Love in the Dark (LarssonSiblingsSeries#1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - EDWARD

EDWARD

I enjoy showing off our whiskey collection to people. I set out five whiskey glasses on the glass bar table and pour two fingers of whiskey into each of them. It's the expensive kind and Delilah doesn't seem to approve as she turns her nose up at the taste of the first shot of the forty-year-old malt.

She hacks into her hand. "It burns! It burns so bad."

I pass over a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and she takes a huge gulp before wiping her mouth and smelling the next on the lineup. I savour the toffee flavours on my tastebuds, just observing as she grabs the bottle to study the label.

"Is this expensive?" she asks, unscrewing the lid off the one she didn't like to inhale it again.

I nod. "It's about twenty."

"Twenty pounds?" she replies.

I don't understand why she usually hides her body underneath those ugly-ass dresses, it's fucking phenomenal. Curves for days, she's got all the nice bits to squeeze and her skin has the smoothest olive tones to match the chocolate brown eyes that are currently assessing me.

"Twenty thousand."

"Thousand?" She puts the whiskey bottle down and lets her mouth drop open. "Are you kidding me?"

Slowly, I lower into the armchair beside the bar with the second whiskey in my hand. "It's the cask that makes it so expensive. It's strong alcohol."

"It tastes like firefighter fluid," she replies.

That makes me chuckle. It seems that a lot of things she does brings me joy. I can't stand it. I'm not wired like other men. I don't do the emotional shit. The thought of it makes my skin crawl.

"It's called Balvenie. Is it your first time trying it?"

Her expression softens when she catches my eye, and something loosens in my chest. "No, I always buy dad the same whiskey for Christmas. I travel down to York every year to buy it from the only alcohol shop that seems to sell it and we sip on it all night while watching films."

There's so much love in her words for her father and it strikes a chord with me because I have the same feelings for my family.

I stretch my legs out. "That's sweet."

"Yeah." She blinks down to the water bottle in her hands and then back up to me. "I didn't expect you to be such a good dancer.

Thrown back to the dance floor, I slide my arms over the back of the chair to grab hold of the ridges at the end, remembering the closeness and the smell of her skin and strawberry shampoo filling my nostrils.

My heart pounds faster.

"You didn't think I would have rhythm?"

She blinks several times. "Not really. You don't seem like the type to hit the dance floor and you're quite tall which makes think you'd be clumsy."

"Gee, thanks." I bark.

She opens those chocolatey eyes, raises her delicate little hand to her mouth and lets out the sweetest little giggle. Fuck me. I'm losing it.

"I'm tall as well. I get the struggle," she blurts, pushing her hair away from her pink cheeks.

I down the whiskey, dump the empty glass on the table next to me to climb to my feet. "Clumsiness is special to you, it seems because I can balance on one leg with a finger on my nose."

I think she's about to say something, but gets distracted by the sounds of the door being pushed open. My brother enters with a silly grin on his face, throwing his body down on the couch across from me.

Delilah's eyes light up, turning my mood sour. "Levi, how're you?"

"I'm good, thanks, beautiful. And you?" He replies, wiggling his eyebrows at me when I mentally send five daggers at his long body.

She dips her head. "I'm good. I'm good. Hey, to settle this, are you clumsy?"

He seems bewildered. "Clumsy? Erm, not really. Why?"

I watch her shoulders slump down. "Oh, well, it's just because my mum always dismissed my clumsiness as a kid for my height. And, I thought because you're probably six foot seven, it must be the same for you."

"What?" she asks grumpily when she finds me studying her over there.

"Nothing." I smile, and I feel frustrated and delighted, all at once. "I can't believe you're taking this to heart. Does it really matter if you fall over more?"

She smirks then. "No, I guess not. So, Levi, do you like whiskey?"

She amuses me. The way she pulls those interesting faces at my brother as he tells her that he would rather drink a drunk guy's piss than that shit in a bottle. He's a real loser sometimes.

"Oh, right," she replies, looking like she regrets asking him. "Well, I don't think it's quite that bad."

Levi stretches out so far on the sofa that his knees hang over the edges. "I came up here to escape dad's friends. If one of them asks when I'm going to get a real job once more, I will knock them out."

"What do you do for work, Levi?" asks Delilah after pulling some lipgloss from her bag.

Levi grins. "I customise skateboards for people. I have a store on Etsy. Been open a few years now."

"I need to know more." She slathers her lips, dumps it back inside her bag before tipping forward on her seat. "That sounds super exciting."

A song plays around us from the speakers on the corner wall, a sassy one, and I find myself listening to it as a distraction from my tight body.

Levi rests his hands behind his head as he gets real comfortable. "I always loved to graffiti on my things, so I turned those passions into a career. It's pretty rewarding when someone trusts you with spraying all over there favourite thing."

"Oh, so people send you their skateboards?" she replies.

"Yeah, or they can choose the new ones we sell," he says, flicking his eyes on me. "Dude, what's that look for?"

My smile fades, my forehead straining when I frown at him. "What look?"

He snorts. "That smile. It looked demonic. Like this—!" I was not pulling that face.

I raise my eyebrow to warn him, but he folds into a laugh anyway, rubbing his hand over his stomach because he probably filled his face with too much good food.

"Was not," I grumble, realising that I sound just as childish as him. "Jesus, I'm going downstairs to watch Betty sing. Dee, you coming too?"

Thrown out of her chair, she simply blinks at me, hurrying to the door. "Oh, yeah, I did have a song request.

Levi hauls his body from the couch on a loud groan and heads over here. "Hey, Delilah, wait up, babe. I wanted to ask how your decorating is going?"

Is he purposely pissing me off today?

Even with her height, she has to tip her head back to look up at him. "Oh, erm, you know, it's going as well it can when you have a million and one jobs on your to-do list!"

"You so deserve this opportunity," he says, pressing his chest out in my direction.

And, I get out of there as fast as my feet will take me.

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