Hothouse Flower (Calloway Sisters 2)

Danger. That is alluring. And it’s what partially drew us together in the first place.

I realize, right now, that this is the beginning of something new.

RYKE MEADOWS

Lo raises his arms as we walk down the hallway towards him. “I called you ten times. What the hell were you doing?”

I point to Daisy beside me, a normal amount of distance between us even though I’d rather be back in the stairwell, with her wrapped in my arms. “I was trying to find this one. She wasn’t in her room.”

“I went for a vending machine run,” she says, masking the lie with a bright, overwhelmingly beautiful smile.

Lo relaxes some. He wears a backwards baseball cap, looking like a fucking ‘90s kid. But it’s partly to disguise himself from people, not that it’s doing a good job. He has striking features that bring attention, even among male models.

“So you came to check up on me?” Daisy asks with an even larger smile, bouncing on her feet as we stop by her hotel door. She looks to the other person next to my brother.

Two inches taller stands Connor Cobalt.

We’re the only ones who hopped on Connor’s company jet.

And it’s a new situation that none of us are used to—the three of us alone with Daisy. Usually it’s Lily, not the youngest, wildest Calloway with us.

“Yeah,” Lo says. “How are you doing?”

“Better.” She fits a strand of hair behind her ear.

Daisy looks fucking terrible. And I don’t say anything about it, but I think we all can tell that she hasn’t been sleeping. She’s really fucking pale, her body frailer, and all I want to do is hold her and tuck her into bed. I wear my concern outwardly, and I don’t give a shit if someone hounds me for it. I’m fucking concerned, and I’m going to stay that way.

“Right…” My brother says, not believing her at all as he scrutinizes her features.

I asked Lo to come along. I’ve been so fucking worried about his state of mind that it’d be just as hard leaving him as it was leaving Daisy.

But the tension builds in the room because we all know his feelings about my friendship with her. Now that Daisy and I have moved beyond that title, the lie weighs heavy on my chest.

Lies.

I’m used to being wound tight by them, and the guilt will come later. It always does.

“Bad news,” Lo says, turning to me. “Connor fucked up.”

I let out a short laugh. “I never thought I’d hear those magic fucking words.”

“So much of what you just said, I hate,” Connor tells me causally, as though he doesn’t really care, but I see that he does when his lips twitch.

Magic—Connor fucking hates magic.

He also hates being wrong. “What’d you do?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Connor says. “Which is why I didn’t fuck up.”

“He forgot to book a hotel room,” Lo explains. “And with the Rugby World Cup happening in Paris this weekend, plus Fashion Week, there’s nothing here or close by available.”

Fuck. “How’d you forget to do something?” I ask Connor, cringing the moment I give him that much credit. But honestly, he has a photographic memory. He has charts and alerts and fucking notes everywhere to remind him of things too.

“Not that it’s any of your business—I’m having a fight with my wife,” he says. “My mind was somewhere else.” He’s still fighting with her?

“Is she okay?” Daisy asks, pulling her phone out of her pocket to text Rose.

“She’s how she normally is,” Connor says vaguely.

“Bitchy,” Lo clarifies. “High-strung, obsessive compulsive.” He smiles. “God, I’m so glad she didn’t come.”

Connor’s eyebrow arches. “I’m starting to be thankful too. Truthfully, I’m not in the mood to handle two five-year-olds.” He pauses. “And in case you didn’t catch that, I was referring to her and you.”

Lo laughs, not taking the insult to heart. See—that shit is fucking annoying. If I said that to Lo, he’d give me the cold shoulder. But for Connor, he can say whatever he wants in this mellow, chill way and get any reprieve from my brother.

It irritates me so much that I turn to Daisy and hold out my hand. “Your key card.” She takes it out of her pocket and passes it to me. I unlock the door, hearing their conversation continue without me really in it.

Daisy asks, “She’s not texting me back. Should I call her?”

“No,” Connor says as I walk into Daisy’s room. They follow close behind.

She has a chair propped underneath the handle of her bathroom door. I set it back on four legs before any of the guys notice and ask questions.

“I’m worried though,” Daisy says. “She usually answers me within the second.”

“Don’t take offense to this,” he begins. “You’re younger than Rose by seven years, and while I don’t take that much stock in ages, she still feels weak if you console her. In Rose’s mind, that’s her job.”

“But you can console her?” Daisy asks.

“I’m her husband, her equal.”

I can sense Daisy reading into that last word. Her shoulders fall at the idea of not being equal to her sister, at being less somehow.

“Hey,” I nod to Daisy and shake my head at her. “Don’t overanalyze what he’s fucking saying.”

She barely looks at me. Then she asks Connor, “If it’s her job to console me, why isn’t she here?”

This shadowed anger passes through his features. “She’s challenging me.” Connor stuffs his hands in his black slacks. “She wants me to figure out whatever’s been upsetting her, and she’ll do anything to beat me.”

“I thought she said that she had meetings all week,” Lo says with a frown.

“Maybe she does.” Connor stuffs his hands in his black slacks. “But Rose would drop any meeting for her sisters. She should be here. She would be here otherwise. But she wants to win, and winning means putting an ocean between us.” Their relationship is so fucking weird.

“What do you think she’s hiding?” Lo asks.

“If I knew, the game would be over and she’d be here,” Connor says easily.

“Maybe I can get it out of her,” Daisy offers.

“Unlikely,” Connor says. “Lily is probably the only one who knows.” Even though Connor is being honest—that Daisy isn’t the sister Rose would turn to for anything—it still hurts her. She tucks her hair behind her ear again and then disappears into the bathroom.

Connor notices her quick exit.

I take a step towards him

and lower my voice. “I swear to fucking God, you need to work on your tact around Daisy.”

“First off, don’t swear to God around me. He’s not listening when I’m in the room. And secondly, I thought she could handle it. I’m misreading a lot of things today. I admit that.” He clenches his teeth, something he rarely does.

“If you need to go home, go home,” I tell Connor.

Lo crosses his arms. “But Lily is there with Rose, so whatever she’s going through, you know her sister will take care of her.”

Lily had to stay back because she has class at Princeton, the only one of us that’s still in college.

And I can tell Lo wants Connor to be here for the duration of the trip. We’re starting our drive to California after this. If Connor bails now, he won’t be coming with us.

“If you go back home,” I say, “Rose isn’t going to tell you regardless.”

Connor nods. “It’s better if I’m here. We’d tear each other apart if we were together right now.”

After a couple minutes of setting down our bags and getting a look around the hotel room, Daisy slips out of the bathroom in pajama shorts and a tank top, her hair still in a high bun. She doesn’t appear upset anymore. While my brother bends down to his bag, digging through a pocket, she approaches me with a coy smile that lifts the corner of her lips.

I remember those soft pink lips on mine, my tongue in her mouth. It seems like a fucking dream. My eyes flicker to my brother, still searching through his bag.

I run a hand through my hair, suppressing that image. While I stand in the middle of the room, she comes close. I watch her carefully as she stops only an inch away. I look down at her.

She whispers softly, “Did you bring my birth control?”

Her eyes flit to my brother for a second, but his back is turned to us. I try not to worry about him right now.

“You willing to gain five fucking pounds by taking it now?” I ask her in the same hushed voice.

She nods, and her breath shallows. She’s not wearing a bra—she rarely does—but her nipples harden, visible with the form-fitting top. I struggle to stop thinking about taking it in my mouth, my tongue at work. I know we just had our first kiss, but I want to do so many things to her, with her. One of the reasons why I’m glad we’re not telling anyone—it forces us to go slow.