Page 9 of Earned Husband

“Do you cook?” she asked after we’d covered my childhood, my dad’s trial, and the amount of hours I spent at the office every week.

I looked up from my tea and nodded. “I do. I’m actually reasonably good at it.”

“And that’s because you had to help your sister take care of your younger brothers after your father got shipped off to jail?”

I blinked hard. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

“I remember your mother,” she said thoughtfully. “She used to be such a force on the fundraising scene. A social butterfly, really. I heard she didn’t take the arrest well.”

It wasn’t a question, but I responded anyway, the urge to defend my family imprinted on my DNA and rising fast in the face of this topic of conversation. “It came as a huge shock to her. She lost her husband, her social standing, and just about everything she owned all in one fell swoop. Anyone would’ve needed some time and space to process something like that.”

“Yes.” Gabrielle wrapped her fingers around her tea cup and nodded like she agreed with my summary of events. “I can’t imagine being in her shoes. It was quite the scandal. I’m not sure I ever would’ve recovered.”

Honestly, I wasn’t sure my mother had recovered either. There was a reason Jane and I had stuck around our family home for the sake of our younger brothers until after she’d married Alex. For the longest time, neither of us had even thought of leaving.

Jane had finally moved in with Alex a couple months after their nuptials, but Wyatt, our youngest brother, had already been in his senior year by then, the others all already off to college. I’d stayed at home until Wyatt had graduated and only after moving him into the dorms had I found a place of my own.

All of us still checked in on Mom regularly, though. We made sure she had food and that she ate it. We bought her groceries and made sure she got out of the house every once in a while. She’d been doing much better since Jane had taken over Thayer Steelworks from our uncle, but we still kept a close eye on her.

Gabrielle took a sip of her tea, but before she could ask whatever personal question would’ve been coming next, the front door opened and Khaled appeared, carrying what looked like half the botanical inventory of the Midwest.

Flowers of different colors, shapes, and sizes spilled from his arms, not any sort of bouquet I’d ever seen before. It appeared haphazard and mismatched, but it was beautiful precisely for that reason.

Gabrielle smiled when he walked toward her. “You’re home. Did you have a successful morning?”

“We did.” He crossed the room and handed her the enormous arrangement with obvious affection on his features. “For you.”

She brought her hand to her chest, her face breaking into a wide grin as she accepted it. “You’re letting me have your research? Bless you. I love it. It smells gorgeous.”

Standing up, presumably to go find a vase, she smiled at someone behind me and lifted the arrangement slightly. “Thanks for these, darling. Trust you to find the very best items on offer.”

I spun on my stool to see Deja in the foyer. She must’ve come back with her brother and she walked toward us now, juggling a briefcase, her phone, and several loose slips of paper. After smiling and nodding at Gabrielle, her eyes slid to me and the world seemed to tilt on its axis.

It was absurd, but there was something about her that amazed me almost as much as it terrified me. Deja Saad, to me, had that same mythical, magical kind of presence as I imagined a Disney princess would in real life, her thick black hair pulled into a simple but sleek ponytail and those golden brown eyes practically glowing.

Her skin was a lighter gold than her eyes, and her cheekbones were high and regal. Even while wearing jeans and a fluffy pink cardigan, she looked like she’d stepped straight out a fairy tale.

And I’m staring again. Wonderful. Smooth, Colin. Real fucking smooth.

Her gaze lingered on mine until I became acutely aware of my own breathing. Then her mouth curved into a soft smirk.Yep. This girl definitely knows what she does to me.

When my sister pushed back her chair, Deja finally shifted her attention to Jane and Ashanti and I snapped out of the trance she’d catapulted me into. I picked up my tea so I wouldn’t look like a complete idiot, but even sipping casually while the conversation continued around me was a surprisingly difficult task.

“Alex would like to have everyone on the yacht for dinner before Khaled leaves tomorrow,” Jane was saying when I finally managed to tune back in. “Are you free this evening?”

Khaled arched an eyebrow at her. “I thought he said something about his yacht being in the Mediterranean? We talked about potentially meeting up with you on our coastline sometime next year.”

My sister gave him a sheepish smile. “Yeah, but he has one locally too. Come on. What do you say? It’ll be a sunset cruise with dinner and the views of the city are spectacular from the water. You have to come.”

“We’d love to,” Ashanti said after exchanging a look with Khaled. “Just let us know what time we have to be where, and we’ll meet you there.”

“Perfect.” Jane smiled and glanced down at her watch, then sighed and shot her friend an apologetic grimace. “Colin and I should get going back to the office, but it was great to see you. We’ll talk more tonight.”

“Thanks for popping in,” Ashanti said, walking us out after we’d said our goodbyes.

Naturally, it took another ten minutes of chatting before Jane finally turned over her engine, but the moment we were on our way, I found myself struggling not to keep thinking about those golden brown eyes and what they did to me.

Eventually, I turned to my sister, knowing from my experience after the dinner party that I’d keep obsessing over my reaction to Deja if I didn’t distract myself. “Have you heard back from the lawyers about the return of our trust funds yet?”