by Regina Kyle
“Will that help me understand why Jake’s my—what’s her name?”
“Angelica Schuyler. She’s the one who fixed her sister Eliza up with Hamilton, her eventual husband.” At great personal sacrifice, I might add. If you believe the musical, and the book it’s based on, Angelica had the hots for good old Alexander herself. But she stepped aside to ensure her sister’s happiness, even knowing it meant she’d never be satisfied.
Kind of like I’m about to do now. Because as much as I’d like to keep my brother’s super smexy best friend all to myself, I know that’s a recipe for disaster. And not only because of the whole brother’s-best-friend-and-business-partner thing. I’ve got a pretty good feeling we’d be combustible in the bedroom, but out of it, we’re like oil and water. He’s serious. I’m silly. He’s into health food. I’m a junk food junkie. He’s firmly planted in the Big Apple. I’m a rolling stone, going wherever my work takes me.
See what I’m talking about? Oil and water. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We’re pretty much polar opposites in every conceivable way.
He slips a piece of pasta to one the cats who’s planted herself at his feet, staring up at him hungrily. Another way we’re different. I’m so not a cat person. Don’t get me wrong. They’re okay. But given the choice, I’m #teamdog all the way.
“I told you,” he says, shaking his head. At first, I think the head shake is for me, but then I realize he’s staring down the cat, who’s begging for more food. “I’m not looking for a relationship.”
“And I told you, this isn’t about jumping into another relationship. It’s about putting yourself out there. Meeting people. Having a little fun.” I take a deep breath and go there. Once I start down this road, there’s no turning back. “And I’m going to help you make that happen.”
“Oh? And how exactly are you going to do that?”
The corners of his mouth turn up in a sexy half-smile that has me reconsidering my decision not to barricade us in this apartment and ride him like a Kawasaki. For a hot second. But I quickly snap back to my senses and return to my original, plan.
“By taking my brother’s place. I’m going to be your Angelica Schuyler.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Connor
FOR THE SECOND time in twenty-four hours, I’m asking myself the same question.
She wants to what?
I guess my earlier deduction was right. She’s volunteering to be my wingman, er, wingwoman. Which means she’s put me firmly in the friend zone.
I should be relieved. Hooking up with my best friend’s baby sister would be a bad idea on so many levels. So why do I feel this acute sense of loss and disappointment? I’m like a kid who’s just been told Christmas isn’t coming this year.
“Hello, McFly? Earth to Connor.” Brie reaches across the counter and raps me on the back of my hand. “What do you say? You. Me. Taking on the singles scene.”
“That’s a big hell to the no. I don’t need a wingm—” I stop myself and go for a more gender-neutral term. “Wingperson.”
“I beg to differ. Man cannot exist alone. We’re social creatures. We’re meant to have company. Not live like hermits.”
“I can.” It’s not that I’m anti-social. I enjoy a night out with friends as much as the next guy. But I also value my private time. Me and my thoughts, maybe the latest Neil Gaiman book on my e-reader, an HBO documentary on my flat screen, or a game of online chess with one of my internet buddies.
I abruptly push back my stool, and Mirri, who’s still parked at my feet hoping I’ll cave and pass her another treat, mews loudly and skitters away. “Look, I appreciate your offer, but I’m doing just fine on my own.”
“Have it your way.” She stacks our plates and brings them over to the sink. “But if you change your mind—”
“I won’t.”
“—don’t be afraid to let me know.”
I take the dishes from her. “You cooked. I’ll clean. Go finish unpacking.”
I set the plates down on the counter and give her a gentle nudge toward the door. Big mistake. The skin on her bare shoulder—she’s wearing a strappy little tank top that ends an inch or so above the waistband of her denim cutoffs—is soft and warm, and now I’m wondering if she’s as soft and warm everywhere. My guess is the answer is yes.
Please, God, let her take my not-so-subtle hint and make like a tree and get out of here. I desperately need some space between us, or I might be tempted to test my theory.
She and shoots me a grateful smile that has my stomach and my dick doing cartwheels. “Thanks. I’m pretty much settled in—or as settled as I’m going to get, since I’m leaving the stuff I don’t use on a daily basis in boxes. But our showrunner changed my schedule, and now I have to be on set tomorrow at six. So I should probably get some z’s.”
“Six?” I open the dishwasher and slide a plate between the tines. Maybe if I’m otherwise occupied I’ll stop fantasizing about feeling her up. “In the morning?”
She nods. “The van is coming to pick me up at five.”
“Damn, that’s early.”
“We’re on location at a restaurant in Brooklyn, and we have to be out before the staff comes in to set up for the dinner service.” She yawns and stretches, her already short shirt lifting even higher to reveal more of her toned, tanned stomach. So much for squelching those fantasies. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
The look on my face must say no way am I waking up that early because she laughs and rolls her eyes. “Or not.”
She starts to go, but at the last minute I remember the keys I had made for her on my way home. Since there’s no chance in hell I’ll be awake at zero dark thirty to give them to her before she leaves, I have no choice but to stop her.
“Hang on.” I brush past her, being careful to avoid touching her again, and grab my briefcase from the couch, where I dropped it when I came in. “Here.”
I fish the keys out and toss them to her, and she snags them in a sweet, one-handed catch. I let out a low, appreciative whistle. “Nice move.”
“I learned from the best. Who do you think tossed the ball around with Jake when Dad was busy and you were at chess club? Or debate practice?”
“I wasn’t on the debate team. It was the academic decathlon.”
“Wow. You really were a nerd, weren’t you?” She flashes me another smile—this one more of a cheeky grin—that takes away any sting in her words.
“Were being the operative word,” I quip back. I might have been the king of the nerds back then, but I’m anything but now. At least, not on the outside. And from the way Brie’s eyes drank in my muscled pecs and washboard abs when I opened the door this morning—neither of which I had back in high school—she knows it, too.
“Fine. You’re hot. But I bet you’re still a geek deep down. You probably still play Dungeons and Dragons.”
Damn. I can’t hide anything from this girl.
“So does Joe Manganiello,” I say defensively. “And People magazine named him one of the sexiest men alive.”
“You read People magazine?” Her cheeky grin gets impossibly cheekier. “I pegged you as more of a Smithsonian kind of guy. Or maybe Wired.”
“Only in the supermarket checkout line. They don’t carry Wired or Smithsonian there.”
With a smoky, past-her-bedtime laugh that shoots laser beams of lust right to my groin, she says good-night—again—and heads down the hall to her bedroom. I take care of the rest of the dishes, put the leftover lasagna in the fridge, and head to my own room to take a cold shower, watch an episode of Mindhunter on Netflix, and read one of the short stories in Ted Chiang’s Exhalation until I finally pass out myself.
I’m not sure how many hours—or minutes—I’m out before I’m awakened by the sound of someone in the hallway outside my bedroom door, then banging around in my kitchen
. It takes me a second to remember that I’ve got a house guest, but when I do I move the cats off my chest, throw on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt—yeah, I sleep in the buff—and go check on her. Brie’s making a hell of a lot of noise. Which means she’s either the clumsiest sleepwalker on the planet or she’s looking for something. Either way, I can’t leave her to fend for herself.
But when I find her, I’m starting to think I should have stayed in bed. She’s wearing even less than she was the last time I saw her—some kind of frilly sleep shorts and yet another tank top, this one in an almost see-through pale pink with “Let Me Sleep” emblazoned across her perky tits. The shorts are short enough on their own, but they’re made even shorter by the fact that she’s on her tiptoes, reaching for something on the top shelf of one of my ridiculously priced, hand-painted custom cabinets, making the shorts slide further up her smooth, shapely thighs.
I clear my throat to subtly let her know she’s not alone. She jumps anyway, almost dropping the glass she’s barely managed to snag from the cabinet.
“Holy crap.” She puts her free hand over her heart. “You scared me half to death.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t my intention.”
“Then what did you intend, sneaking up on a girl in the middle of the night?”
“One, I wasn’t sneaking. Hence the throat clearing. Two, you were making enough noise to wake the dead. It sounded like you were trashing the place. I had to protect my investment.”
She holds up the glass. “If you kept your glassware on the bottom shelf, where normal-sized people could reach without practically killing themselves, I wouldn’t have to wake the dead to get a damn drink of water.”
“I’m normal sized.” I’m tall, but it’s not like I’m Andre the Giant.
“For a guy, maybe. But I’m a vertically challenged chick.”
She looks average height to me, but I’m not going to argue with a pissed off woman in the middle of the night. “Feel free to rearrange things so you can reach them.”
“I was planning on it.” She sets the glass down on the counter and starts right in on the rearranging, swapping a few of the glasses on the top shelf for some of the mugs on the bottom one, leaving both shelves with a few of each. “What did your ex do when she had dry mouth at two a.m.? Suffer? Drink out of a coffee cup?”
I don’t have a clue. And I don’t want to talk about Giselle. Not with temptation staring me in the face in the form of my best friend’s off-limits little sister, wearing next to goddamn nothing. She’s clearly not going anywhere, so it’s up to me to put some space between us before I do something I’ll regret in the morning. Or not regret. I’m not sure which would be worse.
“Is there anything else you need?” I ask even as I’m already backing away.
“I think I can handle it from here.”
She goes on tiptoe to move another mug to the top shelf, but just as I think she’s got it up there safely, it slips from her grasp and falls to the tile floor, shattering into a tiny shards that scatter all around her pretty, pink-tipped toes.
“Shit,” she squeaks, the word coming out on a kind of high-pitched bark, like a fox.
She bends to start picking up the pieces, but I hold out a hand, stopping her. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I figure at least one of us should have some shoes on.”
She looks down at her exposed, bare feet, then at mine, then drags her gaze up to my face. “Good point.”
I grab a pair of deck shoes from my closet and slip on some shorts for good measure. Wearing shoes without pants is just—wrong.
I’m back in the kitchen in seconds. Shockingly, Brie’s followed my gruff command and is right where I left her. I cross to her, slivers of porcelain crunching under the soles of my Sperrys, and scoop her up fireman-style.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Her hands alternate between pounding on my back and clutching my T-shirt.
“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m carrying you to safety.”
“You realize you could have just brought me a pair of shoes, don’t you?”
Honestly, I hadn’t thought of that. Not that I’m going to admit that to her. “This way’s more dramatic.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s safe to put me down now, Lancelot.”
I look around, and she’s not wrong. I’ve carried her all the way out of the kitchen into the living/dining room area, well past the danger zone.
“Right.” I lower her down, her body sliding slowly, agonizingly against mine until her feet touch the floor. For some reason, even though she’s safely back on terra firma, my arms stay banded around her waist. Hers don’t move, either. They’re wrapped around my neck, her fingers flirting with the ends of my hair.
“I think I’m good,” she whispers against my ear. “You can let go.”
“So can you.”
I don’t, and neither does she. The air around us seems superheated, charged with sexual energy. All my nerve endings are on fire. Especially the ones between my legs.
“What are we doing?” Brie asks, her voice wavering. And is it my imagination, or are her eyes locked on my lips?
My tongue instinctively darts out to moisten them. “I don’t know. But I don’t want to stop.”
She looks up at me with those doe eyes, her freckled cheeks flushed and her barely covered breasts rising and falling with each shuddering breath. “Then don’t.”
It’s an invitation even a monk would have a hard time refusing. And I’m no damn monk. Which means my odds of resisting are somewhere between zip and zilch.
I bring my head down to hers and our mouths meet. It’s a kiss that’s been years in the making—at least for me. Given that much of a buildup, it shouldn’t live up to expectations. And it doesn’t. It surpasses them.
Her lips are sweet and tart, like raspberries. Her body is soft and pliant as it melts into mine. And she smells like coconut, sunshine, and salt water, a combination that’s downright intoxicating. In my arms, she’s not Jake’s little sister. She’s all woman. And from the sound of her moans, high-pitched and urgent, she’s mine for the taking.
I’m not sure how we get there, but the next thing I know I’ve got her against the wall. I nudge a knee between her legs, my hard thigh nestling right where she wants it if the way she grinds against me is anything to go on. This kiss has gone from a tentative exploration to too hot for network television in the space of a heartbeat. Not that I’m complaining. I’m as fucking far gone as she is.
Until I’m not. Something cold and wet brushes against my ankles, yanking me out of the moment and back to reality. Half reluctant, half relieved, I slide my lips from Brie’s and look down.
“Dammit, Ajani.” I don’t know what she’s gotten into, but her fur’s damp and matted and the it-wasn’t-me expression on her furry face is as guilty as hell. Probably drinking from the toilet and fell in. Again.
“Something wrong?”
Brie’s husky, sexy drawl almost sucks me back in, but I fight the urge to pin her against the wall and show her exactly how much I want her. Instead, I do the polar opposite, releasing her and pulling away, leaving her with a confused frown that’s like a punch to my gut.
“Yes. No. It’s just—I need to go check on Mirri.” If one of them was in the damn toilet, odds are the other one wasn’t far behind. And Mirri’s not anywhere near as good at climbing back out again as Ajani. Besides, I’m taking this as a sign. My cats are either the world’s greatest cock blockers, or they’re saving me from making a huge-ass mistake. And I have to clean up some broken glass.
“All righty, then.” Her husky, sexy drawl is a thing of the past. Now her voice is flat, clipped. “I’ll just grab my water and go back to bed.”
She breezes past me and heads for the kitchen, calling over her
shoulder as she goes. “Nighty night, Lancelot. Sweet dreams.”
I can’t stop my eyes from watching her ass do that sexy swivel as she walks away. Little vixen. She knows exactly what—or who—I’ll be dreaming about tonight. And it sure as hell won’t be sweet.
More like X-rated.
CHAPTER SIX
Brie
“CAN I INTEREST you in a caviar and crème fraîche tartlet?”
They sound disgusting to me. I mean, fish eggs? Blech. But what do I know about what one-percenters like to eat? I’ve got simple tastes. I’m a pigs-in-a-blanket kind of girl, through and through.
The tuxedoed gentleman shakes his head, and I continue circulating through the crowd of similarly clad men and their elegantly dressed companions. I feel vastly underdressed in my standard issue polyester pants—black, of course—and white button-down shirt.
I’m not even sure what this fancy fundraiser is for. All I know is that when my friend and fellow actress Tiffany called and told me the catering company we occasionally work for was looking for wait staff on one of my few free nights, I jumped on it.
Some people might call me an idiot for clinging to this gig. But I disagree. I think I’d be an idiot not to. I may be a working actress today, but who knows about next month or even next week. Too many things could go wrong. The show might not get picked up for a second season. My character could get written off. They could decide to replace me with someone younger, thinner, more athletic.
If any of that happens, I need something to fall back on so I can pay my student loans. And the increase in rent I hope to have soon for my own place. Because ever since that kiss—that earth-shaking, soul-shattering, mind-melting kiss—living with Connor has been, well, awkward.
It’s not like he’s done anything overt to make me feel uncomfortable. Hell, I’ve barely seen him in the last week. That’s the awkward part. It’s like he’s dancing around me, afraid of a repeat performance. Which is too damn bad, because I wouldn’t object to an encore. But apparently the whole best-friend’s-sister thing is too much for him to handle.
