Brother's Best Friend Unwrapped

by Aria Ford

  I never figured out if it was because he was shy or because he’s snobbish.

  Now that I thought about it, I still didn’t know. With him it could be either. The Grant family were a proud lot, with a long history of involvement in the military and much more wealth than they let on. Carson had always had that sheen to him that spoke of a wealthy family, and I had always just assumed that his silence was because he believed everyone else in the room was inferior.

  “Uncle Carson?”

  Carson blinked as Josh, seated opposite him, spoke up.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Did Daddy show you our racetrack?”

  “Now, son…” Reese said with a long-suffering voice. Carson waved a hand at her, cutting her off.

  “No, Josh. I didn’t,” he said kindly. “D’you want to show me after dinner?”

  “Yes!” Josh exclaimed loudly. “I got lots of cars to race on it, and tanks and trucks an’…”

  “Tanks don’t race, Josh,” Brett said, ruffling his son’s curls affectionately.

  “It depends whether they have to get somewhere fast or not,” Carson said with a tender smile. Josh laughed.

  “See?” he said, giving his father a sparkling grin. Brett pulled a face at Carson.

  “Thanks, Grant.” he said. “My reputation has just been entirely ruined.”

  Carson laughed. “Well, they do go fast sometimes…not exactly racing, but there you go.”

  “Will you come and play after dinner?” Josh asked Carson hopefully.

  “Okay, Josh.”

  I bit back a smile. I had never thought Carson would be good with kids. He seemed, if anything, to have more patience with them than adults. When it came to Reese, Brett and I, he was monosyllabic. But with the kids, he seemed ready to open up. It interested me.

  I wonder how he’s been, this last year.

  Brett hadn’t filled me in on much, I thought with some asperity. He had simply told me the numbers: Carson had been discharged after his eight years in the forces, returning to home last year, round about this time. He lived in Colorado.

  None of that told me anything about how he had been keeping, what he had done, his state of mind when he returned. And now that I saw him again, my curiosity for the details had heightened.

  “More, Amelia?” Reese asked.

  “Thank you.”

  I thanked Reese absently as she passed me the plate of baked potatoes, and went back to my occupation of watching Carson out of the corner of my eye.

  Hell, but he is sexy. Nothing about him had changed. Everything he did, from the way he licked a spoon to the way he grinned, tingled in my tummy and made my pulse race. I couldn’t help it.

  “Amelia?”

  “Yes?” I asked Reese, who was opposite me.

  “You are enjoying your job?”

  “Mm,” I agreed, swallowing the piece of potato I was busy eating. “I still enjoy it.”

  “What do you do?”

  I turned with some surprise to where Carson looked at me, brow raised. He looked like he was genuinely interested. I swallowed hard. Just those soft brown eyes, lit with gentle interest, set me aflame where they surveyed me.

  “I’m an accountant,” I said in a small voice. He smiled.

  “Oh! So you did that after all?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “That’s good,” he said with approval.

  “Thanks,” I whispered tightly through a throat tense with feeling.

  I looked sharply away, focusing on my brother where he was peaceably eating salad. I felt as if I was sixteen again, and he was visiting me at my home. It was as if we were just the two of us, discussing our dreams and hopes. He had been studying Sports Science and I had wanted to be an accountant even then. Now I was an accountant for a major building firm—a job that I actually enjoyed for some odd reason—and he had honorably returned from a war. It didn’t make any difference to how we felt.

  “Amelia?” he asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I asked where you worked?”

  “Oh!” I chuckled self-consciously and tucked a stray strand of hair back behind my ear, a nervous habit. “Sorry. I wasn’t listening. I mean, I…I work for Brax Construction.”

  “Oh!” He sounded impressed. “Like, they do buildings?”

  I laughed. “Exactly like that.”

  “Oh.” He chuckled. “Sorry. I’m being dumb.”

  “Not really.”

  He laughed. I laughed too. It was only when Cayley shifted in her seat, the sound of the leg on the tiled floor making a loud squeak, that I realized the whole room was silent. I looked around, feeling self-conscious.

  “Um…Reese…the toilet’s in the hallway, right?” I asked. I was fairly certain I knew where it was. It wasn’t that long ago since I’d visited my brother, and I’d been there since five, but it was the only way I could think of getting out of an awkward situation.

  “Sure. By the stairs, on the left,” Reese said automatically.

  “Thanks.”

  I beat a hasty retreat, heart pounding in my chest. When I got to the bathroom, I sank down against the door, sitting on my heels.

  “This is going to be hectic.”

  I closed my eyes, half-wishing I had stayed at home, that I was a thousand miles away, even if that meant being in the ocean. I would just about rather have risked the sharks than been here at my brother’s table, with ten years of latent attraction welling up.

  How am I going to manage this for a week?

  I swallowed. It might get easier. It has to. I couldn’t spend seven days feeling as if my heart was being shot at every time I looked up and caught those soft brown eyes on me, saw that handsome mouth turn up at the corners, broodingly.

  I would have to figure out a way of coping with it. Ignoring him would probably work, I reasoned. Making sure I wasn’t seated beside him at dinner or any other time. Avoiding him in all aspects.

  I stood up and washed my hands, then headed back to the dinner table.

  “…and then I told him we should start our own company…”

  Brett was talking to Carson now, telling the tale of how he had started in the firm where he now worked, and in which he was a partner. I had heard the story before, so I forced my attention away from the strange magnetism Carson exerted.

  “You have two weeks off, you said, Reese?”

  For the rest of the dinner I focused my attention on my sister-in-law, chatting with her about her job, her sister, the plans for Christmas day. I didn’t look at Carson; tried to forget he was there. The only time I let myself remember was when I was standing up to take the kids upstairs for their story. Then I turned and caught him looking after me with that tender gaze. I swallowed hard and wondered, not for the first time that evening, whether he still felt something for me as I did for him.

  I couldn’t know the answer to that question. All I could know for sure was what I felt myself. And that itself was different to anything I had experienced before.

  Since I heard from Brett, I had expected to feel resentment, anger, hurt. I had arrived prepared for all those things, to quietly pretend Carson wasn’t there. I was ready to cope with the morass of pain that I expected his presence would awaken inside, but it hadn’t. The moment I opened the door and looked into his eyes, all those years of being angry had dissolved, instant and absolute, and only what was true remained. The truth is that I still love Carson Grant. The truth I couldn’t know was whether or not he felt the same way. As we all stood, helping to pack the dishwasher and retire to bed or the sitting room, I wondered, not without some hope, if I might find out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Amelia

  Finding that I needed some time in peace and quiet, I curled up in my bedroom. It was hard to find peace and quiet here, with two small kids, but I managed it. With the door shut and the heavy curtains drawn, the small, cream-colored guest bedroom became a haven of refuge. Perfect.

  My poor heart was aching,
and my body wasn’t much better. Even the soft burr of Carson’s voice aroused me, and I knew that this week was going to be sweet torment. Opening my phone to search for some light relief on Facebook I found a message from Jess on my phone.

  Hey, girl! How’s Christmas

  I replied. Weird, girlfriend.

  How weird?

  Met someone I wasn’t expecting to see.

  She replied a moment later. Like, a guy?

  Yes.

  Is he good-looking?

  I laughed aloud. I wanted to write back: he’s the most good-looking man I ever saw. I didn’t.

  Isn’t he!

  It was the only thing I could say without giving away just how head-over-heels I was rapidly becoming. She sent back a grin. Good.

  I’m not sure about that.

  She paused. Then her reply came a minute later. Sorry for silence…just making coffee. Why no good?

  I sighed. We have history.

  Oh. Good history?

  Maybe.

  We chatted a while after that. It seemed that, according to Jess, I should forget the past.

  I actually agreed with her on that, except that the past was hard to forget. In this particular case, the past shaped the present. Every time I saw Carson, I was sixteen and the world was magic and my heart broke.

  I lay on my bed, phone forgotten and recalled the day we met.

  It had been a dark wintry day, not unlike these, except earlier in the year. It was the football season, and Brett had been out watching a match. When their home team won, he had brought about a dozen people back to the house. One of them being Carson.

  I recalled seeing him. I was at the table with Brett and his friends, some of whom I knew. Carson sat down opposite me.

  “Hi,” he said.

  I had smiled back. For almost the first time in my life, I had felt shy. His eyes had held my gaze and butterflies had risen in my tummy. It had been the semester break from high-school, and I was sixteen and just learning love.

  “Hi,” I’d said, shyly. I remember as if it was yesterday how my belly clenched as he grinned. He had the best grin I’d ever seen. It was sharp-edged and sexy and my body had ached for him.

  “You’re Brett’s sister, right?”

  “Amelia Carlyle,” I had said. My hand was out to shake his before I’d thought about it. His touch on my skin was soft and firm at once. I could feel the moistness of his palm in the warm room and my pulse leaped to touch him.

  “You like football?”

  I’d made a face. “I can’t not. I’d go mad if I didn’t somehow.” I indicated Brett.

  He’d laughed. “I guess so.”

  At that moment, Brett had announced he was going to make something for a snack and gone to the kitchen. His place was empty and Carson stood.

  “I can hear you better here,” he said, coming to sit beside me. That was, I think, when my heart migrated. It had been with him ever since then.

  I had looked at my hands as he came to sit with me.

  “So,” he’d said. “You on holiday?”

  “Mm,” I had agreed. My whole body was shivering with his presence. I was sixteen, he, I guessed, was Brett’s age; a young college student, probably in his second year. I couldn’t quite believe he was as interested in me as I was in him, but it seemed that way. He smiled.

  “Got plans?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said. My throat was closing up as we talked and I had to cough to clear it. He caught the look in my eye and his pupils narrowed.

  “You want to go out somewhere?” he had asked. I blinked.

  “Mm?”

  He had laughed. “Shall I take that as yes?”

  I had giggled. “Sorry,” I said, breathing shallowly. “My throat.” I cleared it and he grinned. “Yes.”

  “Okay.”

  We chatted after that and it amazed me how much we had to say to each other. I was not big on conversation, but talking with him was easy. I caught Brett’s eye on us and if he noticed Carson had taken his place he didn’t comment about it. He just sat down in the vacant chair, popcorn prepared, and ignored us.

  That was our first meeting. My attention went to later, to our first time.

  We had kissed in the garden, at my parents’ home. It had been summer and I was seventeen and the flowers were in the trees. The air had smelled of dew and roses as my mouth met his. I loved him so much.

  I recalled the excitement, the wonder, the slight apprehension as we had left the garden and gone to his place. He was renting accommodation near us, and it seemed no one was home. He had taken me to his bedroom and we had lost ourselves in a frenzy of wonder.

  I had expected pain, been prepared for it, but there was none. Carson slid into me with such passion and tenderness that any pain was stopped by the wonder of our loving.

  Later, we had laid together on the soft bed and whispered our love for each other. He had said he would always be there for me and I had told him with all the trust of seventeen years that I my heart was in his keeping.

  We had seen each other often—every weekend, in fact. It was on the weekend close to Christmas that he gave me the gift I wished I still had.

  It was a gold locket, in the shape of a heart. A small one, just as big as the nail of my little finger. It had hung on a slender gold chain.

  “A little heart, like the big one you already have: mine.”

  He had said it as he kissed my hair. “Oh, Carson. My heart is yours.”

  He had laughed. “Well, then. A fair exchange.”

  “Oh, Carson.”

  We had kissed and made love in the room in his rented lodgings and we had known that the world was ours and our future was set on the path of love.

  I sighed. My cheeks were wet with the tears I didn’t know I was crying. My memories were so tender and so beautiful I could have spent all evening lost in them. Why I had let him go so easily, I had no idea. But I had.

  I wished I had kept the locket. It would have been a physical reminder of that time, but I had returned it. He had seemed as if he wanted to be rid of me. How could I keep it?

  He had gone to the army and I had tried to distance myself. His career took him to Iraq, and my studies took me first to internship and then full-time employment with one of the biggest construction companies in the region. I found it fulfilling, and the work took a bigger place in my heart than it would otherwise have done, filling up the space Carson would have held.

  It was not as if I had been alone for those ten years. Lovers came and went, but my heart was never in it. None of them could match what I had with Carson. I knew that.

  Now he was here, in the next room. I still wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that. I had not expected to see him again.

  I sighed. I was tired. I looked at the clock. It said ten-fifteen. I yawned.

  “It’s still early,” I commented to myself. I was really tired though. It had been a long day and a demanding one, I reflected, as I reached for my night-robe and towel and prepared to head across the hallway to the shower.

  As I appeared, the bathroom door opened and he stepped out. I breathed in the scent of familiar cologne and unfamiliar shower-gel, all tremulous counterpoints to the underlying musk and clove of him.

  “Carson!” I said, feeling my cheeks flare.

  He was in the hallway, tall and angular, his body covered with a towel nightgown, facing me. I looked up at his face. His eyes widened, then narrowed.

  “Sorry,” he said, a grin on his mobile lips. “I guess there’s only one shower.”

  “Yes,” I nodded. I looked around, feeling impossibly shy. He was tall and handsome and I couldn’t help the fact that my eyes roved from his neck—muscled and soft-gleaming in the faded light—to his chest that I could just see through the ill-fastened nightgown. I felt my heart thud in my chest.

  Those years of military lifestyle had honed his body to sculptural magnificence, his shoulders broad and muscled, his chest gleaming, the trace of pecs bul
ging below the nightgown. I even liked his feet, corded with muscles that wound up his calves like rope.

  I realized I was staring at him and stepped back, feeling embarrassed. He hadn’t moved, though. If he found my scrutiny shocking, he didn’t show it. In fact, it seemed as if he was studying me too. I caught his eyes lingering at my waist and then moving back to my face. He smiled and my heart flipped.

  “You tired too?” he asked. He had a trace of a grin on that quirky mouth and I felt my heart clench tight.

  “Yes,” I said softly. “Day’s driving finished me.”

  “Join the club,” he chuckled.

  “Well. You really did drive a whole day,” I admonished. “Probably without stopping.” I cleared my throat. It was getting hard to breathe here, my whole body slowly flaring up.

  “I did stop, once. Just for lunch.” his grin tickled me.

  I chuckled. “Carson Grant! You are reckless.”

  “You say so,” he teased.

  I bit my lip. I had always said he was reckless. He had always denied it. We were in unknown waters, suddenly: at once familiar territory, but rendered new by all that had passed before now. The words were the same sort of thing we would have said when we were younger together and I think the familiarity of it all shocked us both. It was like ten years had never existed and we were seamlessly together.

  “I…” I murmured, not sure what to say.

  “I guess I should let you shower.” He smiled a little rueful.

  I smiled back. “It would be useful.”

  He laughed.

  We both looked at each other and neither moved. Then he sighed.

  “I’ll freeze if I don’t dry off soon. Until tomorrow, then.” He inclined his head, eyes dancing with merriment, and headed up the hallway.

  I was left where I was, shower-gel and nightie in hand, rooted to the floor. I could feel my heart slowly returning to its accustomed rate. My cheeks burned.

  Did I just bump into Carson Grant, coming from the shower? I wanted to laugh: I felt like I was sixteen and it had the same wild arousal it would have given me then. It did: I knew, as I went into the bathroom, pulling the door shut and leaning against it, that trying to sleep tonight would be very hard indeed.