Give a Little

by Lee Kilraine

  “I think it’s best she keeps going. Sorry to bother you.” He gave me a nod and made his way back to his brothers.

  I settled up with Eddie, trying to keep my gaze from wandering over to Gray Thorne. Not an easy task. Because there was something about the man that drew me in. I threw one last look at him before moving to the back section where Laura’s text had said she’d snagged a table.

  “Sorry! We had an emergency root canal come in just before we closed, so I stayed to help.”

  “Not a problem.” I scooted into the booth and slid her drink across the table before reaching up and pulling my mask off. “The important thing is the dynamic duo is back.”

  “Hell yes we are.” Laura raised her glass and smiled across at me, her eyes tearing up.

  “No crying allowed,” I said, feeling a sting at the back of my own eye sockets. “If you cry, then I’ll cry, and we both know I’m an ugly crier. Splotchy cheeks, snotty nose, and hiccups. So, a toast, to friendship and shenanigans.”

  “Friendship and shenanigans. Also, to you; the strongest person I know.” Laura clinked her glass against mine, her lips sliding into a devious grin. “Now drink up, kitty. This mouse is ready to party. We’re taking an Uber home because this celebration is long overdue.”

  We drank (only one for me until I rebuilt my tolerance) and split an order of loaded French fries while I told her the whole Viagra cat woman story.

  “She. Did. Not. Oh, my God, that’s crazy.” Laura sat back shaking her head. “So you were up close and personal with Gray Thorne, huh? That is one beautiful man. It’s too bad he is the way he is.”

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong with him?” See? This was what I needed to pay attention to. What the guy was really like, not what the unreliable voice in my head was whispering. The fact that my lady parts were siding with the voice? Totally irrelevant. Because if it came up for a vote, I got the last say. And I say I’d been burned by a good-looking, smooth-talking man before, so no thanks.

  “While you’ve been out of circulation he’s sort of gained a reputation.” She scanned her gaze around, maybe checking to make sure there were no Thorne brothers within hearing distance. I guess it made sense. There were a lot of them.

  “What kind of reputation? A cheater? A douche canoe? A rat bastard?”

  Laura looked at me with a tilt of her head. “Huh, now that I think of it, none of the above.”

  “So, what? A non-flosser? Double crosser? Tax evader?” Being a criminal would definitely lower his sex appeal. Probably. Maybe. His face flashed through my mind again and I decided no, he’d just be a very sexy bad boy. “Is he a player?”

  “I wouldn’t say a player, but maybe king of the one-night-stands. Rumors, mind you, but I’m guessing they don’t call him Fifty Shags of Gray for nothing.”

  “Oh.” Yeah, that didn’t sound good. “So he’s a two-timing jerk who sleeps with women and then doesn’t call?”

  “No. One at a time. He’s apparently upfront about his commitment issues. And still the female population of Raleigh lines up for him. I doubt that man has ever heard no from a woman. It’s a mystery.”

  “Not a mystery. You should smell him.” I remembered his scent…and the feel of his chest…and his dark voice like warm honey over my body and a shiver rolled through me. I also remembered the part where it got weird and my inner voice whispered to me. And it doesn’t matter what it said, because I was going to ignore it.

  I know that people tell you not to ignore those inner voices. Especially cops—cops tell you that all the time, right? They say when your inner voice tells you something is wrong and to run, do it. It could save your life.

  But my voice didn’t give me that kind of warning. And my brain had been through a lot the last three years, so to tell the truth, I didn’t always trust it. Especially after my brain had convinced the rest of me that I was in love with my ex, and that had been a mistake. So, I wasn’t putting stock in any of my brain’s inner whispers until it had proven it was reliable again.

  “How do you know so much about Gray Thorne?” I asked with a shake of my head.

  “You’d be surprised what stories people tell me sitting in my hygienist chair.”

  “I totally would. Who can talk while the hygienist is cleaning your teeth?”

  “People talk. Mostly right after the rinse and spits. Oh, hey, by the way, I love the paint job on the van.” Laura pointed a fry at me. “Saw it on my way to work this morning. Does that mean you’re ready to drive it?”

  “Um… No, not yet. But I still have to redo the interior, so I have time.”

  Laura’s eyes roamed my face. “Sweetie—”

  “I know. But, I did file my paperwork for an LLC and I’m testing recipes. My dad volunteered to put together my website. So, progress. I’ve come a long way.”

  “You sure have.”

  “Oh, and I’m finally ready to move forward with my house renovation.” I grabbed a fry, scooping plenty of chili, cheese, and bacon onto it. I would have procrastinated longer on that too, but the old oven wasn’t cutting it for my baking needs. “I’ve got a list of companies to call.”

  “Might as well call the Thorne brothers. They’re some of the best when it comes to remodels. One of the other hygienists in the office used them. Said they were awesome, and I’m pretty sure she meant their work.”

  “Six Brothers Construction? Yep, they’re on my list.”

  “It’s a big job. Whoever you hire will be in your house for weeks if not months.” Laura wagged her eyebrows and grinned. “It might make the reno less painful to live through if it meant having a gorgeous Thorne brother or two in your house. I could wake up to that every morning. Oh, God, can you imagine them shirtless with a tool belt hanging low on their hips?”

  Well, I hadn’t until Laura just mentioned it. Wow. My stomach did one of those slow roll flip-flops at the thought of Gray Thorne standing in my kitchen in faded jeans, bare chest, and a low-riding tool belt.

  “I see you can.” Laura grabbed the plastic Happy Hour menu from where it was stuck into the condiment cozy and fanned my face with a laugh. She stopped mid-laugh, her gaze focused over my shoulder. “Oh, hell. Paul’s here.”

  “Seriously? I had a missed call from him last week, but I ignored it.” And before I could turn to look, my ex was standing next to our table.

  “Hello, Tessa. Laura.” Paul Jenson stood next to our booth as good-looking as I remembered. Not that he took up any space in my memories. He’d been scrubbed from my memory banks two and a half years ago. Life was too short to waste my time on him.

  “Oh, hey, what are you doing here?” Duh, Tessa, he was out at a bar drinking on Halloween—just like you. Except what were the odds he’d end up at the same bar as us?

  “Just a bit of bar hopping with some of the guys from work.” He shrugged, pulled off his Yankees cap, and tucked it into the back pocket of his baseball uniform. No surprise he looked good in the tight, white pants and jersey. He’d played baseball in college. And I thought my cat costume was unimaginative. “Mind if I join you?”

  My gaze whipped to Laura’s and we did that mental telepathy thing the way best friends do. (Me: OMG, no! Laura: My thoughts exactly. Me: Under no circumstance do I want him to sit with us. Laura: Trust me, his ass will not touch our booth.) And she jumped right in, since I was afraid I’d cave and say yes even though that was the last thing I wanted.

  “The thing is, Paul, we’re in the middle of girls’ night out, so unless you’ve got a secret you want to tell us…we’ll have to take a rain check.” This was why she was my best friend. Because she always had my back.

  “Oh, sure. Another time. I’ll call you, Tessa.” He stared for a too-long awkward second before leaving.

  Laura leaned over the table and hissed, “Oh, my God, that crazy rat bastard wants you back.”

  “Why would
he want me back? He’s the one who broke up with me.” But I had to admit, between the awkward stare and the out-of-the-blue phone call last week, and now showing up at the same bar…it was a possibility.

  “I don’t like this. The problem is even though you know what a jerk Paul is, you’re too nice. He’ll pull some BS crap excuse out of his tighty-whities and then probably throw in a few tears and you’ll feel sorry for him and actually think about taking him back just to shut him up.”

  “That’s not true.” It was possibly true. I was a people pleaser. Wait. Scratch that. I used to be a people pleaser. It wasn’t that Paul wasn’t a nice guy—he actually was—but the breakup had been bad timing on his part. Really bad. It had hurt. Devastated me at the time. But it hadn’t broken me. So no, I didn’t want or need him back in my life.

  In Laura’s eyes what he’d done to me was unforgivable. He’d become the enemy and she stood as the guardian at the gates. I loved that about her.

  “You’re Luke before he learns to use the Force,” she mumbled, her gaze running around my face, before her eyes went steely. She pointed at me. “You’re calling Six Brothers Construction tomorrow. Promise me you’ll call them and get going on your renovation.”

  “I was planning on it, but why the urgency?” I frowned over at her. “Are you worried I’ll keep putting it off? Because I’m totally working through my list. The driving thing is just—”

  “I know you are and it’s amazing to watch. No. What I’m worried about is Paul.” Her eyes narrowed with her annoyance over the man. “I want you surrounded by as many not-Pauls as possible while he’s trying to get you back.”

  “Don’t forget I’m a new person now. I’m learning to be better at standing up for myself. Learning to go after what I want. I don’t want Paul back. Not at all. Is never too short of a time to see him again?”

  “That’s the problem: You’re new at this. Also, you’re a romantic. Just like your mother was. And just like your grandma. If Gigi isn’t already, the next thing she’ll be pushing for is for you to start dating again. Which you totally should, except it’s tough out here in the dating pool. And if Paul keeps hanging around, I’m afraid he’ll wear you down in a weak moment, and you’ll end up on a date with him, and it’ll feel okay, like a comfortable old sweater. But you and I both know that sweater is a moth-eaten holey mess ready to fall apart at the worst times. And what if he’s a good kisser?”

  “He is a good kisser. Not that I have much to compare him to since dating him meant four years I wasn’t kissing other men. The only other guys I kissed were during freshman year. David Stone and Kurt Matthews. Neither kissed as well as Paul. Although I’m sure their kissing technique has improved since then, so it’s not a fair comparison.”

  “Comparison? That’s it! You’ve just lived through a long dry-spell and you might be swayed by his kiss. You need someone you can compare him to.”

  “I’ll add rent-a-kisser to my to-do list.”

  “This is serious. Any of the Thorne brothers would work. Gray Thorne, especially, would be excellent.”

  “Why Gray? Didn’t you just a few minutes ago tell me how not excellent he is?”

  “No. I told you how not excellent he is at relationships. If rumors are true, he’s an excellent kisser. But seriously, any good kisser who isn’t Paul will work. I’ll even offer up Steve for the job.”

  “Your brother? Um, no. He’s like a brother to me. Besides, I kissed him back in middle school.”

  “Eww. You kissed my brother?” She opened her mouth and closed it a few times before she shook her head.

  “Spin the bottle. Trust me when I say, Steve sees me like a sister. I haven’t traded spit with him since we both wore braces.”

  “Please stop.” Laura wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Now you have to call Gray Thorne so I can wipe that vision from my brain.”

  Chapter 2

  Gray

  “Okay, whose turn is it to hire the next receptionist?” Beck looked around the conference table during our weekly tactical meeting at SBC. As our company’s CEO and CFO, and the oldest Thorne brother, he had a lot of responsibility. Too much for his own good, which was why the rest of us were happy he’d finally been willing to delegate some of it out. Even the crap jobs we all hated. Except for this crap job.

  “Are we really in between receptionists again? I’ve lost track of both the receptionist and who’s up to bat on hiring.” I wasn’t going to volunteer to hire the next one, but I didn’t see anybody’s hand go up. After burning through six or seven receptionists, no one wanted to deal with hiring a new one.

  “Yeah, Gray, I think it’s your turn.” Wyatt shrugged in apology.

  “Crap, I’m seriously looking into getting us a robot for a receptionist.” A robot receptionist would help us avoid a lot of problems around here. Nobody would sleep with it and the phones would actually get answered.

  “Do they make them?” Eli asked, definite interest sparking in his eyes. “And can it make coffee too?”

  “Receptionists don’t make coffee anymore,” Wyatt said.

  “I feel quite sure a robot receptionist would make coffee.” Eli stroked his beard while he considered the situation. “I’m pretty sure a robot receptionist would even do our laundry, do our taxes, and play poker with us.”

  “You sold me.” I swiveled my head to Beck. “Do we have money in the budget for a robot?”

  “No.”

  “Damn. Eli, what if I traded you? You deal with hiring the new receptionist, and I’ll do your laundry and your taxes?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “Done.”

  “Don’t forget we’re taking the kids on a field trip on our next volunteer day,” Ash said. “We’re hitting up the Museum of Natural History. So make sure it’s in your calendar.”

  “Nice,” I said, feeling a big smile slide across my face. Our volunteer work with some kids in the foster system was important to us. We’d spent too many years caught up in the foster system ourselves. We knew how much kids from abusive situations craved normal.

  Mostly we tried to give the kids our undivided attention by spending time doing normal things with them, things that kids in the system don’t get to do too often, like go to the movies, play ball, or go out for ice cream. But in our heart of hearts, we loved the field trips the most. Growing up, our old man had never let us go on field trips. You can bet we had as much fun as the kids on our outings.

  “Moving on,” Beck said, pulling us back to the meeting’s agenda. “We need all hands on deck as we get closer to wrapping up the King job. Gray, I sent you my schedule of sales appointments to cover. You still good with handling them?”

  “Yep. On it, so take it off your plate.” Sales weren’t my area, but I was more than happy to step up. As Head of Design and Project Manager, I didn’t usually see our clients until the contracts were signed. But I’d seen Beck give his sales presentation plenty of times and felt confident I could handle it long enough to lighten Beck’s load.

  The thing was it wasn’t just stepping up for our business—that we were used to. This time around we were stepping up because of Beck. Well, not just Beck, but Beck and Sam.

  Here’s what I knew: Thorne brothers didn’t do relationships. We just didn’t. In the lottery of life we did not win when it came to our parents. Needless to say, our childhood was… Tough. Challenging. Some days were downright ugly and painful. But through it all we had each other. Six brothers who relied on each other to get where we were today.

  When it came to work and business we had our shit together. We did not shy away from putting in long hours and hard, grueling work. Our personal lives were more of a mixed bag. You could count on a Thorne as a steadfast friend and a solid teammate. We were also dedicated to putting time in to helping kids growing up in the foster system the same way we did. But truth be told, like many people who grew up seeing
the ugliest, most dysfunctional side of love, we’d long ago locked up our hearts rather than expose ourselves—or worse, someone else—to that kind of pain and suffering.

  But, change was in the air. Over the last few months my brothers and I had been watching the romance develop between Beck and Samantha. Well maybe romance wasn’t quite the right word, but we’d never seen Beck act this way with a woman before.

  We liked Sam, liked her a lot. We liked how Beck looked when he was around her— happy. Damn happy. So anything we could do to keep that rolling along, my brothers and I were doing it. And if it meant taking on twice the work load so Beck had time to explore whatever was going on with Sam—even if he had no clue that’s what he was doing—then bring on the work.

  “Hey, what’s with you?”

  I glanced over to watch my brother Ash throw himself into the chair next to me. Looking around, I saw both Beck and Wyatt had already left and Eli was busy at the far wall brewing a new pot of coffee. Huh. I guess I’d zoned out and missed the rest of the meeting.

  “Nothing.” Why would something be up with me? I showed up to work on time, did an excellent job with our clients, and hadn’t given any of my brothers shit for…at least a week. Sounded like a gold star day to me.

  “You look like hell,” Ash said, his eyes roaming over my face.

  “Have you looked in the mirror yourself lately?” Ash had the same dark circles I had. Along with a definite lack of his normal tense energy and enthusiasm.

  “I have an excuse. Got a concussion in the game two nights ago.” He frowned at me. “Which you’d know if you’d watched it, so thanks, bro.”

  “Crap, Ash. I guess I fell asleep.” I’d missed one of his games? More proof that something was wrong with me. I’d been feeling off for a few months now. Maybe longer. I’d even gone to my doctor to get checked out. I had her run every test available. She warned me that insurance wouldn’t cover it since she couldn’t find anything clinically wrong with me to merit the tests. “I think I have the man flu.”