HUGE HOUSE HATES: Chapter 9

“What the hell is that smell,” I shout, screwing up my face in disgust as I push the front door closed behind me. Mrs. Henderson doesn’t cook for us, so one of my brothers must be responsible for the rank smell of rotting fish. They better not have cooked for me because there is no way I’m eating something that smells this bad.

River appears from the kitchen grim-faced. “You better go clean out your closet,” he mutters.

“My closet?”

He nods his head to the stairs. “Cora left us a fragrant gift each. I don’t think the smell will ever leave this house.”

“What kind of fragrant gift?” I ask slowly.

“What the fuck, Mark? Can’t you smell it? A fucking fish.”

“She put a fish in your closet?” I ask incredulously.

“In all our closets. I’ve tossed mine in the trash and scrubbed the shelf it was on with every fucking cleaning product in this place, but the smell is still lingering. I think it’s in the fibers of my clothes.”

“Oh, hell no,” I say, starting to jog up the stairs. The smell gets worse with every step I take, forming a foul crescendo in the upstairs hallway. All I can think about are my expensive suits that are all dry-clean only. It’ll cost me a fortune to rid them of the smell.

When I open the door to my room, the odor takes my breath away. I put my arm over my nose, heading straight for the closet. I don’t see the fish immediately, but when I do, I gag. It’s not just a fillet of salmon. It’s a whole fish with a head, eyes, fins, and scales. It looks at me with an accusing stare. Why the hell have you pissed off a woman enough that she’s wasted me in revenge?

I grit my teeth, heading back into my room to find something I can bag it up in for disposal, and while I do, I swear and grumble, cursing my brother and his stupid vengeful attitude. I hope Cora left him a whole fucking school of stinky fish because I don’t deserve this.

As I wrap the fish in a plastic grocery bag, noise echoes from downstairs and footsteps begin to thud closer. Expecting it to be the rest of my brothers, I stick my head into the hallway. My mouth is open when I find Cora, flanked by five friends, holding their noses, and staring at me.

“You know, you guys really need to clean this house,” Cora says, screwing up her face. “Even frat houses never smelled this bad.”

There’s a ripple of laughter behind her as she uses a key to unlock the master suite. “Don’t worry, guys. My room smells great, and I have candles to burn off any smell that spreads.”

A girl with curly black hair stares at the bag in my hand with wide eyes. There’s a guy with Cora who looks like Travis Barker’s younger better-looking brother, and two girls who look like they were cheerleaders at college.

I’m too shocked at Cora’s bravado to say anything before they disappear into her room and close the door behind them.

By the time Alden, Danny, and Tobias have removed all the offending fish and cleaned and aired their rooms we’re all starving and sworn off fish for life. Alden orders Chinese food, and we gather in the kitchen to regroup. “I can still smell it,” Tobias grumbles. He brings the bare skin of his forearm to his nose and inhales. “I swear the smell has gotten into my skin.”

Danny leans forward to sniff the general area around Tobias. “I don’t smell anything, Tobe. I think it’s all in your head.”

“It’s not. I swear.”

“She got us good.” River shakes his head and then chuckles darkly. “I reckon Danny’s cursing the day he started this fucking vendetta shit.”

“No fucking way!” Danny shouts. “Where’s the fun in pranking someone who’s just going to cry about it? Cora is proving herself to be a very worthy adversary.” He says the last part in a faux British accent, and I roll my eyes at my brother’s stupidity. I swear he needs to find a good woman who will keep him on the straight and narrow. Left to his own devices, he’s a wild animal with the sense of a gnat.

“You’re intending to keep this going?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

“Hell yeah. She’s not going to get away with any of it. If she wants to up the ante, we will too.”

“When you say ‘we,’ are you including me in your ridiculous game?”

“Of course,” Danny says. “If you’re not for us, you’re against us. Do you want to be against us, Mark?”

Before I get a chance to answer, the doorbell chimes, signaling the takeout’s arrival, and feet begin to thunder down the stairs. Danny is up and out of his seat like a sprinter, already anticipating that Cora might try to steal the food before we get a chance to eat it. I follow, worrying that I will need to step between them if things get heated. I know my brother would never be physically aggressive towards a woman, but he has a sharp tongue, and this whole thing is escalating out of control. In the hallway, we all gather, and a staring standoff begins. Eventually, I open the front door to find a delivery driver with what looks like enough food and drink to feed the five thousand.

It’s not Chinese food.

“Delivery for Cora,” the delivery driver says, reaching out to hand me a bag filled with bottles and cans.

Cora appears next to me, leaning quickly to snag the bag before me. “It’s party time, guys,” she squeals, and her friends whoop and cheer. Coming up the drive is the delivery driver from our favorite Chinese restaurant with a moderately sized bag of food. Cora hands the bags to her friends, and they begin to take everything into the den. As I’m retrieving our takeout, music starts pumping out of the speakers, loud enough that it rattles the pictures on the walls.

Oh, hell no. I’m not dealing with this shit tonight, not after everything.

I shove the bag into Danny’s hands and slam the front door. Storming toward the den, I fly into the room to find Cora and her friends dancing with drinks in their hands and way fewer clothes than they were wearing a second ago. Apart from the guy friend, everyone else is dressed in crop tops and snug jeans. Cora’s stripped off to a solid black bralette and booty shorts, and my chin drops until my jaw strains. Holy fuck, she looks good.

Like all my teenage wet dreams come to life.

The way she throws her head back and laughs, then takes a long pull of beer, her throat working to swallow, makes me entirely lose whatever anger was bubbling inside me and the thread of all the yelling I intended to do.

One of her friends notices me and nods at Cora, who turns to the doorway. Her eyebrows rise in a challenge, and I roll my lips between my teeth, my mind whirring over what to do.

This girl needs a firm slap on her ass. She needs harsh fingers gripping her hair and a fuck so deep and hard she won’t be able to sit down for a week. Thinking these kinds of thoughts is so out of character for me, but my mouth waters at the memory of her rounded ass in those skimpy panties and what it would look like with a red handprint the size of mine emblazoned on her skin.

All this fucking around Danny’s been doing…is it because he has a crush on this girl? Maybe if he just fucked her, all the ridiculous pranking and vindictiveness would disappear. Then again, she’d probably hate him for using her, and we’d be back to square one.

“You can come in, you know,” Cora drawls, dancing with a seductive sway to her hips. Behind me, I feel my brothers gathering. “We have enough food and drink for everyone.”

I nod at the table, which is spilling over with the delivery. “That must have cost you a fortune,” I say, eyeing the champagne.

“Not me,” she says brightly. “I’m a starving potter, remember? Randolph’s credit card was kind enough to bear the cost.”

Alden splutters into a cough behind me, and Danny mutters a stream of foul curse words.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tobias says, resting a hand on my shoulder.

Cora and her friends grin, one is dancing in front of her, and another is pressed against her ass. It’s like the most delicious sandwich I’ve ever seen in my life, but just one taste, and I’d be poisoned like Snow White.

Shit.

As I finally find the strength to tear my eyes from our gorgeous soon-to-be stepsister and follow my brothers into the kitchen, I have no idea what will happen next.

Randolph will of course get that credit card bill and no doubt hit the roof.

Not that Cora will care even slightly.

And from the tensed bunch of Danny’s shoulders, he’s on the war path again.