All Chapters of My Sister’s Substitute : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

She didn't sleep.Which, truthfully, was the least surprising thing that had occurred to her over the past three weeks, and that was saying a lot, given the past three weeks had been a parade of a contractual marriage, a vitriolic mother-in-law, and nearly kissing her coma-induced sister’s fiancé in a library at midnight.Nearly.She stared at the ceiling in the dark and had a very direct, very stern, conversation with herself. It was nothing.It was the atmosphere. It was the champagne. It was the beautiful dress, the slow dance, and a man who knew how to look at you as though you were the only worthwhile thing in the universe that would ever capture his attention. It was romantic. It was situational. It was, and she intended to enforce it with a steel-plated rod, absolutely nothing she was going to pull out and turn over under the light of a morning lamp, for the simple reason that some things were better left buried in the dark where they could not inflict damage.She turned over.

The hotel was on the water.Of course it was.Irina stood at the floor-to-ceiling window of the suite and looked out at Biscayne Bay doing its thing in the afternoon light-all that blue, wide and certain and completely unbothered-and felt something in her chest do a small involuntary thing that she classified as appreciation for scenic views and absolutely nothing else.The suite was enormous. Two bedrooms on opposite ends, a shared living space in the middle with a sectional sofa, a coffee table, and a minibar that Irina had already investigated thoroughly. A terrace running the full length of the ocean-facing wall. Miami humming below, warm and loose and smelling like salt and somebody’s sunscreen.Neo was in the other bedroom doing something work-related because Neo in a new city was still Neo, and Neo didn’t do the whole arrive and decompress thing the way regular humans did. He transitioned between modes-working, present, working again-with an efficiency that was either admirable

The following evening was unscripted. The meetings had concluded, Garrett had managed a laugh, Patricia had nodded to her, and Neo had announced-in the quiet, undemonstrative way he did announcing-that the second Miami evening was theirs. Irina wasn't sure what to make of the information. They ate at a small, unpretentious place Neo found, devoid of white table cloths or private dining rooms, free of Patricia and her iron grip. It simply served good food, had plastic menus and a perpetually whirring ceiling fan, and looked out over water that gleamed absurdly at night. "This isn't what I expected," Irina admitted, looking around the room. Neo, already eating, asked, "What did you expect?" "An unmarked building.Another Garrett." "Garrett was yesterday's issue," he countered. "I want to eat fish tacos in peace tonight." She looked at him. "Neo McKinney eating fish tacos." "And that's surprising?" "Honestly? Slightly." "I'm a man of many complexities," he stated flatly. She laughed and

It spilled out sideways, like everything tended to do when you hadn't intended to say it.They were eating, just the two of them; apparently Margaret had eaten in her room - Irina suspected it had something to do with whatever Neo had said to her after Miami-and Sasha was out, doing whatever it was Sasha did on Friday nights that consisted of, based on the evidence available, being fantastic without looking like it was taking any effort.So it was just the two of them, at the vast dining table which they'd both quietly given up on entirely, instead shuffling together at one end, sitting adjacent rather than stretching the full length of it as if shouting at each other over a bowling lane.Mrs. Paulson had made something with chicken and herbs that was utterly life-altering, and Irina was about halfway through when Neo had asked how her afternoon had been and she had opened her mouth to say fine and what had come out was:"Do you ever feel like things are happening behind you?" Neo loo

By nine in the morning the McKinney Industries PR team was descending on the mansion like an expensive, stressed little army. Four of them; Irina counted them from the top of the stairs before deciding it was in her best interest to retreat back to the master suite like a sensible person. She could hear their voices, and the frantic chirping of phones, the specific, urgent vibration of people paid to clean up everyone else's messes; right now, they had a very definite clock running. Neo's voice occasionally cut through them, calm, precise-the kind of calm that isn't really calm at all, just held together by sheer force of will. Irina sat on the bed and listened to the shape of his words and allowed herself twenty minutes to be upset before she went down there to play her role. Apparently, her role was now very important. She used the full twenty minutes. --- The PR director, Claudette, was a tall woman with the weathered patience of someone who’d faced much worse before breakfast and