Free COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) by Glenna Sinclair

baby began to fuss. I carefully slipped him out of his car seat and settled back on the couch.
    “We’ll be out of your way as soon as we can be.”
    Cole started to argue. But then he stopped.
    It was that easy.

Chapter 10
     
    Cole
    “It’s not that big of a deal. I don’t mind spending the money.”
    “You don’t get it, Cole.” Amber glanced at me over her shoulder even as she was moving the clothes on the rack. “I don’t want to have this long tab that I owe you when things go sour.”
    “What makes you think things will go sour?”
    “Things always go sour when more than one person lives in a house. It’s just human nature.”
    “I don’t know who you’ve lived with, but I managed to share a bedroom with Peter for sixteen years and we didn’t have any problems.”
    She rolled her eyes. “Somehow I doubt the two of you shared a bedroom.”
    “We did.” I held up my hand in a boy scout-style swear. “My parents believed that it was a rite of passage for two boys to survive sharing everything.”
    “But it was a huge room, right?”
    “Well, it wasn’t as small as the room Megan had. But it wasn’t huge.”
    “Sure. You probably had so much space that there was never any danger of Peter’s stuff wandering onto your side of the room and vice versa.”
    The truth was, the room Peter and I shared was actually two rooms when my parents bought the house, but they had a wall torn down. So she was right, we had plenty of room to spread out without encroaching on each other. We also each had our own bathroom. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.
    “We’re wandering from the point. You need clothes. I want to buy you clothes.”
    “And I’d rather you didn’t.”
    “So what are you going to do? Keep wearing the two same outfits day in and day out?”
    She studied the rack of skirts she was standing in front of, running her fingers over the fine, expensive material.
    “We could go back to my place and get my things.”
    “We can and we will. But you need a couple of nice outfits. My mom is the social queen of Houston, and she’ll expect you to attend at least one or two of her parties.”
    Amber turned to face me, the stroller where PJ—short for Peter Junior—was nestled in his little car seat between us.
    “I accept the fact that your family wants to buy things for PJ. And I get that you want me to stay with you until I’m fully recovered and your sister is satisfied that that guy who was following me won’t be following me anymore. But that doesn’t mean you have to feel responsible for buying every little thing I need.”
    “Okay. But there is a party coming up…”
    She groaned, turning back to the skirts. I watched her pick through them, not sure if I should admire her for being so stubborn or annoyed that she had to argue with everything I said. She’d been at my place for just over a month and she barely let me help with anything. She didn’t even want me getting up in the middle of the night with the baby, even though I could see she was clearly exhausted. It was damned frustrating.
    Megan didn’t trust her. She’d called me and told me about the photograph that showed Amber at Peter’s funeral. She thought that proved that Amber was lying to us. The thing was, I was already aware of that. I knew the moment she told me she didn’t know that she was lying. But I also suspected that Amber had a reason for lying. She was too stubborn, too determined not to look like she was using us for money, to be playing out some sort of scam. There had to be more to it than that.
    I moved around the stroller, reaching down to move the thin blanket out of PJ’s face, then lifted a simple black skirt off the rack.
    “This one would look perfect on you.”
    Amber glanced at me. “You think so?”
    “Yeah. Go try it on.” When she hesitated, I forced it into her hand and then pushed her toward the dressing rooms. “When’s the last time you had something brand new?”
    She glanced