Then it was time for Magnus’s panel. The enormous room was packed, but Edie managed to find a seat in the audience between a Brony and a Sailor Scout. From her vantage point, she watched the men on the panel discuss Warrior Shop, its infamous buyout for two billion dollars, and what the Sullivan brothers had planned for the future. Magnus quickly had the panelists—and the audience—won over with his charisma and humor, and when he deflected questions about his upcoming projects, it was good natured.

They asked questions about Warrior Shop, the ideas behind it, the creativity, the coding, and Magnus talked for what felt like hours, discussing how he and Levi had coded it while in college, then shopped it around to investors, and when that failed, they’d put it up on the Internet themselves by maxing out their credit cards to pay for everything.

Occasionally a creativity question would come up, concepts about the game, the story behind the characters, and Magnus would deflect those questions with a smile. “My brother, Levi, could answer those if he were here, but unfortunately he’s stuck in traffic.”

And each time he avoided a question, Edie gave a little wince of sympathy. Where was Levi? Why was he hanging Magnus out to dry when he should have been here assisting him? Why was it that Magnus always had to cover for his brother?

When the panel was over, Magnus and the others got a standing ovation, but Edie’s heart hurt for Magnus. She could see the lines of tension on his face and knew they had to do with his brother. Why couldn’t Levi be reliable and devoted . . . like Bianca?

Then again, Bianca was sometimes devoted to the point of smothering, so maybe there was a happy medium somewhere out there.

Ignoring the ache in her knee, Edie headed for the stage and waited for Magnus to finish greeting people. She smiled brightly at him when his attention fixed on her. “That was a great talk.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” he told her, grabbing her arm and pulling her along behind him. “Come with me. We’re going to go back to our room.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, perplexed, and then Magnus was dragging her behind him through the crowds at high speed. Her knee protested the quick movements after hours of walking, but she suspected Magnus was lost in thought at the moment and had forgotten about her old injury. He was always super careful of her during sex, so it wasn’t like him to be thoughtless. She did her best to keep up, stumbling after him.

They crossed the large convention floor and rounded the corner to the nearest elevator. The line to go upstairs stretched around the corner. Magnus considered it, then shook his head. “This way,” he said, dragging Edie along again. “There’s another elevator down here—”

He stopped short, nearly running into Levi, who was pulling a carry-on behind him. Three costumed girls surrounded him. At the sight of his brother, Levi’s face lit up. “Hey, bro!” His gaze moved along to Edie, holding hands with Magnus, and his smile faded a bit. In fact, he looked downright unhappy to see Edie with Magnus, which stung. “Hi, Edie.”

“Levi,” Magnus said, his voice utterly pleasant and so out of character for how he was acting. “Glad to see you could make it.”

“Oh man,” Levi said, throwing his hands up dramatically. “These ladies will tell you, traffic is a beast out there. I’ve been stuck for hours—”

“I’m sure,” Magnus said, cutting him off. “Edie and I were just leaving.”

Levi tilted his head. “Why’s she here anyhow?”

Magnus’s eyes narrowed. “She’s a consultant for a game I’m thinking about creating. One with cats.”

“She is?”

Edie looked up at Magnus in surprise. She was? Why wasn’t he telling his brother she was here with him as his date?

“We can talk about it later,” Magnus said to Levi. “We’re going upstairs. We need to rest.” He started to head for the stairs, and for the first time, Edie protested. “I can’t,” she told him. “The stairs will kill me.”

Magnus’s expression softened as he looked down at her. “I’m being thoughtless, aren’t I? Are you okay? Do you need to sit down for a moment?”

“Oh, shit,” Levi said, then gestured toward the lobby. “That’s right. You want me to get a wheelchair for you, Edie?”

“I don’t need a fucking wheelchair,” she told him, irritated.

He gave her an abashed look. “Gee, I’m sorry. I was just trying to be helpful.”

The other girls gave her a horrified look, as if she were the one out of line. Fuck that. She threw her hands up. She wasn’t an invalid. She just had a bad goddamn knee and had spent too much time on it today. “I am going to go wait in line for the elevator,” she told Magnus. “I’ll see you up at the room. Why don’t you and Levi go have a talk somewhere?”

He moved forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be up shortly.”

She nodded, and the brothers left. She noticed that as Magnus moved away, Levi was giving them another one of those strange looks. She shot him the bird, because if he thought his brother could do better than a girl like her, he could go fuck himself. She was just as normal as the last girl. Maybe a bit bitchier, but it was because people like Levi tried to offer her a wheelchair and everyone else acted like she was the jerk for being offended.

Everyone but Magnus, that is. Brownie points in his direction for that, at least.

Eventually it was Edie’s turn for the elevator, and she went up to their room, grabbed a drink from the minibar, and filled the bathtub with scorching hot water. Icing her knee would probably be better for it, but fuck it. She was going to hurt in the morning anyhow. Might as well enjoy a hot bath and a drink. As the tub filled, she downed her tiny bottle of alcohol and grabbed two more, because she was feeling good.

Within ten minutes, she was toasted. The bubble bath was heavenly, the tub a luxury she never got to enjoy at home since the tub was upstairs with Bianca. And she was having a great damn time, because being in the big, bubbled tub reminded her of the scene from Pretty Woman. It was a similar situation, wasn’t it? Big sexy guy with ridiculous amounts of money got a great hotel room and his broke-ass booty call got to enjoy the bathroom. Of course, in Pretty Woman, the hotel wasn’t full of nerds in costumes, and Edie wasn’t a hooker, but those were semantics.

She could still belt out a Prince song just like Julia Roberts.

Chapter Thirteen

Magnus was in an absolutely shitty mood when he returned to the hotel room. The worst thing about conventions was that he had to constantly be in “on” mode. He couldn’t be rude to a fan who stopped him for an autograph, because they didn’t know that his brother had bailed on him or that Levi had insulted his girlfriend and Magnus had dragged her all over the convention without thinking about her knee. They didn’t know Magnus was weeks behind on his projected schedule and that all he wanted to do was go upstairs and fuck Edie until she screamed his name. They didn’t know he’d signed thirty autographs five minutes beforehand. A fan wouldn’t know any of that, so he did his best to be gracious and friendly, because he remembered what it was like to be shut down without being heard.

But today wasn’t his best day for a con. It had started out promising enough. He had Edie to himself for a few days, with no cats and no juggling of schedules. He’d been looking forward to hanging around the conference with her, seeing what fans were excited about, hearing feedback from peers and fans both, and getting his head back into the game. Nothing was better for the creative juices than a long weekend surrounded by other people buzzing from the same geeky vibe. He’d hoped the conference would recharge Levi’s interest, too.