One Kiss: A Brother's Best Friend Romance

by Annabelle Love

  Hell, what was she trying to do to him? Make him perish out of curiosity?

  Desperate to know more but knowing she’d only reveal what she wanted because she could be as close-mouthed as hell, he said, “As long as you know that Aidan and I are here to help. Aidan’s a rich son of a bitch now, but I’m richer. And I have old friends. Family friends. If something’s… wrong, then they might be able to help.”

  Her eyes popped open and she shrieked, “Are you talking about the mob?”

  He clucked his tongue in disgust. “What? Fuck, you don’t believe those rumors too, do you?”

  His father had made a fortune in construction. A fortune so vast that people liked to discredit his hard work by intimating that the mafia had been involved. As little as he liked his father, James couldn’t and wouldn’t allow that opinion to run unchecked in his presence.

  Dear old dad might be a dick of the first order, but his billions had been earned without any aid from the Cosa Nostra.

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know if I believe in them. I’ve never thought about it until now.”

  “Well, unthink it,” he snapped. “My family has nothing to do with the mob. Never has done and never will. Fuck, Hannah. Credit us with some decency. You’ve met my dad. Does he seem the kind of guy who’d break bread with that kind of person?”

  She bit her lip. “Nope. But we all have pasts, don’t we? And the mob are like spiders. If I think about it, rationally, it makes perfect sense for someone, over the years, to have approached him.”

  “Are you trying to piss me off?” James raged.

  “No,” she confessed. “Not this time.”

  Great, the one time she hadn’t been trying to agitate the fuck out of him, and she did it on this.

  Running a hand through his hair, he didn’t stop until he could grip the back of his neck.

  “Let’s change the subject.” Then, thinking about what he’d just said, he pulled a face and murmured, “What I was trying to say is my dad plays golf with a Senator. Hell, I know a few Congressmen myself. Anything you need, you’ve got it. And all without reverting to type and talking to the local Capo.” He rolled his eyes at his own words.

  She blinked at him, apparently in surprise at the extent of his reach. “I don’t think a Senator or a Congressman can solve my problem, James, but thanks for trying.”

  He jerked a shoulder and explained, “I thought it might be unlikely, but still, you never know. You’re emoting way more than I’ve ever seen in all the time I’ve known you. There has to be a reason for that.”

  “There is one thing, and it’s not a—James! Look out!”

  His gaze darted back to the road, and he immediately saw what had frozen her solid in her seat.

  A small landslide had destroyed the surface of the cliff face. Because it wasn’t a public road, there’d been no checks, and no alert as to this kind of terrain. Rocks, some huge boulders, were in their way. Before he could press on the brakes, the Orion had dealt with the collapse, managing to swerve around the largest boulder in their path, and carry them through like nothing had happened.

  That is until the front left tire swerved out from under them.

  He groaned, because the sound preceding the swerve had been something the Orion couldn’t counter. The swerve, sure. It put them back on the straight and narrow. But as clever as the Orion was, it couldn’t change its own damn tire.

  Especially when said tire was back at the garage.

  Shit.

  “What the hell just happened?” Hannah breathed, gulping down air like she’d had her head held underwater instead of having the living daylight scared out of her.

  He shot her a look, saw her wide-eyed terror and grimaced at her. “It’s okay, Hannah. The Orion is prepared for all kinds of eventualities.” He had to admit though, as much faith as he had in the technology they’d spent a fortune on developing, his instincts had been to grab the wheel and take over. He could understand why she was terrified, because his heart was pounding too.

  “Then why did we swerve?” Hannah questioned.

  “The debris… it must have popped a tire.”

  “Oh crap,” she said with a wince. “What do we do?”

  “I have to call out one of the technicians from the compound.” So saying, James pressed a few buttons on the console dash and waited for the call to connect. When it did, he murmured, “Gonzalo? A tire’s blown on the Orion. I need you to come with a spare.”

  “Don’t you carry them?” Hannah asked crossly. She was back to scowling again.

  Although, truth was, he thought he preferred her scowling to that lost puppy look she’d just had. Seeing Hannah scared was the last thing he wanted.

  Watching her come? Yeah.

  Crapping herself in terror? Not so much.

  “No. Not in prototypes,” he answered, cutting her a look.

  She huffed. “Aidan was right. We should never have come out in this.”

  “Are you kidding?” he immediately snapped. “We’ve just had the best real-time demonstration of the Orion’s capabilities. The way it was programmed, I knew it could handle those kinds of scenarios. It’s one of the hardest parts of the program. Trying to figure out the impossible. But, that was…” He shook his head, impressed by what had just happened even though it hadn’t turned out perfectly. “It was far more than I could ever have expected. I always have faith in whatever we turn out, because I know we test it above and beyond what most of our competitors could even imagine. But now? After this? Wow.”

  He could tell she was still mad, but a smile danced about her lips as she said, “Sounds like you’re starting to believe your own press.”

  Before he could do more than grin sheepishly at her, Gonzalo asked, “Sir?”

  Damn, he’d forgotten the tech was on the other end of the line still. By the looks of her blush, so had Hannah.

  “Sorry, Gonzalo. We just had to maneuver through a landslide on the top of the mountain heading toward the Vistabel viewpoint. We managed to scrape through without any damage save to the wheel, but I’m not sure if a truck will be able to make it through. It might be wise to come in a smaller sedan with the spare, and then we just maneuver through it once we can drive again. Can you arrange for someone to come and clear the debris though? Also, this side of the hill might need shoring up.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Arias. I’ll get that arranged. We’ll be up there as soon as we can.”

  “Thanks, Gonzalo.” James cut the call, then stared at Hannah. “The viewpoint’s not far from here if you want to go see it.”

  “Is that where we were heading all along?”

  He shrugged, “It’s nearly sunset. I figured there wasn’t a better place to view it than from there.”

  “S-Sure.”

  He wasn’t sure who was more stunned by that faint stutter. Him or her. Instead of playing on it though, he watched her nibble at her lip again as she opened the door and climbed out onto the roadside.

  After reaching for his cell which he’d placed in the dock earlier, he put it in his jacket pocket as he joined her on the road. Up here, while not technically a lot higher than the compound, the air was definitely fresher. Even though he could smell the faint scent of gas from the Orion’s minimal output, more than anything, he could smell mountain. Clean and tinged with earth.

  Nice.

  When she nodded at him, they walked up the road. Over in the distance, they could see Portland in all its beauty. The city wasn’t asleep yet, but soon it would be. As the sun grew somnolent in the sky, shards of purple and red streaked across the horizon before them. With each passing moment, Hannah’s attention swerved from him and whatever subject was truly bothering her to the beauty of the view before them.

  When they made it to the top, she smiled at a bench that he must have had installed there. She shot him a look. “You come here often?”

  “Every once and a while. It helps clear my head.”

  She eyed him a second, the
n took a seat. He joined her, and lifted his arm to rest it along the back of the bench and said, “Before I get accused of assault again, this isn’t a come on. I just want to get comfortable.”

  Hannah blushed slightly. “It wasn’t assault. Not exactly,” she admitted sheepishly, then let out a long breath. “This week just gets better and better.”

  “Care to share?” he pressed.

  “Not with you.”

  “That hurts.” He was being facetious. But he lied. It did hurt.

  “I’m sure it does,” she retorted waspishly. “Your ego. It’s the most precious commodity in your arsenal.” Before he could get riled, she groaned, lifted her hands and covered her face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I keep doing that.”

  Neither did he. “Because something’s on your mind, and rather than deal with it or discuss it with someone who gives a damn, you’d prefer to avoid the issue. It’s called denial.”

  She shot him a look. “Since when were you a shrink?”

  He just grinned back at her in a way that displayed all his pearly whites. “Since I minored in psychology.”

  “You totally did not.”

  “Totally did.”

  Her frown had his grin widening. “When?” She asked a little too seriously.

  “When I was at college, silly.” He turned his head and looked out onto the vista before him. It was his turn to sigh. This time, it wasn’t at their conversation, but at the beauty he was looking at. “I never get tired of this place.”

  She turned to look out at the sunset. “It seems like a lifetime since I did something so simple as watch a sunset.”

  “With all the beaches down there, you have no reason to ignore the sun. The Sunshine State is not amused.”

  “I’m too busy to go to the beach.”

  Her admission had James’ brows lowering. “You weren’t bullshitting earlier about how great your job is?”

  Her huff had him hiding a laugh. “No. I was not. I never oversell.”

  Scoffing back at her, “Now that is BS.”

  “It isn’t,” she told him earnestly, sending him an agitated look. Her hands folded around the edge of the bench, and as he watched, her knuckles turned white. “I-I’m… It’s too much. I’m doing too well.”

  His brows rose. That was the first time he’d ever heard that complaint.

  But hell, maybe it was a day for firsts.

  “Too well?” he prompted when she fell silent.

  Her nod was tight, as was the gulp that followed it. “I-I thought I could handle it, and for a long time, I could, but then I got another client, and now it’s just too much.”

  Because this was the last thing he’d expected to hear from her—hell, he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this—he shuffled in his seat. In a world where success was the meter by which everyone lived, she was doing great. Just not that great.

  Uncertain of how he could help, he attempted, “Have you tried scaling back?”

  “I can’t. They won’t let me, and if I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t either.” She blew out a breath which had her bangs flying out of control, before they fluttered back down and settled across her face. “A victim of my own success.” She peeked at him from under strawberry blond lashes. “Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? I mean, seriously. Who complains about this kind of crap?”

  “People who are overwhelmed,” he said softly.

  Hannah pursed her lips. “Yeah. Because I see you and Aidan complaining about all this… Damn, what I’ve done is nothing in comparison to Arias. How do you guys cope?”

  James shrugged, “We delegate. We have each other. Both things make a huge difference.”

  “Seriously? That’s it?”

  He shrugged again. “We have downtime. Don’t think that we don’t. Plus, what we’re doing isn’t as high pressure as sales.”

  “No, you’re just trying to fly to the moon, James,” she said with a scoff. “That’s really nothing.”

  His lips twitched. “Why are you even comparing yourself to us? Do you think I could sell what you do?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. You seem to be able to do everything.” She didn’t sound too pleased by that though either.

  “What are you talking about?” he immediately dismissed. “I have my strengths, and I have my weaknesses. Thankfully, yes, the latter are very few,” he teased, pleased when she rolled her eyes at him. “However, Aidan and I are a team. We’re very lucky to be able to gel together as well as we do. His strengths are my weaknesses. We speak different languages and can make pitches to different investors. His preferences are to work on the inner body of the cars we make, whereas mine is to work on the outer shell.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We’re a team, there are two of us, so you can’t compare us to you.”

  “Mom and dad do,” Hannah said before thinking.

  The glum retort had James' eyes widening. “Diane and Edward?”

  “Who else?” she said with a huff. “Yes, them. They’re my parents, aren’t they?”

  He held up his hands in apology. “I’m just surprised.”

  “Why? They’ve always done it.” She scrubbed at her forehead. “How am I supposed to compete with Aidan when he’s done all he’s done?”

  “You’re not supposed to. That’s how.” He blinked, astonished by what she had to say. “I’m seriously in shock right now. I didn’t think they were like that.”

  Hannah exhaled. “I don’t think they mean to be. I feel like they’re not judging me or anything, but they wonder how they’ve managed to breed one wunderkind and not two. Like genius is in the genes or something.”

  “I’m sure it’s not like that. Have you spoken to them about it?” A thought came to him. “It’s a wonder you don’t get really mad with Aidan. I mean, you could take it out on him.”

  “I love my brother,” she said simply. “Always have, always will. That’s just the way of it. It’s not his fault he’s incredible, and it’s not his fault that our parents can be dicks sometimes.”

  James turned away from her, though he kept his body tilted at an angle toward Hannah. It shouldn’t have been important, but he knew how body language could be read. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel like he was shutting her out. As he turned his gaze onto the dying sun, he watched a few stars start to twinkle overhead and murmured, “I always wanted a brother or sister.”

  She jerked at his words, then shot him a little frown. “You did?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  Now it was James’ turn to exhale, “I was lonely, I guess. My parents were busy being my parents. They didn’t have much time for me… still don’t. But when I met Aidan and then you and your family, I realized how much I’d missed out on by not having a sister or brother.”

  She tilted her head to the side in surprise. “I never imagined you’d be nostalgic about something like that.”

  Her words had him snorting. “You haven’t imagined me doing anything in any way positive by the sounds of it.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “I haven’t painted you black, James. I just… I don’t always trust you. That’s all.”

  Her words stung. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I love my brother. If you never hurt him or put him in any danger, then we’re good to go.”

  Somehow, call it a sixth sense or his instincts, he knew she was lying. Her opinion of him was wrapped up in her feelings for him. Which, to be fair, were undoubtedly as convoluted as his for her.

  Nothing about what they had was simple. Nothing.

  Because of her relationship to Aidan, he’d always had to tread carefully around her.

  He had eyes, dammit.

  He knew she was hot, and he’d never acted on his attraction to her for fear of damaging his friendship with Aidan, which, up until now, had been the priority. What had cha
nged last Labor Day, he couldn’t say, and what was changing today, was even more confusing.

  Why had protecting his friendship with Aidan always meant more to him than acting on his attraction for her?

  Sisters are a no-go zone? Bro code?

  He wished to hell he knew.

  She looked so beautiful in the dying sunlight—her blond hair turning strawberry with the day’s last rays, her face a play of shadows as darkness started to fall. The striated skyline was glorious to behold, and yet, it didn’t even begin to compare to her.

  He closed his eyes a second as he realized he wanted more than just sex. That was what had changed all of a sudden.

  What-the-fuck?!

  The what-the-fuck? thought had him curling his fingers into fists, but though he tried to contain himself, he just couldn’t. Before he could withhold the words, before he could tempt providence or Aidan’s wrath, he whispered, “Have dinner with me tomorrow, Hannah.”

  His offer surprised the both of them, but what stunned him more than anything was when she turned to him with confused but wistful eyes, and said, “OK.”

  Chapter 5

  “You’re such a dickwad sometimes.”

  Aidan’s storm of anger was the last thing James wanted to be dealing with right at that moment, but he could understand his partner’s irritation. The prototype was beyond valuable and he’d been a prick by taking it off the test tracks.

  “I know,” James confessed as Aidan went around the car, studying it with a microscope to ensure there was no damage to the vehicle in any way. “Look, it was just the tire, Aidan. You really don’t have to go that far. Anyway, we both know the outer fascia is my area, not yours.”

  Aidan narrowed his eyes at James. “I’m making sure you haven’t messed with anything at all. Why the fuck did you have to go out in her anyway? What were you trying to do? Hannah’s the last person you need to impress. It’s not like she’s one of your bunnies you’d want to—”

  When he broke off, mid-sentence, James shot him a perplexed look.