Playing It Safe(22)

“Girlie, if you weren’t nine years old—”

“Ten,” she cuts in.

“Okay, okay, if you weren’t almost ten years old, I’d say let’s go grab a drink and hang out this weekend.”

Josie’s eyes go wide in awe. “Really?”

“Totally. I’ve had more fun with you than I’ve had in a looong time. Maybe you can be my new best friend. What do you say?”

Her brow furrows in confusion when she asks, “Don’t you have a best friend?”

“I do, but she moved away and left me all alone and bored.”

Josie starts to laugh as she puts out her hand for me to shake on it. “Deal.”

“Deal,” I say immediately after her with a matching grin.

“This can’t be good,” Alex groans, making his way back into the kitchen where we’re still sitting. “What are you two shaking on?”

“Julia just asked me to be her new best friend,” she explains excitedly.

He stops on the opposite side of the kitchen island and plants both his hands on it before giving me a funny look. “Don’t you have a best friend?”

I open my mouth, but Josie’s voice fills the room first. “She said she moved and left her all alone and bored. And I’m going to be her new best friend that she’s going to take out this weekend for a drink and to hang out.”

“Did she? I wonder what your mom is going to say about that when she gets here in five minutes to pick you up,” he says with an amused chuckle.

Josie turns in her seat to face me. “Oh my gosh, you’re going to love my mom! She’s super cool like you.”

See what I mean? This kid is all kinds of awesome.

“So long as we don’t tell her about the going out for a drink part, I’m sure we’ll get along fine. That reminds me, Alex, did you tell her all about this? The party, I mean.”

He smirks. “You let me worry about my sister.”

I start to power down my iPad and put away my notepad, feeling uncomfortable from the curious look on Alex’s face while he watched my exchange with Josie about being best friends. Plus, his sister is on her way here to pick up Josie, and that’s definitely my cue to start getting out of here myself. The last thing I want is to be sized up by the big sister who, given all the information I’ve come to know about her, has a pretty big say in Alex’s personal life. What I wouldn’t give to know what she has to say about Marisa. Dammit, I should have asked Josie about it when I had the chance. I’m sure she would have been more than happy to give up that intel if I had asked her in a roundabout way.

As if on cue, I hear the front door slam shut, and I look over in that direction to see what could only be Alex’s sister walking toward us. She’s tall, curvy, and has long, naturally wavy dark blond hair that I would kill for. She’s dressed in a pair of fitted dark-wash jeans, a vintage Rolling Stones concert T-shirt, and a pair of black Havaianas—I like this chick already.

Josie goes flying off of her stool and wraps her arms around her mother’s waist before she’s able to reach the kitchen. It’s so fast that she nearly knocks the wind right out of her.


“Mom, I want you to meet someone,” she demands.

She walks her mother over to me and says, “Mom, this is Julia, Uncle Alex’s friend, and she’s going to throw me the best birthday party ever!”

“Hi, I’m Vanessa, it’s nice to finally meet you. What’s this about a party?”

My face must look as confused as I feel by her saying the word “finally,” but I extend my hand anyway because I wasn’t raised in a barn.

Her blue eyes roam over me quickly but not in an “I’m better than you” way. More like a “so this is Julia” kind of way. Which actually isn’t much better either, just less invasive, and it only serves to make me think she knows more about me than the other way around. Which, in turn, leads me to believe Alex has told her about me. What the hell would he tell her about me?

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I say, “and you’ll have to ask Alex since he’s the responsible party.”

Vanessa smiles and sneaks a peek at her brother, who is standing on the other side of the kitchen island with an impish grin still on his face.

“Alex,” she warns, “what did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“Um, maybe I should leave you two to discuss this party thing.” I start to stand up and make a dash for it.

“Julia, stay put,” Alex commands while keeping his eyes on his sister. “I’m having a party for Josie here at my house for her birthday.”

“You’re what?”

“Seriously, guys,” I try to say as unobtrusively as possible. “I’ll just be going now.”

Alex points to the stool I was just sitting on and directs me to sit down again. What’s scary is that I don’t even hesitate; I sit my ass back down. Vanessa and Alex are now going back and forth about how he spoils Josie something stupid while Josie is watching them closely.

Meanwhile, I’m thinking about how he grinned at me when I followed his command to sit back down. My heart skipped a beat or two, and my pulse started to race just from pleasing him. Does that make me a sub? You know, like those women who get off on men telling them what to do inside and outside the bedroom? I may be jumping the gun, but the thought of pleasing Alex—in any way, shape, or form, inside, outside, on the couch, against the wall, on this countertop—gets me really hot.