Page 14 of Playing Hard to Get

“Yeah.” Vinny glanced toward the door before pinning me down with his blue stare. His frown turned into a sad smile. “He wasn’t too happy about it. I’ve had it for months, about the time you took off.”

A smirk tugged at my lips. “Couldn't stand being around him either, huh?”

“He means well.” Vinny shook his head and returned to his chair. “I get it, though. A little bit goes a long way. I needed a place to go, where I could be alone with my thoughts, with my work.”

“What work?”

My brother was not a worker. Daddy never once tried dragging Vinny to work with him. It was Frankie and me who got suckered in. Frankie who soaked up every last word, intent on learning it all so she could build an empire like her uncle. And she did.

I did, too, in a way. Just in a totally different way.

Vinny jerked his head toward his monitors, where another picture of our family showed on the screen. “What do you think all of this is for?”

“Video games?”

A wince. A shrug. But nothing more. “You want me to help you find a place?”

I studied the quiet smile on his face, but let it go. “That’d be great.”

Vinny turned in his seat and reached for his keyboard. Before he could touch it, another picture popped up.

“Vin?”

He was frozen, staring at the screen. The picture was a good one. Vinny looked good. Tan and thin, his skinny body showing off muscles in his chest and arms I didn’t know he had. He was on a beach, his arm around a pretty brunette.

Jen Lucas.

“I haven't had a chance to change it yet,” he muttered.

But I knew him better than that. My brother was a lover. He’d chased women across the globe, following his heart, just waiting for it to get ripped to shreds. And Jen did just that.

Vinny fell for Jen when they met last year. It was all going well. Daddy was in love with her and asked her to invite her family to the house so he could meet them. Little did he know, Jen’s brother—the one person in her family to show up—was Corey Lucas. Frankie’s Corey. That was the fateful day Corey was shot.

The aftermath shook our family. Daddy went crazy. He drove me crazy. Frankie quit her job working for my father to be at Corey’s hospital bed. And Jen decided my brother's intense attention was too much, not something she could deal with while helping nurse her brother back to health.

Jen ripped out my brother’s heart, more so than any woman he’d ever loved.

“I need to change it.” Vinny’s voice was quiet, low. Desperate. He reached for his mouse but paused as the next picture came up on the screen.

This time he smiled, but I sucked in a sharp breath.

The picture was another good one. Vinny, me, and Frankie at Frankie’s condo. It was right before I left, running away from my crazy-ass father to throw myself into work. But it was the man in the background that had my attention.

It was Mitch. Gorgeous. Rugged. That five o’clock shadow present, the one I enjoyed so much against my throat. The tattoos, that dangerous look in his eyes.

He scared me. When he touched me, slid his finger inside of me, where no man had ever touched before. No one but me, stroking myself, thinking of my fantasies to get myself off. My fantasies of Mitch, touching me like he did.

I wanted it. Needed it. Was afraid of it, of losing control.

“Viv?”

I pulled my eyes away from the screen to my brother. He was worried about me, again. “I'm sorry. What?”

“Rent or buy?” He gestured to the screen and I glanced at it. The picture was gone. Just a memory.

Just like Mitch.

“Do you rent?” I asked, shaking off my thoughts.