PRESENT DAY
Addison's eyes pop open and she makes an expression that falls somewhere on the spectrum between surprise and horror. "What the –"
"You fainted." I don't add that she probably fainted because she looks like she could stand to get a good night's sleep and to eat a meal other than salad. I haven't seen this girl since she was seventeen, but she has to be smaller now than she was then. She feels fragile in my arms.
At least, until she starts flopping around like a fucking fish out of water.
"Why are you – " she starts, and slaps my arm, hard. "Put me down."
If it were any other time and any other person issuing the directive, I would. But because it's Addison ordering me around, I can't in good conscience listen. On principle, you know. "I don't think so."
She struggles harder, which makes me laugh. And makes her obviously angry. "You're a Neanderthal. I'm not going anywhere with you."
"You heard my father," I say. "I'm going to be your new bodyguard. Or whatever. Shit, stop squirming, or you're going to fall on your head and I'm not going to feel the least bit sorry for you when you crack your skull open on the damn ground."
"People are looking at us," she says. I'm carrying her down through the hall of whatever-the-hell building this is, and she's right. There are offices in here and someone comes to the door to gape openly at us. "I'm sure someone has called a photographer already."
"Then I guess you better get ready to smile for the cameras, sweet cheeks."
"Unless you want the story to be about how you're hooking up with your own stepsister, I suggest you put me down."
"What the hell?" Her words catch me off guard and I let go. Somehow, she manages to land with her feet underneath her, like a cat, although how she does it on those ridiculously high heels of hers boggles my damn mind. Hooking up with her? "Why would you say something stupid like that?"
I can't see her eyes. They're obscured by the hair hanging in her face as she looks away from me. The fact that I want to see her eyes, that I want to know what she's thinking, should be setting off warning bells in my brain.
Addy whirls toward me, tucking her long blonde hair behind her ear, and giving me a look. I recognize that look. That's the one she used to give me pretty much all the time when we were teenagers. She wants to throttle me.
The problem is that when she licks her lip the way she does, her tongue running over the bottom of it slowly, I swear she's doing it on purpose just to wind me up. I have to consciously think about not getting hard when I look at her.
I don't know what the hell I was thinking, agreeing to the Colonel's plan. This was a big fucking mistake. I ran headlong into the Marines when I was eighteen just to get the hell away from Addy. Five years away from her should have cured me.
All it takes is one look, one lick of her lips, and I'm right back where I was five years ago. Addy has no idea how I felt about her back then, though, I made sure of that – and I'm not about to let her know now. And I sure as hell don't want any pictures of us that imply we're something we're not. Something we can't be.
Addy pushes me away from her. "Something stupid like what?" she asks, her eyes flashing. "You pick me up and carry me outside like a damn caveman. What do you expect people are going to think?"
She whirls around, wobbling in her heels. I catch her elbow so she doesn't fall, but she jerks her arm away from my grasp.
"You want to fall on your ass?" I ask, squeezing her arm tighter. "Stop being so fucking obstinate. Shit, I can see some things really haven't changed at all, have they?"
"Obstinate. That's an awful big word," she says, not looking at me. But she doesn't yank her arm away this time, not until we get outside. Then she wrenches it from my grasp, like she's ashamed of being seen with me publicly. The gesture pisses me off more than I care to admit to myself. Of course, Addy has always gotten under my skin, from the first moment I laid eyes on her, seven years ago. She'd already hit it big then, so she was the golden child, and I was the black sheep.
"Yeah, well, some of us Marines can use big words," I say. "A few of us can even read."
Addy makes an unintelligible sound under her breath, and the fact that she has no response gives me a perverse feeling of satisfaction.
"What?" I ask. "Nothing to say, sweet cheeks?"
"Stop calling me that," she huffs. "I didn't ask for them to make you my fucking handler or bodyguard or whatever the hell they're doing."
"No shit," I note. "I didn't think you were that much of a masochist."
But Addy doesn't respond. "Is your car here?" she asks. "I had a driver."
"At your service." My tone is sarcastic, and I hear her huff behind me as she follows me to the car. I make a point of opening the door for her with a dramatic flourish.
Addy doesn't say anything, but as we drive, she moves her finger absently on the arm rest. Tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap-tap, pause. She used to count when she was anxious, which was a lot more than she ever let on, I think. I doubt she knows I ever noticed, but I did. She had these little habits – counting, arranging her stuff in a certain order – people wrote it off as her being a diva, but I knew it was more than that. I noticed a lot of things about her back then.