Chapter 90

I glance back at the doorway, but Beau just waves. “Have fun, Nanny. Try not to get killed.” Then he turns to Wyatt. “Come away now, Wyatt. This is no sight for children.”

“What children?” Wyatt argues.

They are both gone before I can react.

When I look back to Archer and Neil, they’ve come closer.

Thinking fast, I swivel on my heel and break for the door. I’m slammed against the wall before I even know how I got there. Neil and Archer stand too-close, crowding in around me, one more to my left and the other to my right.

“You vixen,” Archer growls. “You are the reason we are this way.”

“Your fault.” Neil’s voice is more wolf than man. He shakes his head, struggling for control.

“Your clothes are too revealing,” Archer accuses. He drags his gaze down my front.

Revealing? “I’m wearing a t-shirt.”

“No bra,” Neil says, with effort.

“I can see the full shape of your tits,” Archer snaps. His hands shoot forward and hover over my breasts. My nipples harden at his attention. It’s like a trigger reaction, I can’t help myself. “And you’re just walking around with them out for anyone to see. To… lust after.”

“You are out both out of your minds,” I say. Still, I cross my arms over my chest. Being too lazy for a bra was apparently a critically poor life choice.

“And your smell,” Neil says.

“I know, I’m sorry! I’ll take another shower,” I say, trying to reach a compromise. This one, at least, makes a tiny bit more sense.

“Not Neil’s scent,” Archer clarifies. “Yours.”

Or, no. It makes no sense at all.

“You smell too good. You need to change your soap,” Archer says.

“You guys are the ones who bought me that soap!”

“Get rid of it,” Neil says. Slowly, his usual voice is coming back. “And that book…”

Archer’s eyes go wide. “You actually bought that book?”

“I was curious…” Why did this feel like an inquisition? I shook of my nerves and my horniness and pulled from my own righteous fury. “You guys are being impossible! You’re acting like Neanderthals!”

Archer reaches out and snatches my chin between his first finger and thumb. He lifts my face to get me to look at him.

I glare as best I can.

“You aren’t afraid,” Archer says, and makes it sound like an accusation.

I try to shake off his hold but he refuses to let go. The best I do is grip at his wrist, tugging.

“Why the hell would I be afraid?” I say. I’m so over this alpha-macho bravado. “All I see are two pups that don’t know how to act like decent human beings!”

“You should fear us,” Archer says. He’s lowering his face, letting me see the wolfy glaze to his eyes. “Everyone does. We are Hayes’s. We are power. And control.”

He’s trying to frighten me. Doesn’t he know that train left the station a long time ago? I get pissed as hell at the brothers, sure. And some, or all of them, are so hot that I lose my cool sometimes.

But actual fear? Hell, no. Not since the beginning. Even then, I was more angry and humiliated than afraid.

Archer keeps holding me still like he’s waiting for something. He’s searching for it in my eyes.

Hell if I know what he wants. So I just say whatever comes to mind.

“I’m not scared of you. I taught you to change diapers.”

Archer blinks. He leans back. Some of the alpha gleam fades away from his eyes.

This seems to be working, so I look at Neil and continue.

“I’ve seen you worry for Mia, just over a simple stomach ache. Your capacity for kindness is infinite, even if your level of general douchebagery often matches it.”

Neil takes a step back.

Archer releases my face. “Fucking hell,” he growls, but he’s not looking at me. It’s almost like he is cursing himself.

Before I can ask him what his problem is now, he storms toward the door and disappears through it.

Neil lingers longer. He watches me through his eyelashes, his face turned downwards.

He stares at me for a long moment. His expression is unreadable. I have no idea what his problem is.

“I shouldn’t have…” he starts to say.

I hold up my hand, stopping him. “If you are going to apologize for before, save it. Unless you want to say sorry for being such an asshole afterwards. But before? During? I enjoyed it and I won’t let you ruin it.”

“It can’t happen again,” he says.

I knew he would say that. I prepared myself for it. It still slices through me like a knife.

“Don’t say that to me,” I say, in a desperate attempt to quash the hurt before it expands.

“It’s the truth.”

“I know it’s the truth, but I still don’t want to hear it!”

With Archer gone, I have an opening on my right side. I take advantage of that now, pushing away from the wall and creating more space between Neil and me.

“Forget it, Neil. Just forget all of it.”

“I don’t understand why you’re angry. You have to know the reasons why.”

I know the reasons why almost better than anyone else, except Neil himself probably. I really don’t need him to spell it out for me.

“I’m leaving in a month and a half, anyway. You can keep your reasons to your damned self.” I bite because it hurts.

“Chloe…”

I threw my hands up. “I said forget it.” As my hands dropped, my shoulders shook. “Please.”

He waits a moment, then sighs. “Very well.”

Great. So that’s over. Now I can lick my wounds and move on with my life. I start for the door. I’m almost through it when Neil calls out.

“Wait.”

I shouldn’t stop. I shouldn’t hope.

I still do both.

Neil goes into his bathroom. He returns a minute later with a brand new scent-less bar of soap, still in the box. He hands it to me.

I look at it, then up at him. He starts backing away.

That’s it? This is why he stopped me?

Soap?

I am so over this day.

I swivel on my heel and return back into my rooms. I disrobe and take an extra, extra long shower. I scrub with the soap, lathering up four separate times.

Then I dress again. This time, I do put on a bra.

Checking the clock on my phone, it’s almost time for me to collect Mia from Steven, so I head that way.

I knock on his door.

“Come in.”

Steven’s in his lab, looking through a microscope. Mia is bouncing in a bouncy chair. When she sees me, she babbles what I’m fairly certain by now is a hello. Or maybe my name. Or I pooped my pants, though I don’t smell the tale tell sign of that.

“How was she?” I ask Steven as I step through the lab to approach Mia in her bouncy seat.

“Very well behaved,” Steven says. He leans up from his microscope, looks at me, and immediately frowns. “Chloe.”

“Yeah?”

A small confused line appears between his brows. “Why do you smell like Neil?”