Levi also stared at Bianca the entire time he talked.
Bianca, of course, sat at the foot of the table and smiled prettily as everyone spoke, but when Levi gave his speech, she gazed up at him as if he were the only man in the world. Edie could pretty much see the hooks sinking into him. Poor man wouldn’t know what hit him.
On the other side of the table, there was a geeky young woman named Taylor who seemed a little shy. Sebastian, who was rather abrupt and succinct and unfriendly, who seemed an odd choice for a bridal party. There was sweet dark-haired woman named Brontë who quoted Aristotle and mentioned that Gretchen had been in her wedding, and next to her was her husband, Logan, who was also one of the groomsmen. Then there was the man next to Edie, Magnus, who mentioned he made video games for a living and was sincerely happy for his friend Hunter. Edie did her best to keep in her feelings, even though she knew Magnus was a big fat liar. Now wasn’t the time. She wasn’t like Gretchen, to bluster and shock people with her words. Gretchen had a big mouth but she also had a big heart.
Edie? Now, Edie had a cold, bitter heart and she liked to remember grudges.
So when it was her time to stand up and make a toast, she awkwardly rose to her feet and lifted her glass. “I’m Edie King, and I’m an old friend of Gretchen’s. As for what I do?” She let her gaze deliberately swing around the room and landed on three people in particular. Asher. Levi. And then, Magnus. The three men drinking beer. “My profession is a feline behaviorist. I guess you could say that I’m what you call a cat lady.”
Somewhere down the table, someone spit out his beer.
Chapter Two
Magnus would give the cat lady credit—she had fucking stones the size of boulders. Sure, he still didn’t like her, but the way she’d archly delivered her set-down during the toastings? It was beautifully done, even if it was passive-aggressively aimed at him. Magnus enjoyed that sort of thing, and he enjoyed the way Levi got all flustered and Asher kept staring at his beer. They knew they’d been acting like dicks earlier in the kitchen with their sexist commentary, but Magnus tended to blow that sort of shit off. Levi was a dreamer who chased after anything with a skirt, and Asher, well, Asher had recently had his heart broken by his childhood sweetheart. So if he was desperately trying to score some bridesmaid pussy, Magnus couldn’t blame him.
He was pretty sure the cat lady was having none of him, though. Which kind of made him laugh inside. Not that he was interested in the cat lady himself. She was cute enough, in that scholarly, boho-nerd sort of way. He was a man, and a man’s brain had a “fuck switch” every time he saw a woman. The fuck switch either went On or Off depending on how the woman looked, and his fuck switch was definitely on for the cat lady, because she had a nice pair of tits under that ugly dress-thing she was wearing, and a perfect heart-shaped little face that was marred by her perpetual scowl. Magnus’s dick’d do her, because his dick liked interesting things, and she was interesting. Magnus’s brain, not so much.
As the evening wore on, the iciness from his dinner partner continued, and it destroyed even Magnus’s budding appreciation for her. Because when he was stuck between a married couple and a woman who ignored him?
It made for a long fucking night. He was glad when the party finally ended and he was able to collect Levi and get the fuck out of dodge. He’d spent half the night sucking down beers and mentally trying out a few new concepts for The World, because his thoughts always turned to it.
Both he and Levi made a living creating IPs—Intellectual Property—for video games. They’d become famous five years ago when an online computer game of theirs became so big that it was soon showing up in every toy store as merchandise and phrases like “Loot is for suckers” became part of the Internet consciousness. A big gaming company had noticed and had bought the rights to the game for two billion dollars, unheard of at the time. Then, Magnus and Levi had created a second IP and sold the rights to the concept for several hundred million.
Now, he and Levi were working on the newest—The World. It was an alternate-reality type of game where you could choose the path in history for your countries, and the game would alter itself and the levels and classes for your characters based on the “historical” timeline. It was tricky to figure out, mechanics-wise, but Magnus loved a challenge.
He handed his keys to Levi as they left Buchanan Manor. “You didn’t drink, right?”
“My night to be sober,” his younger brother said. Normally he’d bitch and moan about the fact that he didn’t get to drink at a party, but tonight, he was strangely quiet. In fact, he was smiling.
Magnus frowned at Levi. “You feeling okay?”
To his surprise, Levi turned to him and threw an arm around Magnus’s shoulders. “What did you think of her?”
“Who?”
“The sister. The one who works with the cats.”
The ice queen who had sat next to Magnus all night? “She’s cute enough, I guess. Might want to remove that Popsicle out of her ass first, though.”
Levi looked confused. “You didn’t think she was warm and gracious?”
“Fuck no. I mean, I get that she was cute, but damn, man, she was being stone cold the entire night. Didn’t talk to anyone.”
“Are we . . . talking about the same girl? Bianca?”
Who the hell was Bianca? Magnus had to think back, and he vaguely remembered a girl with big brown eyes, pale blonde hair, and a coquettish, tiny smile that he’d instantly found cloying, the same way he found most perfumes cloying. “Oh. That one. She’s a cat lady, too?”
Levi laughed, the sound giddy. “She works with the cat lady. Something about her leg being bad, so Bianca helps take care of her. She’s so selfless.”
“Great,” Magnus said flatly. “Good for her.”
“No, bro, you don’t understand,” Levi said, moving in front of Magnus and putting his hands out in front of him. Okay, apparently Levi wanted to stop and have a conversation in the goddamn driveway.
Magnus glared at his dramatic younger brother. “What don’t I understand?”
Levi just grinned and clasped Magnus on the shoulders. “I’m in love.”
Oh, here we fucking go again.
Though only a year and a half separated Levi and Magnus, they were completely different, personality-wise. Magnus was the workhorse. If the best way to figure out something was to throw himself at it for sixteen hours a day, then that was what he’d do. Levi, however, was a dreamer. He was the one with his head in the clouds, who slept until noon, and didn’t hit a single fucking deadline that Magnus set for him.
But when Levi came up with an idea, it was a fucking game changer. It was why Magnus put up with him despite carrying the majority of their “partnership” on his back.
The most annoying thing about Levi’s dreaminess, though, was his ability to fall in love at the drop of a hat. Levi fell in love like some girls changed hair colors. Today, it was Bianca. In two weeks, it’d be Clarice, or the barista at the coffee shop with the cute nose ring. Or it’d be a fan who ran into him at a party and decided to show her gaming appreciation by kissing him in a dark corner all night.
Levi was easy to impress, and he loved ladies.