The Sister (The Boss 6)

Did she forget who she’s talking to?

I didn’t want to make her feel bad. And I didn’t want to create strain between us. Not now that I’d met Molly. But I couldn’t let it pass without comment.

“Believe me,” I said firmly. “I know what it’s like to have someone let you down.”

****

After we finished our meal, I told Sasha to have Molly meet me in the lobby in an hour. That gave Neil and me time to check in and go to our room, where I could quickly rinse the travel sweat off my body.

“You shouldn’t have done that, you know,” Neil said, raising his voice over the sound of the rainfall shower. “It wasn’t very fair to Sasha.”

“It wasn’t very fair for my dad to abandon me, but here we are.” I hummed to myself, trying not to think bad thoughts about the woman who’d been so nice to me. But she was his wife. She had to have known that I existed, right? Why hadn’t she done something about it?

“Sasha is not your father,” Neil said, my view of him slightly blurred by the fog on the shower door.

I hit the taps and stepped out, shaking water off my flimsy plastic shower cap. Neil flinched from it. I pulled it off and flicked it at him. “What, are you going to melt? And no, Sasha isn’t my father. But she was married to him. Call me naive, but I happen to think that spouses have some measure of influence over each other.”

“We don’t know the whole situation,” Neil reminded me, dropping the shower cap in the sink and grimacing at the wet spots on his shirt. “You could refrain from antagonizing her in the meantime.”

I wrapped a towel around my waist and sauntered out of the bathroom. “You think I’m taking Molly shopping to antagonize Sasha?”

Neil followed me and kept his eyes trained on the floor. “Sophie, stop trying to derail a serious conversation with…brazen toplessness. I am not going to be comfortable with any of this until you promise me that you’re not trying to get under Sasha’s skin. Or Susan’s.”

“Give me a little more credit than that, please.” I rolled my eyes. And remained brazenly topless. “I want to take Molly out to have a good time. She’s dealing with some deeply unpleasant shit. There’s nothing wrong with giving her a little escape. Plus, of the sisters I have that I have met, she seems like she’s going to be the easiest one to get along with at the moment.”

Neil pinched the bridge of his nose and squinched up his face. “There are so many possible pitfalls here, and I’m concerned that you’re not seeing any of them. Or, if you do see them, you’re choosing to ignore them.”

“I’m not going to fall into any pits.” How could I make him understand that everything he was saying had already been run as a scenario in my mind, over and over again, since before I’d even met Molly? “I haven’t ignored anything. Trust me, with my past? I have a much clearer perspective on all of this than you do.”

He looked up, his gaze halting on my tits for only a split-second. “And you’re not trying to buy Molly’s affection?”

I shrugged. “I’m already giving her a kidney. Is buying her affection really avoidable?”

“Touché.” He held up his hands in surrender.

“What are you going to do while I’m gone?” I asked, realizing for the first time that I was kind of ditching him. “Unless you want to come along?”

“No, I think you can spend our money quite well enough on your own.” Three years ago, he wouldn’t have made that joke. Now, we were comfortable enough with each other that he could. “I suppose I’ll just stay here. Maybe visit the fitness center.”

My lips quirked to the side. “You’re going to order dessert from room service and take a nap, aren’t you?”

“That’s likely,” he admitted, flopping onto the bed like a twelve-year-old and kicking up his feet as he grabbed the remote. “I’m putting a dollar amount on this shopping trip today.”

“Excuse me?” That wasn’t like Neil at all.

“I think you need a limit, to prevent you going overboard,” he said evenly. “You’ve told me, time and again, that working- and middle-class people have issues with just being handed things. You wouldn’t want to bring this girl back and offend her mother and sister by inadvertently implying they couldn’t afford to give her the things she needs.”

“Good point.” I played along, because while Neil was trying to be practical and thoughtful, I had a feeling he didn’t have a clue what an offensive amount of money was. “Okay, Mr. Moderation. How much are we allowed to spend?”

He considered. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

I dissolved into a snorting laughter fit.

“What?” he demanded, looking a bit hurt. “Is that not enough?”