Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1)

by Talia Hibbert

High up on the list of annoying things about Chloe Brown was her beautiful bloody face. She had the kind of brilliant, decadent, Rococo beauty that made his fingers itch to grab a pencil or a paintbrush. It was ridiculously over the top: gleaming brown skin, winged eyebrows with a slightly sarcastic tilt, a mouth you could sink into like a feather bed. She had no business looking like that. None at all.

But at night, sometimes, she watched him paint.

He had this visceral quality, even when he was glaring at her, but especially when he painted. There was an honesty, a vulnerability about him that captivated her.

“Can’t you bend the rules due to extenuating circumstances?” “Extenuating circumstances such as . . . the fact that you’re an extra special princess?” “Precisely. I knew you’d understand.”

Red smiled up at her. It was the kind of sweet and effortlessly handsome smile that heartthrobs deployed in rom-coms, and she didn’t trust it an inch.

“You’re so lovely,” she scowled. “I don’t think I can stand it.” He blinked, an unsettling warmth creeping up the back of his neck. Which meant—bugger this skin of his—that he must be flushing like a teenager. He looked away and shoved his fingers through his hair. His voice was gruff when he said, “It’s nothing.”

“Oh, my goodness. You blush.” “Nope.” He knew full well his face was bright red, but he lied anyway. “You do. This is hilarious. I should compliment you more often.” “Please,” he said wryly, “don’t.” Clearly, he couldn’t take it.

There was that smile of hers. Like the rising sun.

“Chloe.” Red’s voice was loud in the deserted car park, so deep it almost made her jump out of her clothes. Wait, no: skin. She meant skin. “Yes?” she squeaked,

“I’m just teasing you, Button.” He was, wasn’t he? Teasing her, and enjoying it way too much. “Don’t faint on me now.”

“First time I shook your hand,” he said, “you acted like I’d electrocuted you.” Ah. He’d noticed. Well, subtlety had never been her strength. “I felt as if you had,” she admitted. He turned to look at her. He was shadowy, his hair catching most of the low light, his eyes difficult to see. But she felt them burning into her, impossible to escape. “Did you, now?”

“I watched because . . . when you paint,” she said softly, “you seem so vital. It was addictive. It felt like coming to life.”

demure.

very mindful

This was what came of liking men: rampant idiocy.

yeah.

But he would, because he loved her. The thought froze him for a second before he sank into it like a feather bed. Before it became the comfort that helped him figure out how to speak. He loved Chloe. He loved Chloe like a blank canvas and a finished piece and all the exhilarating, painful, stop-and-start moments in between. He loved Chloe like tearing through the night on his Triumph, feeling alive in motion when he couldn’t feel alive inside. He loved Chloe like every glare she shot him was a kiss and every kiss she gave him was a breadcrumb-sized piece of her heart in his hands.

How could he doubt that she loved it? How could he doubt that she loved him, that she wanted him and trusted him and hungered to do everything with him just for the joy of experiencing his reactions? She was in love with Redford Morgan, and quite horribly, too. It smacked her over the head so hard she felt dizzy. She should be afraid, should want to hide it, but the knowledge lit her up until she felt just like the fairy lights, and hiding that would be something close to a sin. But the feeling had come on too fast, surely, for him to feel the same, so she wouldn’t blurt it out yet.

“You are a woman who, in a life filled with pain, came here to ask about love.”