Champagne Brunch: The Stiletto Sisters Series by Ainsley Claire (easy readers .txt) 📗

She smiles. “That sounds fun. If you and SoBe want to come to my place, I live in the Marina not far from Pier 39. We can wander around down there. I know it can be touristy, but it’s fun and we can find a place to eat outside so you don’t have to worry about the dog.”

“You think of everything,” I tell her. “I think we’d like that.”

“We can meet about six, if that works?”

We drop Mia off at her place, and Peter from Clear Security gets out to walk her to her door. I’d prefer to do that, but she gives me a soft kiss and seems to be asking me not to. “We have tomorrow night,” she assures me.

I can’t wait. “See you then,” I tell her.

Chapter 9

Mia

“You slept with him on the first date?” Toni screeches.

I know Toni through Claire, and she’s a good friend, but also the most man-crazy woman I’ve ever met. I knew I shouldn’t have told her, but she kept pressing. I just got back in town last night, but when she called, I couldn’t pass up the chance to enjoy lunch at an outside café on one of the rare sunny days in San Francisco. Toni’s puppies are curled at our feet.

“It wasn’t a typical first date,” I tell her. “It’s not like we met for coffee.”

She takes a drink of her pink martini and picks at her salad. “I know! It just isn’t your style.”

“What’s my style?” I ask, confused.

“You met Justin in college. You knew him for four years, and then he was easy but unavailable.”

I shake my head. “He wasn’t seeing anyone. He was single and available.”

She crosses her arms. “He wasn’t available to you. He lives in Austin. You didn’t date him in college. Why? There was no chemistry. Then you meet again at a conference. You keep in touch for a few months, and when you decide you need to bring a date to a poker event in Hawaii, you invite him along. He comes and meets your friends and you play, but you don’t do the deed—”

“We did everything else but the deed, thank you.”

She huffs. “Exactly what I said. Then you moved on to exchanging late-night saucy texts before meeting again in Montana for poker. And only then did you do the deed. It’s not like it was an affordability thing. You’re a billionaire, and he did well with his startup, so you could have met anywhere in the world or spent weekends together, but you didn’t.”

“We met down in Cabo for a week,” I remind her, getting mad all over again about my disastrous relationship with Justin.

She shakes her head. “You didn’t see him every weekend. If it was important to you, you would have made plans. And you just had basic missionary sex, once a night, while you were together. You didn’t have morning sex, and he didn’t go down on you.”

“It got better each time we did it,” I protest.

“You’re both over thirty. He should know his way around a vagina, and we should never settle for a guy who won’t go down. If he doesn’t love eating pussy, we should just move the fuck on. Because God knows they love it when we deep throat until our eyes water.”

“Who are you dating?” I ask, not sure I want to know.

“I went out with that guy I met at the Flirt event. I thought he was interesting because of his travel goals. He said he wanted to go dog sledding up at the North Pole and climb Kilimanjaro, but then I realized he didn’t even have a passport. So how much of that is for show?”

“Did he hint at you taking him there?”

She sets her drink down on the napkin. “No, thank God. I have a signal with my bodyguard, Mike, so he can come get me and tell me I have an emergency if something like that happens.”

“What’s your signal?” I ask. Does she pretend to choke? Maybe he tells her that her house is on fire.

“I see what you’re doing. You think you can change the subject and we won’t go back to you and Axel having lots of sex on your two-day first date.”

“We spent forty-eight hours together. That is longer than five dates. I think I’m okay with my good-girl card. Plus, there were extenuating circumstances. Jeremy Hamilton broke the record for the fastest fastball. The endorphins were high, and the guy is gorgeous.”

“And he went down on you, so we know he’s at least worth keeping around for a while.”

I tilt my head to the side. I didn’t tell her anything, so now she’s fishing.

“How well do you know Axel Remington?” Toni looks at me over her sunglasses.

I gaze over the people wandering, so many of them holding hands and smiling. Why can’t it be us? “He’s friends with Nate.”

“But is he really? He’s the agent of one of Nate’s players. That doesn’t mean Nate really knows him.”

“True. But given all that Nate’s gone through with his wife being murdered by her good friend, I think he’s careful about who he brings into his circle.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry. I’m only looking out for you.”

“I know, but it’s nice to think about something other than Viviana for a while.”

Toni is quiet a moment. “The FBI was at Claire’s offices going through things,” she reports. “She thought Landon was going to throttle them. Her office building was next door to Viviana’s, and there’s a possibility she got ahold of their satellite technology. Claire swears Tinsley took Landon somewhere and must have done something for him, because when they came back, she was flushed and Landon was finally calm.”

Do people really have