Flawed (Ethan Frost 4)

I want to dig for the truth, want to nudge her a little and see what comes out, but she’s got a hell of a poker face when she wants to. Experience—and a healthy dose of instinct—tells me I won’t get anything from her that she doesn’t want to share. At least not by asking…

So instead of prodding to find out what’s wrong, I sit at the kitchen table looking out at the never-ending blue of the ocean and help Tori pretend that everything is okay. It’s shitty and unhealthy and not the way I like to do things. But for now this is Tori’s party and the last thing I want to do is make things even more uncomfortable for her.

“Are you done?” I ask a couple of minutes later as I stand up to start clearing the table.

“You don’t have to do that,” she says, springing to her feet and reaching for the big platter in the middle of the table. “I’ve got it—”

“You cooked, I clean.” I push her gently back down in her seat. “It’s a pretty simple equation.”

“Not if you consider you’re letting me stay here, rent-free—”

“You keep bringing that up. Why is it bothering you so much? I may be paying rent, but this is Chloe’s house. You let Chloe live with you rent-free when she did her internship at Frost Industries last summer and it worked fine for both of you. So why is this such a thing with you all of a sudden? Why won’t you let her do this for you?” I set the dishes in the sink and begin rinsing them off, but I keep an eye trained on Tori’s face. She’s so hard to figure out, so hard to understand that I feel like any expression I pick up from her can only help.

“Because it doesn’t feel like her place right now. It feels like yours. It’s bad enough that I have to mooch off Chloe, but you too…It’s not okay.”

“What’s not okay? The fact that we’re trying to help you?” I stack the dishes in the dishwasher. “I don’t get it.”

“Of course you don’t get it!” she tells me as she throws her hands up in obvious exasperation. “You’re not the one who doesn’t even have a pair of shoes to her name! Staying here for convenience is one thing. Staying here because I have nowhere else to go is something else entirely. And now that I’m sleeping with you—”

She breaks off as the intercom connected with the front gate buzzes. A glance at the clock tells me it’s probably the delivery I’ve been waiting for. But since reporters are still hanging out at the end of the driveway hoping to get a glimpse of Tori, I head into the security alcove to check the video feed instead of just using the security intercom in the kitchen to open the gate.

Sure enough, a large delivery van waits at the gate and—after a brief exchange—I let him in. Then I watch the screen carefully, checking to make sure that none of the paps out there decide to try sneaking on the property through the open gate. None of them do, probably because Ethan had three paps arrested and prosecuted last year for both trespassing and criminal harassment after everything about Brandon and Chloe came out.

I’ll never be happy with anything about that situation—anything that happened to my sister as she was victimized yet again by the press—but Ethan’s precautions with her do make it easier for me to protect Tori, and for that I am grateful.

I watch as the van clears the gates, making sure that they swing closed smoothly behind it, before I head back over to the table—and Tori. “Come on,” I say once I get there, holding a hand out to her.

“Where are we going?” she asks. “Who was at the gate?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“A surprise?” She looks doubtful. “I’ll be honest, Miles, I’m not sure I can take any more surprises right now. Between the video and my father, I’m pretty much done.”

“It’s a good surprise this time,” I tell her. “I promise.”

She still looks less than impressed, but she takes my hand. Lets me pull her out of her chair and guide her toward the foyer.

r /> We get there just as the delivery guy rings the bell. “Delivery for Miles Girard,” he says, holding his electronic clipboard out to me. I sign in the box, then wait with Tori as he carries several large parcels into the house.

Once he’s finished, I give him a twenty-dollar tip then close and lock the door behind him.

“What is all this?” Tori asks, though I can tell from the look on her face that she has a pretty good idea. Each of the bags is marked by the name of the store it came from, after all.

“Why don’t you find out?” I tell her, nodding to the large gray bags from Nordstrom. “I want to go check the security cameras and make sure he gets off the property all right. I’ll be back in a second.”

It only takes a minute or two for me to watch the delivery van head back down the driveway and out the gate. From the way he turns out, it’s pretty obvious he’s nearly as annoyed with the paps as I am. Considering he almost nicks one with the bumper of his van, I’m a little sad I didn’t tip him more generously.

After making sure the gate is securely closed—and all the vultures are on the other side of it—I head back toward the foyer. But I’ve only taken a few steps out of the kitchen when I run into a pale and furious Tori.

“I certainly hope you wear a size two in women’s clothes,” she hisses as she pokes me in the chest. “Because if you bought all that for me, then we have a serious problem.”

Okay, so this is definitely not going the way I expected it to. I stare at her nonplussed for a few seconds as I try to figure out what to say. Nothing particularly impressive comes to me, so in the end I just blurt out, “I thought you liked presents.”

“Oh no,” she snaps, her finger jabbing at me. “Don’t act like what you did was as simple as buying me a present.”

“I bought you several presents.” I wrap her hand in mine, pull it away from my chest before she ends up tunneling through skin and bone straight to my heart. “Didn’t I?”

“No,” she says as she wrests her hand from mine. “Those aren’t presents. Those are charity.”