Seven

"And that's how I might be jobless and sleeping in animal shelters by the end of this month."

"You have a house." Raph stated, trying to smuggle some broccoli into her broccoli free plate. Of course, that'd be the first part of her narrative he'd latch onto.

"With a huge mortgage." She pushed the broccoli back to him.

"I'll never let you sleep anywhere that isn't comfortable." The broccoli was back to her plate, looking delicious. Legend knew better.

"That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me." She said softly and she meant it.

Raph blushed, chewing on his bottom lip.

"Eat your vegetables." He commanded gruffly as he forked up the broccoli and put it on her plate again.

"Why?" Legend muttered petulantly. "I don't need them."

"They're good for your eyes."

"Says the guy who eats them every day and still wears glasses."

"Smart mouth." He smirked at her.

"My mouth's not the only thing that's smart." Was she flirting with he that must not be flirted with?

"Oh, yeah?" His voice was husky, like warm coffee. Was he that must not be flirted with flirting back?

"So, tell me about this storyline you're planning?" He put some food in his mouth. He hadn't even been affected by their back and forth, but she'd almost died from overheating. Ever since yesterday, when he'd seen her naked and had looked like he was starving, Legend had been dreaming nonstop about her and Raph. Together. Doing all the wild things she'd taken a two-year hiatus from. God, her nether regions were probably creaking with under use. She watched Raph lick sauce from his lips and she almost came on the spot smack dab in a restaurant with a handful of other people.

"Yeah," she said distractedly. Now, the sauce licking had moved to those long fingers that looked oh so skilled. "That's the thing. I got nothing."

He paused before wiping his hands on a napkin. Live porn was nothing compared to the way Raph ate.

He ate like he was making slow, sweet love.

"Then, how are you gonna win?"

"I'm still working on it. I have 31 days, remember?"

"30 days. It's the 1st of October. "

She made a face at him.

"I know, Nanny McPhee."

"What's that? "He asked around a mouthful of food.

"It's a movie," She told him. "We should see it sometime. Maybe when I'm in Hotel Raph. You still haven't gotten around to doing that." Legend was very discreet. Or so she thought.

"You had the bubble bath by yourself the other day. You promised me a show." The husky voice was back again, his eyes going dark with delicious hunger.

"I gave you one." She responded with the bravery she wasn't feeling.

"I couldn't see. Everywhere was...bubbly."

Legend caused every bubble anywhere in the world, even in Bikini bottom.

"We could have another one."

He smiled and Nice Raph was replaced with Alpha Raph who looked ready to work her body hard from dusk up till dawn.

Legend grabbed her glass with shaky fingers, drowned the contents in one gulp and almost brought it back up through her nose.

"Don't kill yourself, sweetie." He said dryly, his expression amused.

"Thanks." She was still coughing hard.

"Anytime, love. Anytime."

***

They were leaving the restaurant when Legend suddenly remembered something very important. She had to have ice cream.

She stopped. Raph turned to her, an eyebrow arched in question.

"I want ice cream."

"What, now?"

"Yes."

"Can't it wait until we get home?"

Legend thought of mint and chocolate chip dough.

"No, it can't wait. It's a matter of life or death."

"How is you not getting what you want a matter if life or death?"

She shrugged. "The heartbreak might end up killing me."

He stared at her, and she gave him a wide smile that made her cheeks ache and Raph's resolve melt.

"Where the hell did your parents get you from?"

"They got me from the cabbage patch." She informed him cheerfully.

"C'mon, you big baby, I know a good ice cream place round the corner."

"Yaaay!" Legend fist pumped the air, shaking her tiny ass.

Legend was still doing her best to twerk when she bumped into someone.

"Sorry." She murmured with her cheeks flaming and turned back to give Raph who was guffawing the stink eye.

"Omg, watch where you're—well, well, well. Look who it is."

Legend would know that nasal, grating voice anywhere. People who had the misfortune of knowing this woman were always her bread and butter.

Legend was speaking from personal, bitter experience.

Amelia OMG Letto, known to all as Its Lia, Dah-ling! and to Legend as OMGleeeurgh, stared down at Legend with the you've-been-caught-in-the-cookie-jar look. Legend berated herself for feeling guilty, like she'd done something other than eye fucking her roommate.

"Legend, Dahling. It's been soo long. You don't even visit."

Ha-ha. That was a very funny one. If she knew where Amelia lived, she'd be in prison for multiple charges of vandalism, arson and assault.

"Amelia." She was playing the cordial card.

"I mean," Amelia carried on as if Legend hadn't said anything while waving her manicured hand around.

Legend wanted to bite those fingers off. "No one's heard from you since the incident." Her eyes widened in mock alarm.

"Oh, dear. I hope I didn't bring up anything painful, Dahling."

Yeah, right. After her stupid blog carried fake news about her for years, Amelia was now trying to play innocent? Legend wasn't buying it even if it walked up and slapped her across the face.

"Won't you introduce me to your friend?" Her catlike eyes sparkled with speculative interest as she sized up Raph, probably wondering if Raph was single and how that bit of information could help her blog and her ho-ish sex life.

"Wait a minute, have I seen you someplace before?"

Uh-uh. Legend turned frantically to Raph and used her eyes to tell him to 'Hide your face motherfucker!'

Raph stared steadily at Amelia, refusing to look at Legend. His mouth was in a thin line, his eyes were dark grey.

Legend was doomed, doomed, doomed.

Amelia's eyes did what everyone else's always did when they recognized Raph; it widened and widened until they looked just ridiculous.

"Raphael Perdome, as I live and breathe." Amelia was such an ass. Who still said as I live and breathe?

"Legend, you sly vixen. Couldn't steal the hot one so you settle for the other one. Real smooth. Wonder what my readers will have to say."

Okay, that was it. If she did something like poke out an eye or rip a very expensive designer blouse, Legend was so not to be blamed. Amelia could make a saint the devil.

Before she could do anything rash, Raph stood in front of her, his lips pressed in a thin line.

"That's enough. We were leaving."

"Oh, sure, Mr. Perdome. Don't let me keep you from what is offered to you so freely."

Ha. Imagine that. A ho calling Legend a ho. That had to be the funniest thing she'd heard in a while. She just had to laugh.

And she did. She threw her head back and laughed and laughed until people began to wonder if the Human Cotton Candy was okay. She wouldn't be surprised of security came to remove her forcefully from the restaurant's entrance. Honestly, she didn't give a shit.

"Oh, wow." She gasped as she faced an irritated looking Amelia who was tapping one foot repeatedly. Legend noticed how big her foot was.

Everyone knew about big footed women's tendency to be shitty bloggers.

"I'd love to stay and watch you embarrass yourself, but I have to go eat some ice cream with a really nice billionaire who isn't interested in lying bitches," Yup, 'take no prisoners' was the ace card now. "I would say nice talk, but then I'd be like you, a liar."

Amelia's mouth gaped wide open, wider than the gap she should really learn to give Legend.

Legend brushed past her with a smile calling out to Raph.

"Come along, honey."

She didn't even know where she was headed, she just wanted to be far away from Lady Venom.

Because no matter how much sass she'd given out, everything Amelia had said cut too, too deep.

***

"Would you stop looking at me?"

It didn't even occur to him to admonish her for speaking with food in her mouth and showing him what ice cream in the process of digestion looked like.

Raph was still equal parts amazed and concerned.

They must have slipped something in Legend's food at the restaurant because she'd been breathing fire like she was Zuko or something.

But now...now her hands were shaking while she tried to spoon more of the ice cream in her mouth.

"Maybe we should sit down." He said, gesturing towards a couple of park benches.

Legend nodded and walked away from the ice cream truck. She stopped and looked back at him when he didn't follow.

"What, are we supposed to wait for your private jet to come pick us up?" She asked, dryly.

"Coming." As soon as he got over the fact that Legend Freeman, who probably argued with the Creator while he was making her, hadn't uttered a word of protest to his statement.

Something was definitely wrong.

He followed her and they both sat.

"Okay, spit it out. What's wrong with you? How am I even sure you're Legend and not some evil clone?"

"Do you feel like I'm using you?" No dig at his lame joke, no sarcastic comments, she didn't even look up from her ice cream cup.

"What?"

She looked up then and her eyes were as blank as her voice.

"Do you feel like I couldn't get Logan, so I decided to go for you?"

"Whoa, we aren't even dating." He panicked. Legend was beginning to scare him with the way she was acting. She looked ready to jump off Kilimanjaro or the nearest mountain.

"Oh, right."

Those words somehow made him feel worse. She went back to stabbing the ice cream and muttering under her breath.

"Okay, look, no one cares what she thinks. She's just a two-bit blogger."

"Yeah, with over a million followers who are gonna hear of how I seem to spread my legs for the nearest Perdome man."

"I don't think you'd do that for my Dad." He attempted another joke. He really should stop doing those and focus on being his boring self. Legend was better at these things.

Lady Luck must have decided that he could only take so much being lame because Legend's lip curved a little to the side, and while on a normal day, it would've looked like she was having a stroke, today, Raph was taking anything he got.

"Is he handsome?" She quizzed.

"Particularly so."

"Meh, I love your Mum. Wouldn't do that to her. Besides, I don't even want to think of what she's gonna do to anybody stupid enough to do that."

"And there's the real answer. I mean, let's face it, you don't love anybody."

"I used to love my Nana." Legend corrected sadly.

Raph must have gotten a PHD in being an insensitive clod without his knowledge because he was turning into a real piece of work these days.

Legend's Nana had been the only family she'd had left after her parents had had an accident and she'd passed on when she was nineteen.

"I'm really sorry, Legend. I think my mouth's leaky." And boom, folks, another joke.

He just couldn't help himself.

"Do you think I would've been this miserable if she were around?"

Raphael stared at his slowly melting ice cream while he mulled the question over.

Finally, he gazed at her, sitting close to him, attired in rubbish as usual with those ice-blue eyes boring into him.

Shit, she was a fucking beauty.

"Well, I think what's meant to be will be. In the end, there's nothing we can do but let nature take its course."

Silence. Then, "You're full of shit, Raphael Perdome."

He chuckled. "What I mean is that I don't think she would've changed anything major. Your Nana wouldn't make decisions for you. She might offer advice, but in the end, you make those decisions that sometimes end up making you miserable. And it's not so bad to be miserable, y'know."

Legend smiled fully at him, and he thought that if the sky were to fall right now, he wouldn't notice.

"Well, I still say you're full of shit, but the good kind." She proclaimed.

"That didn't sound weird at all." He captured her chin, turned her face to his.

"Hey, I know you're feeling like you're alone but you're not. You have me. Kay?" He murmured gently.

She nodded. "Jeez, go ahead and make me cry, why dontcha?" Her tune was gruff.

"You? Cry? I'm sure you didn't even cry when Uncle Ben died."

"Why would I? He was old. All his friends were probably wondering what was keeping him from joining them in Retirement Home Heaven."

She got up and discarded her cup.

Raph gasped. "You have no heart." He mirrored her actions and stood while getting rid of his unfinished ice cream.

Legend held out her hand and he stared at it for a minute, wondering if he really should. He didn't want his brain getting any funny ideas that they were something more.

Legend quirked a brow. "Still waiting for that Private jet?"

He shook off all feelings of foreboding and linked his fingers through hers.

Her long, slim hand fit perfectly with his.

It felt right.

Why was everything whispering that this was wrong, then?