PLAYBOY PRINCESS (gxg) ✓

24. Rory Preston

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                IT HAD JUST OCCURRED TO RORY, NOW, TO ASK.

                "Hey, Paris?"

                They were parked in front of her mother's house—a one-story brick condo in a suburban neighbourhood. The small town of Squamish in Vancouver.

                Paris made a humming sound. Acknowledgement.

                Now, as she was checking her darkened lashes in the car mirror, Rory's chest caught. She was so lovely that Rory wanted to capture the artistic edges of her bold jaw, her full mouth.

               Rory's fingertips itched for her sketchbook.

               Focus, she thought.

               Rory said, "You told your mom I was coming, right?"

               Paris hesitated. Her eyes sliding towards Rory.

               "It'll be fine," she said. "She'll be happy that I—"

               "You didn't tell your mom you were bringing me for the weekend?" Rory said incredulously. "You were planning to throw me to the slaughter?"

               Paris rolled her eyes.

               "Rory, this isn't a slaughter. This is my mother's house. You'll be fine."

               "I will most definitely not be fine! I—"

               Paris set down her compact mirror with the final touches on her makeup. 

              "You're telling me, Princess, that you once went bike riding down Death Road. You once went cliff diving off La Quebradas. You even once went whitewater rafting in the DMZ! And you're scared of going inside a nice little suburban condo?"

               "I'm scared of meeting your mother,"  Rory hissed.

               Paris's mouth softened into a grin. "You get nervous meeting parents?"

               No, the truth was that Rory didn't get nervous meeting parents.

               Rory didn't meet parents at all.

               Her relationships had never been serious. Never more than one-night stands. Just like Declan, she had treated the lovers in her life like flings.

               And even with Paris, who had been the most important relationship in her life, Rory had never met her parents.

              "Do you think she'll like me?" Rory whispered suddenly.

              Maybe it was crazy. To be scared of such a simple thing, like meeting the mother of the girl she was falling for.

              And after everything she had done—

              After every stupid, dangerous, reckless stunt she had pulled in her life, this shouldn't have seemed like something so monumental to her.

              It shouldn't have been so terrifying.

              Paris climbed out of the car and opened the trunk. Unfolding Rory's wheelchair before she rolled it up the gravel driveway to the passenger side.