Long enough she’s living with me, about four days.

That would make his father’s head explode, and as such, he wanted to say it, but since he wasn’t five, he didn’t.

“Not long,” he said instead.

“Not long,” Sylas repeated under his breath. “It’s like pulling teeth.”

“We’re new, Dad. Mom called to ask me over to dinner. I let it slip that I’d met someone special who I think is important and Mom wanted to meet her. So Hattie’s here. And I’d appreciate it if you’d be cool while she is.”

“I’m always cool,” Sylas replied.

“Calling her a pretty little thing isn’t cool.”

Sylas stopped pouring Cîroc and lifted his brows at Axl. “She’s pretty, and my guess, she’s eight inches shorter than you, if she wasn’t wearing those heels, so that’s little.”

Axl drew in a deep breath, turned his head to look out the window, then he went to a couch and folded his body in it.

“You’ve always been so fucking sensitive,” Sylas said in a voice that it was like he didn’t want Axl to hear what he said, but he absolutely wanted Axl to hear what he said.

He should let it go.

He did not let it go.

“Could it be, with a woman who is right now touring my parents’ home with my mother, which means she’s important to me, that I’m sensitive to the fact that I want her to like my parents?”

“I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t like us.”

“You’ve never been called a pretty little thing. If you were, you might reconsider that opinion.”

Sylas stopped fixing the top on the shaker, set it down and turned fully to Axl.

And the games were about to begin.

He was not proved wrong.

“Well, fuck, my boy’s one of those enlightened men who maybe shouldn’t call themselves men.”

“Only you could take the word enlightened and make it seem like a bad thing.”

“It is when it really means you’re a pussy.”

“We’re done.”

Axl didn’t say that.

Hattie did.

His head jerked toward the sound of her voice and he saw her standing in the doorway with his mother, both their faces flushed with anger.

Surprisingly, since she’d shown so little emotion around his father for as long as he could remember, his mother looked ready to detonate.

But Hattie…

Jesus.

Hattie.

She turned to Rachel and said, “I’m so, so sorry.” And then to Axl, she stated, “Axl, I’d like to go home now.”

He rose from the couch, having no clue how to play this, considering he was falling in love with her and she was going to eventually have to have a relationship with his parents.