Page 71 of Windlass

“Why, anyone you want to murder?” Stormy asked her.

“I don’t need a dress to do that.” She leaned back in her chair, not needing to feign the self-satisfaction dripping from her voice.

“No you don’t, girl. Things are good, then?” Stormy raised a meaningful eyebrow.

“I’m always good.” Stevie had told her she was a good girl. She shivered.

“Good,” said Lilian in a tone that was a bit too neutral to be genuine.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Angie pressed, like an idiot. There was a reason she hadn’t wanted her friends to know what she and Stevie had arranged even if they knew there were feelings involved on both sides. Everyone knew, but if they suspected she and Stevie were involved in reality, they’d have expectations.Steviewould have expectations. And when Angie let them all down, she’d lose everything.

Maybe she should tell her friends so they could talk her out of this. She eyed them. These were the two people she trusted more than anyone else in the world—except Stevie. But even they could not talk her out of things now. She curled her toes in her shoes to keep from fidgeting. Stevie, filling her completely. Completing her.

Quite unexpectedly she wanted to cry again.

“I was worried it might be, um, lonely in the house,” said Lilian. “Just you and Stevie.”

“Guilty conscience?” Angie tried to play the conversation off.

“Do you two just make the absolute worst jokes all day now?” Stormy asked.

“Pretty much.”

Lilian snapped her fingers. “That reminds me. The island house has five bedrooms. Six, technically, but that room is tiny and barely fits a crib.”

“The house was designed for us.” Stormy counted off on her fingers. The way Lilian was looking at Angie, however, told her where this conversation was going. She tried to pull her attention back to the present instead of lingering on how it had felt to fall asleep tangled up in Stevie and wake, watching Stevie’s sleeping face until the early morning sunlight roused her.

“One of the bedrooms is Ivy’s parents’, though, and they don’t like when other people use it. Someone will have to share.”

“Are you saying . . .” Stormy adopted a dramatic whisper, “there isonly one bed?”

Only one bedagain? Was the universe toying with her?

“Technically no. One of the rooms has a king that’s made up of two twins, so we’ll pull those apart. Do you mind bunking with Stevie, Angie? Or Stormy?”

“Or Stevie and Stormy,” said Angie, “and I get my own suite.”

“No offense to your girl, but I am not sharing with her,” Stormy said. “Or you.”

“Wow. That hurt. I don’t even snore.”Your girl. She didn’t hate the way that sounded.

“It’s not the snoring.”

“I won’t sleep naked.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” said Stormy. “Not that I mind, aesthetically speaking.”

“So you’ll share with Stevie?” asked Lilian.

“Only if Stormy tells me why she won’t share a room withme.”

Stormy appraised her with a perfectly manicured brow and sipped from her mug. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

“Oh, but now I have to know.” She wasn’t actually offended, but her curiosity was piqued, and an anxious little voice in her mind wondered what she’d done wrong.

“Angie, love, I mean this with all the love in my heart, but you talk in your sleep, and the things you say arefilthy.”

Angie waggled her eyebrows. “Was I calling out your mom’s name again?”

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