls and came to the source.”

“You don’t watch the cameras at work at all, do you?”

She turned back to me from where she had been making a beeline for my fridge. “The cameras?”

“Yeah, I figured you would have been all over it when you saw Shane show up a couple nights ago.”

To that, her smile went a little wicked as she pushed her long beach-wavy blonde hair behind her shoulders. “Shane came to work? Did you guys do it on the desk or something?”

I snorted. “Um, no. We went somewhere without cameras.”

“Come on. Details,” she demanded, going back to my fridge. “How old is this Chinese?” she asked, reaching for the containers.

“Last night.”

“Perfect. You can’t have a girls day without shitty food. I mean, that’s what I hear anyway. I haven’t had any girl friends before.”

“I know the feeling,” I agreed. I had a few casual female acquaintances, but my friends were generally of the masculine variety.

“I think girls like us have a hard time with friendships in general. But it’s even harder with women. We’re…”

“Prickly?” I supplied, making her head jerk to face me, lips parted a little, brows drawn together.

“Did Shane tell you about that?”

“About what?”

“About the prickly thing with me and Hunter.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head, having no clue what she was referring to.