The Price of Love (A Price Novel Book 1) (3 page)

“I have no idea.” He shrugged his shoulders, looked away, and started cleaning a pan. “I don’t recall ever cooking for her.” He looked back at me as I stuffed a huge mouthful of pancakes in my mouth. “Did she ever say I cooked for her? I don’t know — maybe I did.” He looked back down at his dishes.

I took a gulp of orange juice to wash down that bite of pancakes. They were actually really good. I was impressed.

“I don’t know. You know Kenedy. She loves to run her mouth. She told me plenty of things you did for her,” I said with raised eyebrows, “but I don’t recall cooking being one of them.” Just then, I realized what he must have been thinking, because his face was red. I knew he had had sex with my sister, and now he knew that I knew. I started blushing too. Little Miss Virginity over here, picking on the sinners. I had to change the subject. “So, what are you doing today?”

“I got a callback from yesterday. So I’ll be doing that for a few hours, and then I don’t know. What about you?”

“I’m not sure yet. I was thinking about looking around on the Internet for things to do.”

“Well, you have a good day and I’ll be back soon. If you feel like hanging out, I’m sure I can give you some suggestions.” And with a wink, he was out the door.

I shook my head at myself for letting him make me so nervous. That kiss last night was amazing, but surely he’d had too much to drink. That’s all that was.

*****

I’d only been in Paris a few days, but I already needed to do laundry. Staying with a hot guy was keeping my wardrobe in rotation. It wasn’t like I could let him see me in the same pajamas twice.

I was getting ready to go find a Laundromat when Slayde came in. “Where are you going?”

“To do laundry,” I said with an exaggerated frown.

“You want some company?”

Absolutely, if it’s you!
“You want to do
laundry
?” I asked, trying to play it cool.

He nodded. “I could use some clean clothes too. Give me a minute and I’ll come with you.”

As we headed out the door, he grabbed my bag. “I got it,” I said, but he ignored me and took it anyway.

We had been walking down the street a few minutes when I finally asked, “Where are we going?”

He stopped and looked at me. “I was following you.”

Was he serious? I stared at him. He was serious. I giggled. “How would I know where to go? I just got here. Have you not washed clothes since you got here four years ago?”

He looked away, and I thought he looked a little embarrassed. “Actually, no. I have someone pick them up once a week and bring them back.”

“You know you’re a freak, don’t you?” I couldn’t help but find it a little amusing. Of course he didn’t wash his own underwear.

“Hey, that’s not very nice.” He pretended to be angry. He squinted, and his lips drew into a tight, forced scowl, but the sides of his mouth curled up, and I wound up getting that little half grin I loved so much. Slayde asked a woman walking past us, and she gave us directions to a Laundromat.

“Dammit,” he said as he threw our bags onto a table.

“What?”

“I forgot detergent.”

I pointed at the wall. “Lucky for you, they were counting on that.”

He smiled at me. “Lucky me.” He started to hand me my laundry bag but then stopped and looked at it funny. “Whose bag is that?”

“Mine. Why?”

He pointed to the monogrammed initials on the front. “What does the
E
stand for?”

“Emily.”

“Your first name is really Emily?”

“Yeah, why?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just didn’t know, that’s all.” He looked back up at me. “You don’t look like an Emily.”

I just laughed and threw all of my clothes into a washer.

“And Slayde’s not my first name. I’m named after my father, so I prefer to go by my middle name.”

After we got our laundry started, we walked across the street and grabbed a coffee. Then we went back to wait on our clothes.

“How do people do this all the time?”

“What? Laundry?” I asked, trying not to laugh.

“Yes.”

“Nobody made you come,” I said.

“No, I’m fine since you’re here, but I’d hate doing this alone. I’d be bored.” He pointed at some guy in the corner, reading a paper.

“Oh you get used to it. We do it in shifts at school. Or we make a study group out of it.”

He hopped up on a dryer to sit. “So, what happened to you?”

“What do you mean? Nothing that I know of.”

“I mean, you just left school a year early.” Had Slayde Price noticed I was gone? “I thought you’d switched schools or something, maybe gone to school with all the other smart kids, but your sister said you graduated early. Why? Didn’t you like high school?”

It would be hard for someone like him to imagine missing out on high school, but I hadn’t been in the Slayde Price cool-kid club. “Well, I wanted to get on with life, you know.”

“Not really. Tell me.”

I hopped up on the dryer next to him and sat cross-legged. “Growing up, I had to take care of both Gia and Kenedy. Which meant getting them fed, getting the homework done, doing the laundry, and making sure they actually got up and went to school. Bottom line, it sucked. I loved them, but I resented them too. It wasn’t their fault any more than it was mine, but I still resented them for it. I just wanted out of there.”

“Don’t you have another sister?” he asked. “I think I met her once, but she didn’t live there.”

“Yeah, Isabelle. She lives with her father. She got lucky, I guess. She only visited when she had to, and I can’t say I blamed her.”

“OK, I don’t know how to say this without sounding nosy or tacky, but you all have different dads?”

I was a little embarrassed, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. So I answered him, but I didn’t look him in the eyes; I stared at the washer. “The only father I remember is Isabelle’s. His name is Garrett Chandler, and he is some hotshot attorney in Los Angeles, and he didn’t want her around us. She only visited on weekends once every few months.

“Isabelle is my favorite sister, for sure, probably because she has had little to no influence from our mother. Her father must have met Mom in passing, because I don’t remember ever seeing them together. As soon as Isabelle was born, he got custody of her and only allowed her to see us when he had to. He said that there was no supervision at our house, and he was right. He didn’t have much patience for any of my other sisters, but he always let me visit. I would go stay with them at least once a month and sometimes go on family vacations with them.

“And that’s it. Mom had a boyfriend for a while, but he wasn’t any of our fathers. None of us know anything about any of them except Garrett, and if we ever asked, Mom just said, ‘You obviously don’t need him.’ But it feels like I obviously don’t need her either.”

He seemed to handle and process all that information surprisingly well. “You just left and never looked back?”

“I really didn’t plan on leaving and never going back, but Kenedy and Gia can be extremely hard to deal with. They gave me hell, and I stayed stressed out worrying about them. So when I left that house, I felt like a free woman. I just didn’t want to go back there.

“When my friends went home for the weekends or holidays, they enjoyed being pampered by parents who missed them, and had all their laundry clean when they came back because their moms had taken care of it. Not me. I went home at first thinking I’d be glad to see my family, but it was like walking in to work. Usually Mom wasn’t there and hadn’t been there in days. Sometimes the housekeeper would have come, so I wouldn’t have a huge mess to clean up, but no one cooked for me or did my laundry or even sat down and asked me how school was going. Some weekends Mom didn’t even call, much less stop by the house and see me. Finally I just stopped going home unless I had to. Which meant holidays only.”

“Gosh, I knew your mom was never there when I was, but I thought that was just a coincidence. I didn’t know you had all that responsibility dumped on you. That really sucks.”

I didn’t want his pity. I faked a smile. “It all turned out fine. I love school. I love my friends. I never go home.”

“Tell me about your friends.”

“You must be really bored,” I joked, but when he didn’t smile, I said, “Well, Milly, that’s my best friend and roommate, she’s in med school too. She’s a few years older than me, but she’s so much fun. She’s from Texas, and she and I have lived together for years. We have pretty much all the same classes. We’re inseparable. She’s more family than my actual family.”

“So you left high school and just went off to college to party it up?”

“No. I mean, we have fun, but we have to study a lot.”

“Why didn’t Milly come to Paris with you?”

“Oh, she had to retake a class. She struggles a little, but it is really hard.”

“So, all you do is study? No boyfriend?”

I could feel myself blushing. “I don’t have time for a boyfriend. Not now, anyway.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” He got off the dryer and started switching his clothes over.

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that. I didn’t say anything and just started helping with the load of clothes. Once we had it all in the dryer, I asked, “What about your family?”

He shot me a sly smile and raised his eyebrows. “You mean Brady?”

I rolled my eyes. “No thanks. I know what he’s doing.”

“Oh, you still talk to him?”

“No, but I can only imagine. And I really don’t care.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Uh, yes. We’ve been broken up for years. I don’t care what he does. What about you?”

“Well, he’s a pain in the ass, but I still talk to him.” He laughed. He knew that wasn’t what I was asking.

“No, what about you and Kenedy?” I climbed back up onto the dryer. He followed suit.

“Nothing. I avoid her at all costs. She’s also a pain in the ass.”

“Did you know she was here when you came?”

“Oh yeah. But Paris is a big place, and I didn’t think about the fact that she’d be living in the same building.”

“She lives in your building?” I was shocked.

“Yeah. Almost everyone who signed with the agency lives there. I told you that the day you got here.”

That’s right, he had. I had been more worried about his smile and his eyes at that moment, though, so I had forgotten. “Why didn’t she ever mention that?” I thought aloud.

“I guess because we’re not really friends, but I do see her all the time.”

“Maybe you two could get back together.”

He burst out laughing. “Are you kidding? Hell no! She’s nuts. Sorry, I know she’s your sister, but she’s nuts.”

I couldn’t help but laugh under my breath. “She is a little nuts.”

“You still haven’t heard from her?” he asked.

“No. I can’t believe she ditched me in a foreign country.”

“I can.” I looked at him, wondering what else he had to say. After a moment, he continued. “I mean, she’s all about her. Surely you know this. You did live with her.”

He had a very good point. “Yeah, but I talked to her a few days before I left, and she was all ready for me to come. I should have known that was total BS.” I looked down at my shoelaces and started nervously making double knots in them. He was right. I did know her. I knew she was selfish — but I never thought she’d leave me stranded in a foreign country.

He reached over and pulled one of my shoelaces. “Well, I’m glad you came.”

I looked up at him and smiled. “What would you be doing tonight if you weren’t keeping me company doing laundry?”

“I don’t know. Maybe hanging out with friends. Maybe flying home. I don’t have anything to do Monday or Tuesday, so that makes this a long weekend. I’d probably go see my mom. Hang out with my friends. Kevin, my best friend, always acts like I’m never coming home. He’s come over here twice since I’ve been here, but I miss hanging out with him all the time. I have friends here, but they aren’t like my friends at home.”

“Why not?”

“They’re nice and all, but honestly, I don’t care about modeling. I just didn’t want to stay in LA, and I didn’t want to play baseball. I had to do something. I’m pretty homesick most of the time. So, seeing a familiar face is refreshing, and you’re normal. That helps too.” He smiled at me.

“I don’t know about normal,” I said, but I felt good. I had been worried about being in his way but hearing him say that made me feel better. For the moment, anyway.

A
whole week passed with no word from Kenedy. Maybe she’d really forgotten about my visit.

Slayde was off doing whatever it was he did all day, and I decided I would take the metro to the Right Bank. I hadn’t done much other than on the one day that Slayde took me sightseeing. I needed to get out and see more of the city.

I really enjoyed browsing through the shops and found myself shocked by how nice everyone was. I had had some negative perceptions of the French before coming to Paris, but they weren’t any ruder than the people in LA. My French really sucked, but I tried. Most of the shopkeepers understood English and were nice enough to let me know that before I embarrassed myself too badly.

On my way back to Slayde’s, it poured. I hadn’t taken an umbrella because it had been gorgeous when I left. So by the time I got back, I was soaked. I hoped Slayde wasn’t home. I didn’t want him to see me looking like a drowned rat.

Of course, I wasn’t that lucky. He was lying on the couch watching TV when I came in. He sat up and smiled really big. “Are you wet?”

I rolled my eyes and headed to the bathroom to strip off my clothes. I was freezing. He knocked. “I won’t look. Here are some dry clothes.”

I opened the door just a tiny bit and took the T-shirt and boxers he’d brought me.
Why didn’t he just bring me my own clothes?
Maybe he felt digging in my bag for panties was a little out of his comfort zone.

I towel-dried my hair and slipped on his clothes. They smelled good. They smelled like him. I loved that smell.
What is it?
Cologne? No, it wasn’t cologne. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it was a clean, fresh scent mixed with a little outdoorsy woodsy smell. Strange but wonderful!