Delilah Green Doesn't Care(Bright Falls #1)(12)

The complete opposite of grown-up Claire Sutherland, if she was being honest.

She shook her head, swallowed back the last of her bourbon, and walked over to the group.

“How was your flight?” Astrid asked her stepsister.

Delilah laughed. “We don’t have to do this.”

Astrid blinked, but then her mouth tightened. “Fine. Good night. You’ll be there tomorrow?”

Delilah sighed, took another hearty swig of Astrid’s wine. “You emailed me the itinerary for the next two weeks. Three times. I know where to be.”

“I don’t know what you know.”

“See you tomorrow at noon,” Delilah said as she took one more sip.

“Oh shit,” Iris said. Even Claire tensed. Astrid made sure the week’s itinerary was burned into all of their brains, and noon was definitely not the right answer here.

Predictably, Astrid’s face contorted. “It’s ten. Ten a.m. for the brunch at Vivian’s Tearoom. Remember? Delilah, tell me you remember.”

From behind the wineglass, Delilah smiled, and Claire nearly screamed at her. She was playing Astrid like a fiddle.

“Ugh, just be there, okay?” Astrid said, snatching her drink back. A bit of red wine sloshed over the rim, spilling onto the rough wooden table.

“Sir, yes, sir,” Delilah said smoothly, then started for the door with her suitcase. She glanced at Claire once, something flaring in her eyes Claire couldn’t name. Claire lifted her chin, trying to appear completely unaffected, like she openly hit on her best friend’s sister on the regular and, of course, she knew who Delilah was the whole time. But then Delilah lifted a brow and pursed her lips as if to call bullshit, and Claire was the first one to look away.

Once Delilah was gone, she sat back down at the table and took her wine from Astrid. She wanted to chug it like water, but she still needed to drive home and she already felt a bit hazy. Bourbon and Syrah probably didn’t mix very well. She couldn’t tell if her head was spinning from the liquor or Delilah.

“So . . .” Iris said as they all settled around the table again. She had a purely evil grin on her face. “Did you get the number or not?”

“Oh, shut up,” Claire said and then gulped down the wine anyway.

“What?” Astrid said, signaling Gretchen, the server who kept everyone at the tables happy, for a third glass. “Whose number?”

“No one’s,” Claire said, widening her eyes at Iris. Astrid was already pulled tight enough to snap with the wedding—not to mention that she still had no idea that her best friends despised her future husband. She certainly didn’t need to deal with the fact that, not ten minutes ago, her wicked stepsister had gotten Claire all hot and bothered with one little whisper. If ever there was a sensitive subject in Astrid’s life, it was Delilah Green. And honestly, Claire was doing her best to forget the entire interaction as well.

Luckily, Astrid seemed to be sufficiently distracted. She leaned her elbows on the table, fingers massaging her temples. “I have a headache. She’s been here for ten minutes, and I already have a headache.”

Iris reached out and squeezed Astrid’s arm. “It’s going to be fine.”

“I don’t know what I—” She took a deep breath, followed by a sip of wine. “I don’t know what my mother was thinking, asking her to be the photographer.”

“Me neither,” Iris said, and Claire shot her a look.

“She was probably thinking that she loved Delilah’s dad,” Claire said softly. “And Delilah is . . . well, she’s . . .” She widened her eyes at Iris, silently begging for help.

“She’s . . . part of the . . . family?” Iris said slowly, her intonation tilting up at the end like it was a question.

Astrid’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. She is.” Then her back went ramrod straight and she waved a hand. “At least, that’s what my mother says, and she’s the one with the checkbook. God knows Delilah wouldn’t come without some other incentive.”

“Your mother still uses a checkbook?” Iris asked, and Claire kicked her under the table.

“You know she almost bailed?” Astrid said, ignoring Iris. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with her for weeks now, emailing, texting, leaving voice mails. I had to call her at two in the morning her time last night just to get her to talk to me.”

“So she’s a vampire,” Iris said, tipping some ice cubes into her mouth from her glass. “Explains a lot.”

“Ris,” Claire said, shooting her yet another look.

Delilah and Astrid’s sisterhood wasn’t typical. Delilah’s mother died when she was only three years old—cervical cancer, if Claire remembered correctly—and her dad married Isabel, Astrid’s mom, when she and Astrid were eight, so they’d practically grown up together.

Astrid told them that Delilah was a quiet kid from the beginning, attached to her father like a barnacle, which Claire supposed made sense. She understood single parenting. She also understood being a young girl with only one parent to rely on—it was a precarious, desperate, somewhat panic-fueled existence. But then Delilah’s dad died suddenly of an aneurysm when the girls were ten, and there were no grandparents, no aunts and uncles, so Isabel had sole custody of Delilah.