Needing Her (From Ashes #1.5)(10)

Ha. Win.

“Ask her where she was yesterday,” Dylan prompted, and both Sam and Craig gave me a suspicious glare.

“Where were you?” Craig asked.

“I went shopping.”

“Yeah,” Dylan interjected, “but she wasn’t at the mall, and won’t say where she was.”

Sam snatched the phone back out of my hand, and Craig caged me in the way Dylan had earlier. “Who are you hiding from us?”

“What’s your password?”

“Screw all of you! I’m not giving you my password. I told you what I was doing yesterday, and I don’t have a boyfriend!”

“You know we’re going to find out, Maci, you might as well just tell us now so we can get this over with.”

“Craig, there’s nothing to tell!”

“Either we give your boyfriend the message now, or he lives in fear of when we find him. Your choice.”

“Jesus Christ! There’s no boyfriend, no message needs to be delivered.” God! How long had I been hooking up with Bryce and I’d never had to deal with this, but one day of pranking Connor, and all hell breaks loose with my brothers.

“Maci—”

“Daddy!” I yelled, and let a slow, coy smile spread across my face when all four of my brothers froze. “That’s right, bitches. I just used the ‘daddy’ card.”

They all stood and crossed their arms over their chests as they waited for what would come next. Four pairs of gray eyes were plotting another intervention, or my “boyfriend’s” death. A couple seconds later, loud thuds could be heard coming down the hall until my dad appeared in my office.

“Boys, what in the hell is going on in here?” his deep voice boomed, and I couldn’t help but smile when all four of them subtly flinched.

“Maci has a boyfriend,” Craig answered for them.

Dad raised a graying eyebrow; but before he could respond, I pointed at Craig and said, “Now that’s a damn dirty lie. They’re harassing me because they think I have a boyfriend.”

“But you don’t?”

“Nope.”

He studied me for a second before turning around to go back to the hall. “If she says she doesn’t have one, then she doesn’t. In my office, boys.”

The boys all stood there glaring at me until Dad’s footsteps could no longer be heard. One by one, they all turned and began leaving. When only Dylan was left, he grabbed a box of paper clips off my desk, opened it up, and threw the contents at me.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m gonna figure out who it is, brat,” he called over his shoulder as he retreated down the hall.

I shook out my shirt and listened as more paper clips hit the floor. “Real mature.”

Looking at the mess on the ground and under my desk, I sighed and lazily fell out of my chair to the floor to begin picking them all up. Crawling on my hands and knees under the desk to grab the dozens that had scattered there, I was just leaning back when I heard a soft laugh and froze.

“Do I want to know why you’re down there?”

I jolted up and back, but misjudged the distance and ended up smacking my head on the corner of the desk. My hands flew up to hold my head, causing me to drop all the paper clips I’d just spent minutes on picking up. When I went to sit back on my heels, I rocked back too far and kept going, falling into my chair, which rolled to the side, leaving me to hit my head on the wall as I fell back.

“Son of a bitch, that f*cking hurt! Ow, ow, ow! Shit,” I hissed when I was fully, and safely, on the ground. “You don’t scare someone who’s under a desk, you motherf*cker.”

“I’ve always loved that mouth of yours.”

My eyes shot open at the admission, and I found intense, blue eyes directly above my face. I’d officially stopped breathing. What’d he say?

Connor’s face fell before he backed up and sat next to me. “Jesus, you hit your head that hard? I meant the way you can’t finish a sentence without swearing.”

And let’s bring back the insecurities from last night. There’s nothing about me that Connor Green finds appealing. Well, except the fact that I have lady bits. The anger and humiliation I’d felt last night came flooding back and I glared up at the ceiling.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” I bit out. “Why are you here?”

He breathed heavily through his nose and drummed his fingers on the floor. “I came to check on you.”

“Well . . . looks like you did a helluva lot of good with the checkup.”

“It’s not my fault you’re prone to hurt yourself on every surface available and enjoy being on your back . . .” he trailed off.

“Fuck off, Connor. I don’t need your shit today.”

“Where were you when I came over this morning?”

“Not in my apartment . . . ?”

A low growl built up in the back of his throat as he leaned back over me. “You knew I was coming over. I thought you were sleeping, so I let you sleep until I was done cleaning that shit up. By then, you should’ve been getting ready to leave for work. I went to wake you up, and surprise, surprise . . . no Maci. Where were you?”

“Oh, so I’m back to being Maci again?” When Connor just looked at me confused, I rolled my eyes and looked past his head at the ceiling. “Thought I was Mini last night.”