In the living room, Claire was curled up in a corner of the couch, her entire body wrapped around a cup of tea. “Sophia’s making sandwiches,” she said, without looking up. “She asked if you’d want a drink. I told her that you’d probably make it yourself, if you did.”
Two fingers of whiskey sounded delightful right now, but that was the best reason in the world to avoid it. “What happened at home?” He sat down across from her. Claire studied the ripples in the surface of her tea; her hands were shaking. “You said Aaron came over?”
Claire nodded. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Claire, did he hurt you? If he so much as looked at you wrong—” He choked back the urge to threaten to rip the man to shreds. Aaron Schwartz was his mother’s personal assistant, and there had been something creepy about the guy as long as Alex had known him. His eyes tended to rest on both Claire and Olivia in a strange way. It wasn’t as if he found them attractive, more just—disrespectful. His relationship with Alex had been adversarial since Alex hit junior high school and started to fill out through the shoulders. Of course, Alex’s relationship with his father had always been adversarial; he hadn’t realized there was anything particularly off about that until he’d seen his friend Leo with his father. The dynamic had been so different, and the young man Alex had been had wanted to be a part of that so very much.
None of that had anything to do with Claire, or the suddenly panicked look in her eyes. She didn’t need to hear how Alex would shred the man, strong and white though he might be. For her, Alex got a grip on his temper and forced it back and out of the way. “You can tell me anything, Clary. What happened?”
Claire wrinkled her nose at the nickname, but it was the first reaction she’d really given him since he sat down. “They were fighting. Aaron and Mom. They were screaming at each other. Olivia kept shrieking that he shouldn’t have done it, that they should have found another way, and he was screaming at her to keep her voice down. He pushed her into a wall, Alex, like Daddy used to. I thought he was going to kill her. And then he saw me.” Her knuckles were tight around her mug.
“Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head. “But I think he would have, Alex. I think he would have, if I hadn’t run. I didn’t know where else to go. I’m sorry you didn’t see my message, I’m sorry I ruined your date—”
Tears were streaming down his sister’s face, and he reached out to her, taking the cup of tea and setting it on the table. She curled up in his arms, and cried quietly for a little bit. He stroked her curls and tried to let his urge to comfort her show, not the desire to go obliterate the man who had dared to frighten his precious baby sister.
After a little while, she pulled back, wiping at her eyes. He handed her a tissue, and she carefully blotted under her eyes, picking up the eye makeup that had run. “I’m really sorry,” she said.
“Does Olivia know where you are?”
“You should call her Mom,” Claire said. “It breaks her heart that you don’t.”
He didn’t bother to answer. By the time Claire had been born, their parents had basically maintained separate homes, married only on paper. She hadn’t had to live through the hell that had ensued while they were still trying to pretend they gave a shit about each other, and not just what they could get from each other.
“Does she know you’re here?”
Claire shrugged.
“I have to let her know,” he said. “I’ll make sure she isn’t going to just burst in and demand that you come home.”
“If she tried, Sophia would kneecap her.”
Alex chuckled. The girl wasn’t wrong. Sophia had come with the penthouse, for all intents and purposes, but he’d hired her on full time, and he had told Zoey the truth about what he paid her. He’d found the compensation packages that every person in his social sphere offered their live-in housekeepers, and then he’d topped them all, and told Sophia to tell him if anyone tried to make her a better offer, that he’d match it. She adored his little sister nearly as much as he did, and would probably have less patience than he would for anyone who made Claire cry.
On queue, Sophia brought in a tray of sandwiches. Chicken salad, it looked like, along with chips and salsa. Sophia was a wiry woman, in her forties. Her hair was blonde, threaded with white strands, and her hairs were a crystal shade of blue. Her skin was the extreme pale of northern Europe. “Thank you,” Alex said. “It looks like Claire’s going to be staying with us for tonight, maybe a bit longer than that.”
Sophia nodded and smiled at the girl. “Excellent,” she said. “I changed the sheets on your bed just the other day, Claire, everything should be all set for you.”
“We have another guest as well,” Alex said, and from the flicker of amusement in Sophia’s bright blue eyes, she already knew that. “Zoey Gardener will be staying with us for tonight. She’s in the west room. If you wouldn’t mind, she’d love some soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, maybe a cup of coffee.”
“Of course,” Sophia said. “Will she be here for breakfast in the morning?”
It was absolutely scandalous, the way everyone around him seemed to be just so delighted that he’d finally brought someone home. He didn’t dare walk out of the room; Claire and Sophia would probably start tittering about something as soon as he did. Dammit. “Yes, I believe so,” he said, trying to make it sound like there was some doubt.
“Anything else tonight?”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said. “I’ll take care of the dishes once Claire and I are done.”
“I’ll make sure to have a lunch in the fridge for you in the morning, Claire. Coffee for you?”
Claire wrinkled up her pert nose again. “Absolutely not. Thank you, Sophia.”
Sophia nodded, and left the room, her soft bottomed shoes making a shushing sound as they slipped over the hardwood.
“So,” Claire said, her voice stronger, which of course meant that she was ready to tease her brother, “Tell me about your new girlfriend.”
He shook his head. “She’s not my girlfriend, she’s just—” There was no word to describe what Zoey was. Someone he met at a club, fucked until his balls ached, and then fantasized about for hours on end? “Someone I took on a date,” he finished. It sounded completely transparent, even to him. Claire was grinning like a maniac.
“Took on a date, and then brought home, something which is, as far as I know, unique in the history of Alexander Blankenship.” She nudged him with one toe. “Come on, big brother, spill. Give me the deets. Did you meet her somewhere swanky? Or in some skanky dive you’re afraid to tell me about?”
He shook his head. “She’s a journalist. For the Downtown Voice.”
Claire wrinkled her nose again. “Seriously?”
He laughed. “Not everyone has the connections to go straight to the Times, Clary. And some of the people who do would be better off working in the trenches a little bit, and appreciating what they get.” Which was quite a speech from a guy who inherited his father’s company, but that wasn’t the point. He was trying to create a teachable moment without talking to his little sister about kinky sex.
“So, what, she was interviewing you?”
“Basically.” Begging him to keep spanking her, admiring the red marks on her ass in the shape of his long fingers—yeah, that was the same. Absolutely.
“You’re not going to tell me anything interesting, are you?”
“Nope,” he said, and poked her back with a finger. “Not until you’re of age. Though I’m happy to tell you that there’s a supply of condoms in the bathroom off my room, and if you need some, take some. I’m too gorgeous to be an uncle.”
Claire snorted. “Mom would kill me dead if I made her a grandmother before she was sixty.”
“Finally, a point on which we agree,” he said.
“All right, all right,” Claire said. Her fingers were relaxed now, instead of twisting around each other, over and over. “I have some homework to do, and I suppose I should keep up the responsible exterior. And you should go boink your girlfriend.”
He didn’t know what to object to, boinking or girlfriend, so he settled for thwapping her with a pillow while she giggled hysterically. “Let me know if you need anything,” he said.
“I’ll let Sophia know,” she said. “You, I am too smart to disturb.”