My Brother's Best Friend: A Last Chance Romance (Soulmates Series Book 6)

by Hazel Kelly

  “Right,” I said, turning away to hide my smile. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “Do.”

  “How long have you suspected I did that on purpose?” I asked, sweeping the circular scraps of paper into a pile.

  “Since you walked into the conference room and told Dick it was a playful accident.”

  “Do you think anyone else knew I was lying?”

  He shook his head. “No. You were pretty smooth.”

  “Good,” I said. “And for the record, I’m not sick of pouring all coffee, just decaf. I mean, what is the fucking point, ya know?”

  “I haven’t the slightest.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So what do you say to that drink?” he asked. “You do owe me one, and it’s about time you saw my place.”

  “Yeah, but I’m supposed to buy you a drink. I can’t do that at your condo.”

  “Agreeing to enjoy a drink with me is just as good,” he said. “It’s your company I’m after anyway.”

  My lips curved into a smile. “My company, eh?”

  “Yeah, but to be honest, sometimes I think I want a lot more than that.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “How’s that for inappropriate?”

  I swallowed. It’s a start.

  “Well?”

  I took a deep breath. “I have a few more things to finish up here before I can leave,” I said, my heart racing. “But if you want to go back to the party, I can text you or something when I’m done.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, putting his hand on my lower back. “I’ll help you, and we can both get out of here faster.”

  “Are you sure? I feel bad asking you to do something so—”

  “It’s no big deal,” he said. “Let me take over here, and you can get started with whatever’s next on your list.”

  “Thanks.” I grabbed the papers I’d already prepped and crossed the room to get some empty binders.

  “Hey, Margot,” he said after a few minutes of working away.

  “Hey what?” I asked, keeping my back to him as I added another finished binder to the growing stack beside me.

  “You know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  And as a stupid smile lifted my face, I wondered if I’d ever have a chance to show him how much it meant to hear him say that.

  T W E L V E

  - Landon -

  “So I guess you would describe your style as minimalist?” Margot asked as she surveyed my apartment’s main sitting room.

  I eyed her silhouette in front of my picture window, surprised to find that the vast city skyline didn’t dwarf her at all. If anything, she looked larger than life as she improved the view I was so proud of.

  “Can you keep a secret?” I asked, pulling some liquor from my freezer.

  “Of course,” she said, looking over her shoulder.

  “It’s mostly Ikea.”

  “That explains why I love it so much.”

  I set a clean glass out and poured a small measure of grenadine in, trying to remember the exact drink recipe my friend Ethan had shared with me recently. “The size of the service elevator makes it difficult to have grander ambitions. Plus, I figure someday I’ll meet someone who’ll want to put her own style touches on the place, and this way I won’t mind a bit.”

  “I think you’ve done a nice job,” she said. “It’s stark, but still cozy.”

  “Not unlike your place, I imagine.”

  She laughed. “The size of my place makes coziness unavoidable, but I do have a covetable view of a brick wall covered in pigeon shit.”

  It bothered me to hear she couldn’t see anything interesting from her window when I knew what a daydreamer she once was, always zoning out in the car on family road trips, endlessly distracted by the sky and everything below it. No matter how many times we tried to include her in our games of Ghost and I Spy, she’d always opt out eventually as a result of not paying attention.

  “What are you making?” she asked, sauntering over and leaning on the opposite side of the counter.

  “A Dirty Shirley,” I said, pouring some vodka over the grenadine until it turned a lighter shade of pink. “A buddy of mine taught me to make it. He’s the head bartender over at Club Abbott.”

  “Fancy.”

  “I’ll take you there sometime,” I said, topping the drink off with some Sprite before sliding it across the counter. “I hope I got this right.”

  “That’s a pretty girly-looking drink,” she said, hoisting herself onto a bar-stool. “I can’t imagine you drink those when you’re home alone.”

  “No, they’re purely for entertaining female friends.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Which you have a lot of, I take it?”

  I leaned against the counter. “Not really. Most of the women I’ve met since I moved here are hard work, and I’ve had enough of that in my life.”

  She still hadn’t taken a sip.

  “Try it already.”

  “I’m waiting for you to get yourself a drink,” she said. “So we can cheers.”

  “Right.” I grabbed an IPA from the fridge and pulled an opener from the drawer. “What do you want to toast to?” I asked as the metal cap rolled across the counter.

  She twisted her mouth as she considered the question. “How about we toast to us? To you for helping me get the hell out of my parent’s house and to me for making you look good at work.”

  I smiled and lifted my beer. “To us.”

  She clinked her glass against the neck of my bottle before taking a sip, her eyes sparkling before she’d even swallowed.

  “Well?” I asked, licking my lips and wondering if there was anything on Earth that tasted as good as a cold beer after a long week.

  “It’s delicious,” she said, not lowering it to the counter. “But surprisingly strong. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get me drunk.”

  “You’re very welcome to get drunk. You certainly deserve it after all your hard work this week, but don’t try blaming me if that happens.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, taking another sip.

  “Now for eats,” I said, setting my beer down. “You have two choices.”

  “Okay.” She rested her cheek on her hand.

  “You can have a Cup Noodle, as promised,” I said, grabbing three different flavors from one of the cupboards and stacking them in front of her.

  “You weren’t kidding.”

  “Or you can have some homemade pasta bake.”

  She furrowed her brow. “I don’t want you to go to that much trouble.”

  “It’s already made,” I said. “I just have to blast it in the oven.”

  “Already made by who?”

  “Me, of course. Who the hell else is going to make me a pasta bake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You want to try it?” I asked. “And if you don’t like it, we’ll resort to plan B?”

  “Sure.”

  I flicked the oven on to preheat.

  “I had no idea you could cook.”

  “How else would I have grown so big and strong?” I asked, flashing my eyebrows at her. “My dad can barely boil the kettle, and my mom hasn’t shown up for dinner in over ten years.”

  Her expression drooped. “I’m sorry, Landon. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

  “It’s fine,” I said, removing the pan from the fridge and setting it on top of the stove. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Did you ever hear from her again after she left?”

  I nodded. “She came back for a week six months after she first left.”

  “Really? How could I not know that?”

  God, the things she didn’t know. “I asked Matt not to say anything at the time. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to stick around.”

  “And she didn’t.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

&n
bsp; “I can’t imagine how awful that must’ve been.”

  “It was worse the first time,” I said, taking a swig of beer. “Since my dad and I didn’t have any warning.” She just disappeared, leaving nothing but a sticky note on the counter that said, I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore. Two days later my dad found more in the trash can, all with the same message, plus or minus a few words.

  Margot cocked her head, her blue eyes fixed on me.

  “You blame yourself as a kid, you know? You wonder what you did wrong, if you drove her away, if you didn’t love her enough or vice versa.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “I grew up a lot in those six months, though. I learned to take care of myself, learned to take care of my dad. And I swore that if she ever came back and couldn’t love the new me enough to stay, I wouldn’t take it personally.”

  “Whatever she was going through,” Margot said, reaching her hand across the counter and resting it on mine, “I’m sure it had nothing to do with you.”

  “I know that now, but… It was still fucked up.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  “Sorry to go on about it,” I said, pulling my hand back. “You guys did enough for me and my dad back then that you shouldn’t have to hear about it anymore.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I appreciate you opening up to me. I know it can’t be easy to talk about her, even after all this time.”

  The oven light clicked off then, and I was grateful for the interruption, since the last thing I wanted to do was drive Margot away with my impromptu pity party.

  After all, if there was anything my mom had taught me, it was that there was nothing worse than having someone you care about walk out on you.

  T H I R T E E N

  - Margot -

  It was obvious that Landon didn’t want to talk about his mom anymore, and I couldn’t blame him.

  God knows how my own family would’ve fallen apart if my mother had rejected us. The pressure he must’ve been under at that age, especially considering how poorly his dad coped at the time, seemed terribly unfair.

  And as horrible as I’d feel for anyone in that situation, the fact that it happened to someone I cared so deeply about—someone I thought so highly of—really angered me. How could she not see how amazing he was? How deserving of affection?

  Who knows what he must’ve thought of our family. My parents were so happy, so loyal. My dad sometimes had an awkward way of showing it, but there was no question that they’d been reliable constants in mine and Matt’s life from the beginning.

  How Landon had turned out so well without the same resources was beyond me. Even as a teenager, he never sulked about it, never used it as an excuse to slack off or fail. I admired him so much for that.

  “So what else can you make?” I asked as he slid the foil-covered casserole dish in the oven.

  “All the classics,” he said, righting himself again. “Though I’m partial to stir-frys, and I’m especially proud of my Spanish omelet.”

  “I’m impressed.” I drained my drink, and before I’d even set the glass down, he was getting the ingredients out to make me another. “My skills in the kitchen plateaued around the time I learned to make ramen and cheese sandwiches.”

  “I see.” He tipped a splash of grenadine over the ice in my glass. “Well, I didn’t really learn until I got competitive at lacrosse and started to care about nutrition, so my motivation was high.”

  “Ahhh. Caring about nutrition. That must be the piece I’m missing.”

  “Same with Matt.” He unbuttoned his work shirt and pulled the tucked-in part from the top of his pants.

  My mouth watered at the way his undershirt hugged his chest.

  “He’s lucky Kelsey’s so good in the kitchen.”

  “She’s an amazing baker, too,” I said. “I already bet him he puts on at least five pounds this year.”

  “Five if he’s lucky,” Landon said, stirring the ingredients of my fresh drink together. “Sometimes I think he likes sweets more than he likes a drink.”

  “And that’s saying something,” I said. “Did you see the pictures they put up from their honeymoon?”

  “A few of them,” he said. “Looks like they had a good time.”

  “I’ll say. And the scenery was stunning.”

  “Agreed,” he said, sliding my glass across the counter. “But it wouldn’t be the honeymoon for me.”

  I furrowed my brow. “No? Why not?”

  “Because I’d be too damn busy making sweet love to my gorgeous wife to bother with the camera, for one thing.”

  My mind dizzied at the thought of what it would be like to tumble with Landon across crisp hotel sheets.

  “I’d order room service for every single meal,” he said. “And we’d get all our exercise and sightseeing done in bed and from our own balcony.”

  I smiled. “So even if you did take pictures, they wouldn’t be fit for sharing?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “In fact, we wouldn’t even need any luggage. Just an outfit to wear on the plane there and back.”

  I clung to his use of the word we and wondered if he had a picture of this woman in his mind, this fictional wife I couldn’t help but be jealous of. “Sounds pretty romantic.”

  He eyed me for a second before grabbing another beer from the fridge. “No offense to Matt, though,” he said, turning back to me. “I’m glad they enjoyed themselves.”

  “Me too,” I said, still longing for the honeymoon Landon described.

  “Do you mind if I change out of these pants?” he asked, taking his work shirt off entirely.

  “Not at all,” I said. “By all means make yourself comfortable.”

  He glanced at the timer on the microwave and disappeared around the corner.

  It was only then that I realized how shallow my breathing had become. I made an effort to slow it down in the hope that my heart rate would follow suit. Then I combed my fingers through my hair, licked my lips, and wondered what would happen if I ambushed him in his room. Would he would stop me if I threw myself at him?

  He came around the corner thirty seconds later in the same undershirt and a pair of dark jeans that made him look so fuckable I had half a mind to throw my drink over him just to see what he’d look like in a wet T-shirt. Seriously, why the hell was he spending his Friday night with me? He probably could’ve been out clubbing with drunken supermodels…

  “What did you mean at the office?” I blurted.

  He leaned a hip against the counter across from me. “What?”

  “When you said sometimes you think you want more than my company?”

  His eyes bounced between mine.

  “Landon.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I shouldn’t have said that out loud.”

  “What did you mean?”

  He crossed his arms, and the sleeves of his T-shirt tightened around his muscles. “I just meant that sometimes I wonder…”

  I craned my neck forward. “What?”

  “How things might be different if—”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “If what?”

  “If you weren’t my best friend’s little sister. If I wasn’t so protective of you.”

  I flattened my hands on the counter. “What exactly is it that you’re so desperate to protect me from?”

  He shrugged. “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “Getting hurt, mostly. Or getting taken advantage of.”

  “I can protect myself, though,” I said. “Literally. My roommate has been giving me self-defense lessons.”

  He raised his eyebrows in obvious amusement.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “I’m sick of trying to prove to you that I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  “I know you’re not a little girl,” he said. “Trust me. I’m all too aware of that.” His eyes turned down at the corners but lifted again when the timer went off.

  I exhaled as he slipped a blue oven
mitt on and watched him move the pasta bake to the stove top.

  “This will have to cool for a second,” he said, keeping his back to me.

  I watched as he got two plates and forks out. “Landon.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, still not turning around.

  “The circumstances are never going to be different,” I said, lowering my voice. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want them to be.”

  “Okay,” he said, peeling the foil off the edge of the sizzling pan. “I’d say that’s definitely done.”

  My heart sank. “It smells delicious.”

  “Wait till you try it,” he said. “There’s nothing more cruel than taking back kind words you’ve already said.”

  I clenched my jaw, frustrated that he would even suggest I didn’t know what I was saying, that I would say things I didn’t mean. Especially to him.

  “Shit,” he said, jumping back and waving his thumb through the air.

  “Did you burn yourself?” I asked, sliding off the bar-stool and walking around the counter as he stuck his hand under the faucet.

  “It’s nothing,” he said, his face twisted with frustration.

  “Let me see.” I pulled his thumb from under the cool water and looked at the red blister that had already formed where he must’ve grabbed the pan.

  “I got distracted,” he said, turning off the water with his free hand. “I wasn’t think—”

  I pressed the pad of his thumb to my lips and closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was staring at me. I lifted my face but kept his hand cradled in mine.

  “Again,” he said, his voice low.

  I kissed the burn once more, holding my lips against it as my heart pounded in my chest. Then I kissed a bit lower, slowly working my way down to where his thumb met his palm. When I kissed his wrist, his hand cupped my face and tilted it upwards.

  I was breathless before his lips met mine, and I opened my mouth to him instantly, inhaling his air as he kissed me deeper, my stomach dropping when his tongue found my own.

  One of his hands slid around my lower back and pulled me to him until my body melted against his chest. And as his hand sank down to squeeze my ass, I felt the bulge in his pants swell against my stomach, making my insides burn.