When Size Matters. Carly Laine

holding the guilt off, but just barely, and my wrists were getting tired. “Asia is my sister. My beautiful, mysterious, little sister. Asia Cézanne McKay.”

      “Man, I love these names. What’s your little brother’s name?” Jeez, he’d heard that part, too.

      “Greyson. Greyson Carter McKay. We call him Grey.” His lips worked their way over to the right into his sexy, crooked grin. The one that showed all of his pretty white teeth. I may have mentioned it…

      “Their last names are both McKay? I thought you said they had different dads.”

      “Yeah, that’s right, but remember? We were talking about you and your family.”

      “We were?”

      We weren’t but I nodded my head.

      “I got a mom who didn’t remarry, a dad who did, a stepmother a couple years younger than me and a real sister, Emily.”

      I tried to keep my face impassive, the whole time thinking, Whoa! Younger than you? Out loud I asked, “What’s that like?” Seemed like the Magnet Man and I had some family tree mutations in common.

      “Oh, you know, strange at first. But she’s a good mom to Emily and a nice tasty treat for the old man. She and I get along okay. Not too friendly, though.” He chuckled to himself, popping his eyebrows up and down. “She’s pretty hot.”

      Trophy wife. Arm candy. I named her Candy Love. Man, oh, man. You just knew Candy Love was a card-carrying Diamond Girl.

      “Big diamond?” I asked.

      “Huge,” he answered, deadpan.

      I knew it! Older = bigger. At least when it came to men and diamonds.

      We sat at our little table, pleased with ourselves, as though we shared some secret or maybe an inside joke. I didn’t need my grandma’s antennae to read the vibes. He wasn’t into the whole carat thing. You could just tell. And I was grinning, letting him think we were on the same page. But I wasn’t really opposed to carats. In fact, getting some would be nice, before I was too old and wrinkly to wear them. I knew they didn’t measure love. But if love went with it, a little, itty-bitty carat—or three or five—would have been fine with me. I got squirmy then, knowing I was deceiving him by allowing him to think I was above it all. And then the air changed, the moment was gone.

      Acting on some parallel cosmic impulse, we both reached for the champagne glass at the exact same time and knocked it on its side. It didn’t break. Of course not. If it could withstand Groom Daddy’s affections it could withstand anything. Brad reached for my hand with one of his and used his other one to hand me the glass. I took it but he didn’t let go and we became a completed electrical circuit. Switched on.

      “You gonna keep it?” he asked, lightly rubbing my palm with his thumb, increasing the voltage.

      I barely nodded.

      “Good,” he whispered.

      Another nod from me. What that thumb was doing to my insides!

      “And, Dylan,” he said in that soft, growly voice of his. “I wanna promise you something…”

      This time, I just let my eyebrows speak. Up they went.

      Both of them. I sat very still, watching him across the table and holding my breath. Waiting with Silence.

      “Sky Dylan Stone, I promise I, Bradley Hamilton Davis—”

      Oh, nice name. But I wasn’t about to distract him.

      “Also known as the Brad Davis and Brad Davis of Dallas—”

      No breath would pass my lips until he finished.

      “—will never, ever—” he said, dropping his voice even more, but still managing to heat up the “ever.” He paused and looked right into my eyes. Both of them. At the same time. And his thumb kept circling my palm. “—ever…call you Dill.”

      I took a deep breath and looked past his upturned lips, straight into the quiet of his charcoal eyes and I felt the rubber bands around my heart begin to snap apart, one by one, and that big, hard knot inside of me start to melt away. And I fell again, for the second time that day. Crashed hard. But this time there was no puffy orange dress to break my fall.