Sleeping with the Enemy (An Enemies to Lovers Collection)

CHAPTER 12

Wilder

I know Esme pulled the friends’ thing out of her ass—her albeit fine ass—and she did it just to spite me and make my life difficult because she hasn’t trained herself out of it. I also know it’s going to take more than a suspiciously expensive gift that wasn’t really a gift because she’s determined to pay me back for it, to change her mind. Surprisingly, she somehow pulls it off.

While I’m outside grilling steaks on a barbeque that I should have also replaced on my morning shopping spree, she’s inside with her two girlfriends. I heard them arrive, but I haven’t gone inside to be formally introduced.

I’m not sure if they’ll devour me or like me, but I’m not entirely sure I want to be liked. I mean, I get why Esme was suspicious about the sewing machine. Instead of the best of the best, I should have bought a run-of-the-mill, slightly above-average machine. I can see how it’s like handing someone the keys to a car that costs more than their house, then telling them it’s not at all suspicious, and you’re definitely not doing something shady to get the cash.

Esme doesn’t know me from a toad in the road.

God, I’m an idiot. No wonder she thinks I’m being too nice. I am being too nice. I’m trying to do the right thing, but shit’s getting desperate, and I’m acting desperate. I wish Silas would have warned me. I guess he kind of tried, but still. He didn’t tell me that his great-granddaughter had a heart of diamond-plated titanium coated with diamond dust and diamond skin and extra diamonds. Oh, and a layer of bulletproof glass.

Thank you to all the Chads who paved the road before me. Gosh, is that toy car really worth it?

That thought makes me think about the collection of toy cars waiting for me at home. And the life in general that I have there. I miss my family, I miss my friends, and I miss going to work every day. The online stuff just isn’t cutting it. Besides, I don’t want to be weird and do the screen thing with my parents after I basically just got here. I’m a grown man, but this isn’t easy on me.

I wasn’t even thinking about that when I bought the sewing machine. In reality, I was thinking about how happy and surprised Esme would be. I was thinking about those wild green eyes and how they’d light up. I swear I wasn’t thinking with Mr. Happy in my pants. I was trying to do something nice, something good. Except it was too nice and too good. I swear I’m a smart guy, except, apparently, when it comes to Esme.

When it comes to her, I don’t know what I am. I can get through this dinner, but I don’t know if I can keep it up for the next six months. Esme is even tougher than my sisters were on me when we were growing up, and man, it’s a miracle I lived to see adulthood with them in the house.

When the steaks are done, I pull them off the barbeque and kill the propane. Then I slide open the patio door—and by slide, I mean I basically wrestle the thing into submission because it’s so old and warped that it doesn’t do much budging—and angle my huge body through the tiny crack.

“Oohhhh! Beefsteaks!”

That sweet, feminine voice belongs to a tall, shapely woman with bright pink hair curled up into a vintage style to match a white sweater and a pink skirt with a cat outline on the front. She has frilly white socks on and pink shoes with buckles, which somehow go with her slightly over-the-top pink look.

However, she’s not looking at the steaks when she says it. Instead, she’s looking at my butt, even though I’m angled away. She’s literally straining to the side to get a glimpse.

“Rump roast. Looks delicious. I like it.” She unashamedly puts that out there, just in case I had any doubts about what she really meant.

Before I can blink, Esme strides into the dining room, followed by a petite woman with honey-colored hair. I’d call her plain, but that’s old school and not cool, and she isn’t really. Plain, that is. I can tell she’s shy and doesn’t wear anything that would draw attention to herself, but she’s still pretty in a very understated way. The other friend is loud, and I don’t just mean her hair or the declarations about my derriere.

“Let’s just eat,” Esme mutters.

She’s mortified by her friend, but I can also tell she’s used to it based on the resigned look she gives both women. Whatever. She asked them over, so it’s her funeral. If they want to check out my bottom dollar or just my bottom line—haha—they can go right ahead.