Page 5 of Unexpectedly Wanted
I turned to his parents, hoping like hell I was pulling this off. Whateverthiswas. It was clear they were as shocked as Milo about my intrusion. I reached a hand across the table, offering it for a shake, making sure to hold Milo’s mother’s gaze and show no fear.
Then I hit them with the big punch, and I was honestly surprised at how easily the whole thing rolled off my tongue, sounding a little too natural.
“Hi. I’m Remy. Milo’s boyfriend.”
2
Milo
How the fuck did I get in such a predicament?
I’d spent most of the afternoon asking myself that question. Which meant that I had done nothing but waste time trying to figure out something that I felt like I had no control over. That really bothered me because I had a million different things I needed to be doing. More important things. Life-saving things.
I’d learned real fast that the world was an ugly place. I’d been lucky enough not to experience it firsthand, but that didn’t mean I was blind to the things that went on in the shadows of the world. When I was offered a chance to shed light on those shadows, I didn’t hesitate to sign up.
Okay, before you go thinking that I was this great guy who wanted to slay the monsters of the world, I must be completely transparent. Reed Willis found me when I was looking at doing hard time. Yeah, nerdy, awkward,never thrown a punch a day in his lifeme. I’d already made a name for myself by the time I was seventeen. I couldn’t lie, I’d had people looking up to me because I had some mad skills. Not mad enough, I suppose, since I did get caught trying to slip into a back door of one of the world’s largest fraud banks, and almost destroying a three-year-long FBI sting operation or whatever. Oops! Apparently, saying “sorry” and promising not to do it again wasn’t good enough.
How come no one ever trusts a hacker?We’renot that bad. Well,mostof us aren’t.
Reed Willis, the tech genius and owner of Willis Security Tech, the company with the best and most sought-after security systems, must have had all kinds of connections. I say this because when the FBI busted me, I was only sitting in an interrogation room for a couple of hours before the charming millionaire walked in and offered me a spot on his team. Back then, it had only been a baby of an idea. A secret project that had a name and a handful of beefy men to go out in the world on missions.
One of those beefy men was Remy Gable Loveman.
No! Not one single crack about how you just have tolovetheman. So dumb. He was not cute or awesome or even hot! He was a self-centered, know-it-all, pain in my fucking ass. Yeah.
Anything you can do, I can do better.
That was what his face constantly said any time he looked my way.
I hated Remy.
Hated!
So… how did I end up here, again?
As I stood on my front porch, my head was still spinning. My phone was in my hand, which meant I was a few short steps away from walking into the front door that I’d already unlocked with the app before I got out of my car. But I couldn’t do it because my mind was super focused on trying to figure out how I’d gotten here. Not only how I’d gotten here in this spot, but how I’d woken up this morning, quite single and mostly fine with that, and now I somehow had alive-inboyfriend. Honestly, the way Remy had gone on about our relationship when talking to my parents, you would have thought we were seconds away from becoming engaged.
So, yep, I was terrified to open the door and walk into my house.
I went back to when I’d been at lunch with my parents. Things had been going about as good as expected, which wasn’t great at all. Thenhewas there, sitting next to me, calling me ‘babe’ and grossly kissing me on the cheek. Okay, it wasn’t that gross, I guess. I’d sat there completely dumbfounded as he went on about how we’d been together nine months and living together for five of those. Which, apparently, I’d been the one that begged him to move in with me. Ha! Like I’d ever beg him for anything. There were so many wrong turns taken during that lunch that I didn’t know which way I was going anymore.
I still wasn’t sure where all of this had come from. How I’d been sitting there across from my mother while she basically ignored how interested Iwasn’tin her marrying me off to somegood Southern womanthat I’d never have anything to do with. And then Remy was there. It was almost like he was trying to save me. And that thought left a bad taste in my mouth.
Well, little did either of us know, the joke was on us because my parents told me that they never made hotel reservations, and therefore, they would be staying with me. After all, “what’s the point of having a guest bedroom if you aren’t going to use it for family,” as my mother so nicely pointed out.
Lunch had ended, and I felt like I hadn’t said much. I was too stunned to open my mouth and tell my parents it wasn’t real. Plus, there was something about how close Remy was sitting to me that seemed to capture all of my focus. It pissed me off, and I spent too much time trying to find a way that I could put distance between us without looking obvious, though I wasn’t sure why I didn’t want my parents to notice.
Back at the office, I had been so thrown off that I ended up downloading my house security system app onto Remy’s phone and giving him his own code. Then I’d tried to work as he went off and, well, moved into my house without me.
My parents were staying at my house.
Remy was staying at my house.
He would be sleeping in my room!
On the floor, you’d better believe it. I hadn’t asked for any of this, so he was going to suffer for his stupid idea that we couldn’t back out of now. We were in it too deep.
And maybe… I didn’t want to. Not because I was excited about Remy being in my space and playing the part of my boyfriend, but because it might actually get my mother off my back for a little while. Truth was, I was exhausted and deeply hurt that she didn’t acknowledge me for who I truly was. I should have been used to it since I’d been dealing with this for most of my life. Even distance and limited interactions hadn’t changed anything. I still felt like that kid that was just there in the background. An accessory to her life, nothing more. One that she wasn’t particularly fond of, either.
