Esa did a double take and grabbed her sister’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” she said sternly.
“Uh oh. Am I in trouble, teacher?”
Esa studied her little sister through narrowed eyelids. At the moment she looked almost exactly like she had when she was fifteen years old, when she’d made it her life’s mission to tease and torment every waking moment of Esa’s anguished teenage years. Her dark red hair was pulled into a high, bouncy ponytail. She wore faded jeans and white Keds tennis shoes. Her pretty face looked fresh-scrubbed as a dewy peach in the bright sunlight. Few would have guessed that the young woman who walked next to Esa with the mischievous glint in her big brown eyes had single-handedly launched and ran the most popular magazine in the city of Chicago.
“Carla spilled that you plotted with her for this whole flirting in traffic scheme, even getting me to drive that pimpette machine of yours to further your cause.”
Rachel smiled in a friendly fashion, completely unscathed by the fury in her sister’s tone. “I’d love to take all the credit but in all fairness I can’t. I wanted you to loosen up a little, have some fun, that’s all. Both Carla and I have been worried that you were going to pre-purchase your cemetery plot any day now. But you far surpassed my expectations, Esa. Who’d a thought you’d actually snag yourself a man as gorgeous as Finn Madigan?
“His brother though,” Rachel paused and made a sound of disgust, “I feel terrible that Carla got hooked up with such a loser. A few more dating nightmares like hers and Metro Sexy’s reputation is going straight down the drain.”
Esa refrained from sarcastically expressing the great loss to the world that would be. All of the fury and confusion about what had occurred with Finn this morning found a focused outlet on her sister.
“For your information, Carla is crazy about Jess. It’s my situation that’s a nightmare, and Metro Sexy’s got nothing to
do with that. No, that’s all your fault! You never could keep your nose out of my life. Just like that time you called Blake Merrill when I was in the tenth grade and told him I was crying my eyes out in my bed because he’d broken up with me.”
“I was pissed off at that jerk. I wanted him to know what an idiot he was for dumping my sister,” Rachel defended.
Esa stopped in front of Mr. and Mrs. Burbage’s brick colonial and turned to face her sister. “I was mortified. The last thing I wanted was for Blake to know how I really felt about him when he’d broken up with me!”
“And then he asked out that sleazy Marianne Jordan, remember?”
“Rachel, that’s not the point!” Esa shouted so loud that Mr. Burbage pushed back the curtains and looked outside. Rachel waved in a friendly fashion before she grabbed Esa’s elbow and forced her to start walking.
“And why in the world didn’t you tell me about Finn’s calling you?” Esa asked, her voice shaking with anger. She was at least mollified to see that Rachel looked a bit guilty.
“Oh, that. Well, I was confused at first—I mean, who was this guy calling me and saying he was concerned about me leaving and was everything all right, and would I please give him a call? I didn’t recognize his name and I haven’t gone on any benders for at least a month, so I knew I couldn’t have just blacked it out,” Rachel added with a gamine grin that faded when Esa gave her an exasperated look.
“Right. So the next thing I know he’s calling and mentioning not only your name, but Julia Weatherell’s. Well, that got my interest.”
“What did he say, precisely?” Esa asked, her footsteps slowing.
“He said he felt bad about Julia just walking into the bedroom like that.” Rachel paused and gave her sister an openly curious look.
“Go on,” Esa grated out.
Rachel sighed, obviously recognizing she wasn’t going to get anything juicy out of her dried-up older sister.
“He said that he and Julia used to be engaged and that apparently she felt she had the right to enter his condominium any time she pleased. ‘Which she doesn’t’—that’s what he said, rather firmly, I should add.”
“Really?” Esa asked slowly, unable to disguise her obvious interest in the news.
Rachel nodded, ponytail bobbing.
“He also said that he wished you’d stop running out on him. He sounded downright pissed about it.”
Esa colored hotly and picked up the pace.
“What did he mean by that? Why do you keep running out on him?” Rachel queried as she jogged to keep up with Esa like she was a reporter hot on the trail of the story of a lifetime.
“What would you have done if you were in bed with a guy who you knew for one night and his ex-fiancée walked in on you?”
“So you did go to bed with Finn?” Rachel asked, triumph gleaming in her liquid brown eyes. She flinched back when Esa swung around wildly.
“Is that all you care about? Is sex all anybody cares about?”
“Well, it’s a good place to start, isn’t it?” Rachel asked simply.