SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  Even more upsetting than the sight of her wearing my slippers and underwear, and eating my ice cream, however—and I say this as I stand in the doorway, gaping, humiliated, and furious, especially when she gets to the part about how I’ve named my vibrator Parry—is the fact that she’s obviously broken in to my apartment and made herself at home. By reading my diary.

  “It has a lock! What the hell are you doing? And why are you even here?” I hiss, slamming the door behind me and stomping over to snatch my diary away, although she’s obviously far enough into it that letting her get through the next few pages, until she reaches the end, won’t make that much of a difference.

  “Isn’t it obvious? I’m chilling out. Relaxing. And finding out just why it is that my little Sin has been avoiding people to the point of hiding herself away,” Tee says, her eyes narrowing when I let out a muffled scream and stomp towards my bedroom.

  I’ve been on my feet for sixteen hours straight, I haven’t slept in two days, and I now have exactly seven hours to sleep, shower, and shave off the fur pelt that has become my body before I have to get up and start doing it all over again. Ever since Hart Inc. decided to buy Helos, the restaurant that I’ve wanted to buy for years, my life has been nothing but endless days of nonstop work. I basically manage the restaurant, cook all the food, since the three sous-chefs decided to quit on me, and spend hours poring over the books to try to figure out why the place is hemorrhaging money the way it is.

  I’m beat up, overwhelmed, and so tired that I could fall asleep standing up, no matter how much my feet hurt.

  And now, this.

  “I’m not hiding, and I am not avoiding anyone. I’ve been working, which is more than I can say for you. What happened? Did all the angry people in the world suddenly realize that having a certifiably insane psychopath as a therapist isn’t exactly smart?” I snipe, fighting a smile.

  Ironically, my cousin Tee is an anger management therapist, and I say that it’s ironic because she’s the angriest person that I have ever met. She acquired the nickname Biter in high school, and that’s just in family circles. Plus, she’s literally the most violent person in our family, a feat that is amazing because all of us Sweets are angry. It’s in our blood.

  “Nah. I just thought that I’d take some time off and listen to some less angry people for a change. Technically, I’m on a short suspension, since Doc Travis didn’t take too well to my threatening to knife my secretary. Stupid old fart doesn’t understand that Gladdy and I have a thing going on,” she snorts, her red brows winging up as she follows me to my bedroom and flops down onto my bed.

  “It isn’t a thing. You threaten Gladdy with violence all the time,” I mutter, pitying the poor woman because she’s as enthralled with Tee as she is afraid.

  “Meh. You call it what you want. It’s foreplay to us. Now, about that diary…” she begins, her eyes taking on a sinister light that has my spine threatening to turn to jelly.

  About that goddamn diary and all the feelings that I poured out into it…

  SIN

  Chapter One

  Sinai

  Unrequited love? More like unrequited—and as yet unaccomplished—homicide!

  My nickname is Sin, a shortening of the name that my aunt Angelica, aka Honey Sweet, gave me. I’m named for the Sinai Peninsula or something like that, because my Aunt Honey has always been obsessed with Egypt and anything that comes out of it. Ask her one thing about the pharaohs, their death rites, or the pyramids, and she’ll be off and running as if her mouth just came out of a decade’s worth of silence. Not that she runs in the right direction, because when she pronounces the word pharaoh in her sweet Southern drawl, it comes out sounding like fara-yoh. But you kinda get the gist of who Honey is. She claims that she knows everything, thinks that she’s the leading expert on every subject, and is slightly unhinged—hence her love of Egyptology, by which I mean the whole death thing.

  I mean, she’ll start talking, and by the time you realize that she’s saying something “important,” all you can manage to think about is what the heck the English language ever did to her. Because, let’s face it, someone with an accent coming outta Carolina, living in Georgia, and speaking in Egyptian…is not that easy to understand.

  Anyway, I’m Sinai—or Sin, to my nearest and dearest. The irony of my name is that sin is the last thing I do. Unlike my cousins, I am the good girl of the family. The nice one. The one who actually tries, and works hard, and keeps pushing until something good happens. I’m the thinker, and always have been. I overthink everything and make choices based on what I think is right and wrong, although I think that sometimes the problem is that my definitions of right and wrong aren’t always quite…right.

  And yet right now, I can hardly stand myself enough to form a single decent thought. And the reason for that problem is…

  Paris Hart. Yeah, you heard me right. The man’s name is Paris Hart, so named because his mama, Athena “Lovey” Hart, is obsessed with all things pertaining to the Greek gods of the olden days. She had five sons and named them Adonis, Achilles, Ares, Paris, and Zeus. My cousin Cleo—full name Cleotapra, so named because Honey was so hopped up on pain meds that she spelled her crowning glory wrong—is engaged to the eldest Hart brother, Adonis. My other cousin, Rosetta Stone, is married to Zeus.

  She’s now Rosetta Stone Sweet-Hart, and yes, she really did do it that way because, according to Rosetta, she’s an incurable romantic—which we all know is bull hockey. Rose likes the thought of being romantic, but she’s about as romance-driven as a lump of clay. Anyhow, my point is, that makes us all family in some really weird and uncomfortable way. The Sweet and Hart clans are now officially family, which means that I will be seeing Paris up close and personal for the rest of my life. Not that the sight isn’t a good one, because Paris is a fine-looking man, with hair the color of the deepest, darkest chocolate, eyes like stormy gray clouds, and a face and body that attest to the notion that he was indeed created by some bygone Greek god. Basically, he’s hot. He’s pretty to look at, and he’s been as sexy as hell ever since he turned all broody.

  Unfortunately for me, the broody part started as a result of my…well, I don’t know what to call it, but we’ll skirt the edges of unnecessary rejection and leave it at that. I was a little too harsh, a little too mean, and a little too quick to tell Paris that I wasn’t interested in him. The truth, though, is that I am. Interested. And I always have been. It’s a cliché, but the moment that I saw Paris Hart, I swear to God that I felt the Earth shift beneath my feet. He was, is, and probably always will be a shining beacon among men.

  Unfortunately, he’s a shining beacon that I can’t get too close to because I will get burned.

  “You’re staring,” Tee whispers from beside me, her red hair, so like mine, tickling down my forearm when she leans closer to get in my face. “It’s sad and disgusting the way you’ve been pining for that man. Has anyone ever told you that you’re an asshole? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you rejected a man you very obviously seem to want.”

  I hiss back at her, snapping my teeth as I drag my gaze away from Paris and try to focus my stare on Tee. She’s my favorite cousin—though don’t tell the others, or they’ll do things to me that the good Lord will send them to hell for. In my world, Tee is the only person who truly understands me and will stick by me no matter what. She was with me, as was everyone else, when I gave Paris a piece of my mind, but, unlike everyone else, she still stuck by my side, even if she didn’t agree with the way I handled things.

  Which is saying a lot, because Nefertiti—Tee—is one of the most callous people ever to walk the face of the Earth. She once told an overweight mother that turning her eight-year-old daughter into a whale was not just bad parenting, but also an obvious attempt to implode the kid’s life out of some projected form of hatred for herself.

  Whatever that means.

  The point is, Tee has no tact, even less sensitivity, and absolutely zero guilty
feelings when it comes to speaking the truth. And so she, too, gave me a slap-down later, after everyone else had kicked my ass to the curb. Her exact words were, “Sin, sweetie, being honest doesn’t mean you have to be nasty. Of course, sometimes nasty is fun, but being nasty to a man who did nothing more than want you is a little too mean, even for my standards.” And with that, I finally pulled my head out of my ass and admitted to myself that I’d fucked up. Big time.

  Let me explain.

  When Cleo first met Adonis on a blind date that their moms had set up, the rest of us got stuck in some way tolerating one of the other Hart men. Rosetta got Zeus—even though she’d been convinced that she was in love with Achilles, Alex got stuck with Achilles, Tee got paired up with Ares, and I ended up with Paris gazing at me with puppy dog eyes. And so, ever since that meeting, and especially since our consequent familial merging, I had to deal with Paris. He texted me, called me, showed up at my job constantly, and even broke into my apartment to surprise me with dinner and a movie.

  He was just everywhere, at a time when I needed to be alone to lick my wounds. Everywhere I looked, there he was, and while that wouldn’t normally be a bad thing, it was something that I just couldn’t deal with at the time. For personal reasons of my own, I just couldn’t look past his smiling, impish face and accept that his attention was a good thing.

  Now, thinking back on it, though, I know that he saved me. His constant harassment and adorable, thick-skinned attitude gave me the distractions I needed to keep going—and keep going I did. I see that now, but, as with everything, only through hindsight. It’s only now, thinking back on that rough time, that I realize that I was wrong to push him away. He was there when I needed him, and he kept me from sinking. I just didn’t know it.

  “Sin?” Tee whispers, sidling over until she’s right in front of me and blocking my view of Paris, her blue eyes filled with worry. “Are you okay?”

  Okay? Not really. I haven’t been okay for a while now, I think, a shot of resentment and pain slamming into me when I hear Seth gurgle from where he’s being fawned over and doted on by the Sweets and Harts combined. He’s Alex’s son, and the first grandchild to be born into the family. He’s adorable, perfect, and so sweet that I hate myself for avoiding him the way I do.

  I keep telling myself that it’s because I don’t like kids, and, to a certain degree, that’s true. But really, I know why I don’t hold him all that often, and why, when I do, I try to pass him off lickety-split. Being here, in the home of Lovey and Cree Hart for a big family dinner, isn’t easy for me—and worse, I’m surrounded by everything that I’ve been trying to forget for over a year now.

  “Did I ever tell you that I finally caved and went on a date with Lola’s brother?” I ask, my mind drifting back to that place, back to the memories that I almost let drown me.

  Tee jerks as if slapped, and gives me a startled look filled with confusion.

  “No. You said that you didn’t like Coleman.”

  I didn’t. At first. He was smug, self-assured, and vain, and not in the way that Adonis is vain, but in a way that made him seem as if he saw women as inferior. No woman is attracted to that, and as a card-carrying feminist, I can say for sure that I hated him almost from the moment I met him. But fast-forward a few months’ worth of knowing the guy, of being whittled down, and of Cole himself making all the right moves and saying all the right things, and what you get is my becoming what my mom would call a lust-driven fool.

  Basically what that means is, he played me. When he figured out that his holier-than-thou, “me man, you inferior woman” routine disgusted me, he switched tactics. He started acting like a nice guy, and somewhere during the months that I knew him, I started to think that maybe I had misjudged him somewhat. That I’d gotten him wrong. I’d misunderstood. I’d judged too quickly.

  Cole Veldman was hot and successful, and he paid attention to me. So yeah, I slept with him, and afterward, we started what I considered a relationship. Wrongly. I was so fucking wrong.

  “Well, I did,” I say, sighing loudly when I see Paris vying for a chance to hold Seth.

  The baby coos, going to his uncle’s arms with a soft smile that wrenches at my heart.

  “No way. That douchebag was a certified caveman. He told me, the few times I went to Helos, that he didn’t like the thought of women working. He thought that it would endear him to me, as if I would agree with his ‘females are too delicate to work’ theories.”

  Knowing Tee, I’m sure it enraged her, and knowing just how anti-chauvinist she can be, it’s a wonder she didn’t punch him in the groin for his male-centric views. Not that all men think that way. In fact, I know that most don’t. But Cole did, and I was just too blinded by his attention to realize that.

  I snort, somehow managing to keep the violence I feel for the guy to myself. It’s not easy, but with the therapy I’ve been going to, I can just about breathe through my ever-simmering anger towards the man.

  “Yep. He made all the right moves, said all the right things, and then wham! I was hooked. We dated for close to four months,” I admit, shame and regret filling me so fiercely that I have to hold my breath to keep in a scream of disgust.

  Self-loathing fills me just from thinking about what I did, the ever-present anger and sorrow so deep that I have to admit that I still don’t sleep very well. It’s a secret that I keep closely guarded—so closely, in fact, that it’s become a festering sore that I know will eventually poison me from the inside out.

  “Goddamn, Sinai. I didn’t know,” she whispers, her eyes searching mine. “Is that why…?” she nods her head back at Paris.

  “A little,” I admit, the half-truth turning to acid in my mouth.

  I wasn’t in a good place when I met Paris Hart, and emotionally, I was struggling so much that it took an almost Herculean effort for me to keep myself in check. Not that I don’t like Paris, or anything like that. The obvious answer is that I really do. The man is sexy, funny, and sweet, and behind all that easy-going jokiness is a swirling morass of deep, dark, and broody.

  He’s exactly perfect for me.

  Or was, I remind myself, when I hear Axel, Seth’s twin, gurgling up at my Aunt Honey. He was perfect for me—past tense—because, even now, knowing how much he hates me, I can’t stop myself from looking over at him and seeing the tender way he looks at that baby. It crushes me a little…

  A lot. It crushes me a lot, because that right there is the reason that I cannot be perfect for Paris Hart.

  “Look, I know that you think that I should know everything about that situation, seeing as how I read your diary and all, but you didn’t put any of this crap in those pages,” Tee points out, causing me to chuckle darkly and glare back at her.

  I think back to how I walked into my apartment a few days ago and saw her pawing her filthy way through my diary, reading my innermost thoughts and feeding off my misery and humiliation. It was enough to make me consider, just this once, killing Tee—or at least attempting to. I say attempt, because at this point, she’s become enough of a legend that I don’t even think that The Undertaker could put her into the ground.

  I’m not gonna lie: she scares me a little. A lot, really, if you consider the fact that Nefertiti regularly does things like break into your apartment at ass o’clock in the morning just so that she can sit in the darkest corner of your bedroom and stare at you all night. I almost died of a heart attack this morning!

  “Because I don’t want anyone knowing my business, Nefertiti!” I hiss, turning my back towards the room because I can’t keep staring at Paris like some sick stalker. It’s getting pathetic.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. We know everything about each other. Remember what Uncle Jack said? The best way for us to lie for each other to law enforcement is if we know everything,” she reminds me.

  “That didn’t help me any when I was being questioned about that guy at Club Freedom and his missing ear.”

  “Pfffft. I would never, ever bite a co
mplete stranger’s ear off,” she scoffs, her eyes going dead, which tells me without a doubt that she’s lying.

  “First off, you knew Greer Victor, so that makes him the opposite of a stranger. Second, I saw you do it. Half the club saw you do it when you launched yourself onto his back and locked your jaw around his ear.”

  “That was not me! Even Ted the bartender said so.”

  “Ted the bartender is so sickeningly in love with you that he’d lie to a priest in order to protect you.”

  “Can I help it if people like me, Sinai? I’m likeable!”

  “That’s not the point I was making!” I hiss, keeping my voice low because Jack and Honey can smell blood, and having them participate in this conversation is not something I need right now.

  I once saw them sit Cleo down on a wooden chair in the basement for “a talk” that ended with her confessing every sin she’d ever committed. We were all down there for six hours. Essentially, Cleo did a lot of sinning for a girl who was no older than fourteen, and Jack and Honey Sweet were obviously trained by Mossad.

  “You weren’t making a point, idiot. You were trying to get me off topic, something that you know for a fact will not happen. Now, spill it, you stupid ass. What did Cole do to you that would make you pass up the opportunity to go for Paris?” she asks, her left eye going slightly narrower than her right.

  In Tee-speak, that means that she’s more than willing to get violent in order to get answers out of me. Usually, I play along with her and just spill my guts. It’s easier, it’s safer, and I don’t have to deal with waking up at five in the morning only to scream my head off when I see a glowing ember in the darkness, like I did that one time. Thank God it was the glowing tip of a cigarette and not one of her eyes.

  Although I am not saying for certain that one of her eyes wasn’t glowing. I can’t. Not after Father Bryan replaced our other priest at church and asked Tee to stop coming to mass.