New York Billionaires Series

She finds a lot of things interesting.

I find critiquing her findings interesting.

It’s a solid combo.

“The city is hiring street artists to paint murals of famous birds in five different subway stations,” she says. “Isn’t that nice?”

“Birds? Did you say famous birds ?”

“Yeah. You can vote online for which ones will be featured. Oh, should we do it? Let me find the website.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She nudges me with her elbow, but I lift my leg over hers, trapping her deliciously close to my body. “It’s harmless and fun,” she says.

“There are people with serious bird phobias. Anyone with half a brain who watched Hitchcock will have developed one. This will give people panic attacks on the subway.”

“People aren’t that afraid of birds.”

“Oh, yes they are. Who came up with this idea?”

“The mayor’s office. Apparently it’s in honor of Small Birds Awareness Week. It says here domestic cats have decimated a lot of our small bird populations and ornithologists are trying to get their numbers back up.”

I close my eyes and slip my hand under her shirt, finding a bare hip. “Right. Well, I’m sure the Coalition for Worms and Bugs will have something to say about that. Their numbers have skyrocketed thanks to bird loss.”

Summer laughs, her tummy shaking beneath my hand, and I wonder how it’s possible to be so perfectly happy as I am in this moment. Not a twinge of a migraine, the darkness kept at bay by her sunshine.

I never want to leave this couch.

There’s a rustle as she turns the pages. Re-arranges her head placement on my arm. “Oh, Page Six!”This belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.

“It’s all garbage.”

“Yes, but it’s fun garbage.”

I snort. My mother and Summer could have a field day over that. What was said and what wasn’t was often the most important topic of discussion in the Winter household when I grew up.

“It’s pretty tame today. Oliver Langston publicly apologized for his affair.”

“Ridiculous,” I say.

“Why?”

I snort. “He should be apologizing to his wife, not to the people of New York. He didn’t wrong any of us.”

“Well, we don’t know how many other women he had affairs with,” Summer says. “Perhaps this was the most convenient way to apologize to them all. You know, saved on his phone bill.”

I laugh at that, brushing her hair away from my nose. “Imagine that.”

She reads on. But then she sighs, a soft, surprised “oh.”

“Another hypocritical politician?”

“It’s about your family.”

“So close enough,” I say. “Read it to me.”

“Well, it’s a public announcement of the upcoming nuptials between Isaac Winter and Cordelia Jacobs. There’s a bit of speculation here, too.”

“Read it to me,” I repeat.

She clears her throat. “One can’t help but wonder if the joining of the Winters and Jacobs families is a dynastic move of premeditated proportions. Not unlike, in fact, the Winter Corporation’s recent expansion to the Caribbean, where Robert Jacobs has built his famous golf courses. What came first, the chicken or the egg? The love or the business deal?”

I snort. “Clever.”

A rustle and soft thud as Summer puts the paper down. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, about them talking about your family like that. I mean, I don’t know if I’d like it if my marriage was put in the paper with a heavy insinuation that it’s arranged.”

“You’d mind, because it wouldn’t be true.”

She shifts in my arms, turns over on her back. “It’s true?”

“True enough.” My brother had known Delia his whole life. So had I, for that matter, and my opinion hasn’t changed much since I’d met her at sixteen. “But how my brother chooses to live his life isn’t any of my business.”

“Are you close?”

“Isaac and I?” I ask, as if there’s a third brother she might be referring to. Buying me some time. I look down at my hand, smoothing over her flat stomach, circling her navel.

“Yes,” she says.

“We used to be close when we were younger. It was us against our parents. Now we live pretty different lives.” Not to mention I’ve been an ass around everyone who isn’t Summer for the past two years.

It’s pitiful how unused I am to having these conversations. Any conversation, really, that requires me to respond in more than monosyllables.

“Are you going to the wedding?”

She nods, looking down at my hand. Covering it with her own and slipping her fingers through mine. “Families can be tricky. Friendships, too.”

Does she have a sixth sense for when I need her to drop a subject? Because she manages every damn time.

“Yes. Well, not if you’re Summer Davis, and your parents are the ideal representation of true love, raising puppies for a living.”

She bursts out laughing and I prop myself up on my elbow, enjoying the show. Freckles decorate her nose, courtesy of the summer sun. “You make me sound like I have little birds helping me dress in the morning.”

“Don’t you?” I ask. “No, don’t tell me. You would’ve, if domestic cats hadn’t decimated their populations.”

She bursts out laughing and I move my hand up across her ribs, tickling. Summer doubles up, shrieking.