Forbidden Boy by Abbott, Hailey (the false prince series txt) 📕

manager keeps his hands to himself.” She laughed at her own mock-saucy voice.

Remi shot back a sexy, “Oh yeah?”

“Definitely.” She pulled the zipper of her gray hooded sweatshirt up to her tanned collarbones.

Somewhere around noon, Julianne reached for the cement. As she stretched across the tiny bathroom, trying to wrap her fingers around the handle of the cement bucket and grab the wooden stirrer, the edge of her hoodie got caught on a loose piece of cabinet that hadn’t been installed yet. She lost her balance and went tumbling into the bathtub, the cement from the stirrer splashing across Remi’s new button-down, and one lone drop landing on his nose. The bucket teetered dangerously on the ledge for a moment before mercifully settling back in place.

Cement-splattered, Remi spun around, nearly as surprised to see Julianne sprawled out in the newly installed bathtub as she was to be there. “Hey, lady, you better watch where you’re splashing that stuff!” Remi scolded in mock indignation.

“Or what?” Julianne shot back. “You’re going to rap my knuckles with your big bad T-square?” She burst into hysterical laughter as Remi tried to put on his best “I mean business” face.

“You know,” she managed to gasp between bouts of laughter, “it would be a lot easier to take you seriously if you didn’t have cement on your nose.” Remi groped around his face, trying to locate and remove the offend-ing cement. “C’mere.” Julianne reached a hand out to Remi and pulled him into the bathtub on top of her.

She licked one finger like a child’s grandmother in a shopping mall and started to scrub the cement off of his nose. Before Julianne could reach in for a second try, Remi caught her with a long kiss.

“I think I missed a spot,” Julianne breathed between kisses, tenderly reaching toward the remaining cement speckled on Remi’s nose.

“I think I can live with that,” Remi murmured back, winding his hand under Julianne’s tangle of curls and letting it rest on the warm nape of her neck. He pulled her face back to his again.

Julianne eased her lips apart, making room for Remi’s mouth on hers. Every time they kissed she only wanted to kiss more, kiss longer, and memorize the feeling of their lips meshing against each other.

Reflexively, she felt her entire body relax and sink into Remi’s. She pressed her palms flat against his strong back and pulled herself even closer to him. He did the same.

The outline of his cheek and nose pressed under her ear made Julianne positively giddy. She leaned back and slid down along the bathtub’s flat floor, bringing Remi along with her. She felt free and powerful and so ridiculously alive, in a way that nothing other than making art had ever sparked in her before.

“Stop!” Julianne giggled. “Did you hear something?”

“Probably just the guys upstairs making fun of us for a change.” Remi shrugged before kissing her again.

Before long, Julianne and Remi were too focused on making out to hear the bathroom door open.

Julianne heard a sickeningly familiar gasp. She froze under Remi, who took a few seconds to realize she’d stopped kissing him back. Julianne slowly sat up and pulled her hair out of her eyes. She thought she was hallucinating. Standing in front of the bathtub, slack-jawed in horror, her eyes filling with angry tears, was Chloe.

Julianne zipped up her hoodie and leapt out of the bathtub in one motion.

“Chloe?! What are you doing here?” She was pretty sure her heart was beating louder than Randy’s hammer upstairs. This was actually what it felt like the second before the whole world ended. Oh. My. God.

“Well, I’m not making out with my archenemy in a bathtub.” Chloe was oddly matter-of-fact as she said it.

All of the color had drained from her face and her hazel eyes looked like dull coins. “The living room flooded.

Badly. Dad’s in New York and I need your help. I can’t do it by myself.”

Julianne looked at her robot sister and nodded dumbly. “Sure.” She heard the word hanging in the air before she realized that she had said it.

Chloe looked from Julianne to Remi and back again.

Then she stormed out, her hot pink galoshes squealing through the basement. Julianne began to run after her, then stopped mid-stride and turned to Remi. His eyes widened, and he started to reach a hand out to her. “I can’t see you again,” she heard herself say blankly before chasing Chloe out to the car.

For most of the ride home the sisters sat in tense, awkward silence. Finally, Julianne couldn’t take it anymore.

“Chloe, I’m so, so sor—” but Chloe dismissed her apol-ogy with a wave of her hand, restoring silence to the car.

Julianne had never seen her sister like this before. She was terrified and completely overwhelmed with guilt.

Then it was like someone flipped Chloe’s on switch.

All of the color came rushing back into her face, along with a lot of extra red. She went ballistic.

“I can’t believe you!” she bellowed at Julianne, before rapidly changing her mind and switching tactics. “No, I can’t believe him! ” She ran her hands through her hair like she was on the verge of ripping it out in clumps. She flailed, and if she hadn’t been piloting a small car down a flooded highway, she probably would have started pacing. “It’s not enough that he knocks me over at the first party of the summer,” she continued. “It’s not enough that he and his yuppie, tacky-ass parents move in and build the largest, ugliest house in the history of the universe. It’s not enough that they’re trying to kick my family out of the home we’ve owned since before I was born to make more room for their McMansion, but now he goes and screws around with my baby sister?! Is he evil? Is that his deal? Is he actually a malicious person who gets his kicks out of harming others?”

If Julianne hadn’t been scared for her life, she would have made Chloe