The Stocking Was Hung(27)

I just want one look at her. Once peek at her ass in those black leggings she slipped on when we got home from the mall that left nothing to the imagination. Damn, that ass. Such a fine, fine ass.

“Stop picturing my sister naked and focus,” Nicholas scolds, pointing his bottle at me. “What are your intentions with Leon?”

I raise an eyebrow at his question and take a drink of my own beer to give me a minute to process my thoughts. I don’t think Noel would appreciate it if I told him to f*ck off. I’ve resorted to saying WWLD in my head each time Nicholas grilled me in the house tour yesterday. What Would Logan Do?

Right now, I don’t really give a f*ck what that dumb-shit would do. He’s not here and I am.

“What do you care about my intentions? Seems to me like all you care about is picking on your sister,” I snap back.

Nicholas sets his bottle down, crosses his arms over his chest, and leans his chair back on two legs. “Not true. Leon just makes it too easy because she never defends herself.”

“Not a good enough reason to make her feel like shit all the time,” I scoff.

He shrugs. “You’ve got family, you know how it is. We tease, we nitpick, but we still love each other at the end of the day.”

His eyes bore into mine like he knows damn well I don’t have a family and it makes me uncomfortable. I just nod my head in agreement, acting like I know everything there is to know about loving families.

“How much money do you make a year?”

My head jerks at the sudden change in topics and I try to push back thoughts of Noel standing in her bedroom wearing nothing but scotch tape, trying to remember what the f*ck I said when he asked this same question yesterday.

“Um, like three-hundred K.”

It makes me physically ill to spit that out, knowing Noel had it made with this guy. I barely make just over a tenth of that with the military.

“Right, and how many clients do you have as a fancy money manager?” Nicholas quickly asks next.

“Uh, seventy-four.”

“Aren’t you an investment banker, not a money manager?” he asks casually.

I rerun his previous question through my head and realize my slip-up.

Son of a mother f*cking bitch!

“It’s pretty much the same thing,” I tell him stupidly, not really knowing or giving a f*ck if that’s true.

The feet of Nicholas’s chair drop back down to the kitchen floor with a thud and he smacks his palms on the top of the table.

“Alright, I can’t take this shit anymore. I know you’re not Logan,” he tells me with a shake of his head.

My mouth drops open as he pushes his chair out from the table, gets up and walks over the fridge, grabbing two more beers. He silently pops the tops off using the magnetic bottle opener stuck to the front of the fridge in the shape of a candy cane, before waltzing back over to the table and sliding one of the beers across it to me. As he sits back down in his chair, he takes a drink of his beer and then casually sets the bottle down on the table. Meanwhile, I’m still sitting here with my mouth open, the beer I’ve already drank curdling in my stomach while I try and quickly come up with a defense for what he just said.

“Breathe, dude, I’m not going to kick your ass or go running to my parents,” Nicholas snickers.

“Right, like you could kick my ass. I’d mop the floor with you,” I mutter, the subtle threat the only words I can come up with as I wonder how in the f*ck he knows I’m not Logan. It was the lame excuse for my little southern accent, wasn’t it? It’s not my f*cking fault almost my entire platoon is filled with Texans and I spent the last year-and-a-half listening to them twang all their damn words. It rubbed off, dammit.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. If I’m not Logan, then who the hell am I?” I ask, turning it back around on him so I don’t get a headache from thinking about this shit.

“That’s what I’d like to know, because you sure as hell are NOT Logan Masters. I’ve Facetimed with that douche and you, my friend, are not him.”

Oh, shit. Oh, holy shit f*ck damn.

“What? Does Noel know this? Why the f*ck haven’t you said something before now?” I ask in annoyance.

“Nope, she has no clue. I Facetimed her one time about three months ago and she was in the shower. Dip shit picked up her phone and talked my ear off about how much money he made that month,” Nicholas says with a grimace. “Seriously, all he did was spend fifteen minutes talking about his bank account and what hair products he uses. Even if I hadn’t seen that guy’s face before, I would have known the minute you opened your mouth and didn’t prattle on and on about yourself.”

I don’t even know what to say at this point. So, Nicholas knows, but at least it’s not because I slipped up somehow. He’s seen dumb-shit before and knew what he looked like. As long as I can get him to keep his damn mouth shut until after Christmas, Noel should be good and won’t have to worry about ruining the holiday for her family.

“You can’t say anything, man. She doesn’t want your parents to know.”

“Know what? Obviously she broke up with that putz and convinced you, whoever you are, to pretend to be him so my mother wouldn’t annoy her about settling down,” he says. “Which, by the way, is pointless. Our mother won’t shut up until Leon is wearing a white dress and marching down the aisle. And even then she’ll still nag her about standing up straight and making sure to keep her husband happy.”