by Natalie Rios
“Did you go there by yourself?” Brody’s voice is right at my ear and I nearly scream. When in the heck had he moved so close to me?
Part Neanderthal, part ninja with those stealth movements.
“First of all, do not sneak up on me. And secondly, yes. I usually travel alone.”
Brody’s hand wraps around my upper arm, pulling me away from Tanner’s side. I would protest, but Tanner seems all too eager to walk away, leaving me alone with his big brother. “By usually, do you mean always?”
I’m fully prepared to deny it, but one look at Brody’s face gives me pause. Face tense, brows furrowed, lips closed in a tight straight line...He’s angry. I’m familiar enough with this expression on his face to be sure of it. But what I don’t understand is why?
“It’s dangerous for a woman to travel alone. Especially to remote areas.”
Ah. The protective streak rears its head once again.
“Relax, Dad. Both the cruise ship and the campsite were crawling with tourists. No one was trying to sneak into my tent to steal my virtue. And even if they were, there wasn’t exactly any virtue to steal.”
If anything, my words only increase the tension in his face.
“Look, it’s not exactly like I had my pick of guests to bring along with me. Most of my friends have jobs and none of them are crazy enough to go wandering around Antarctica. I went alone and returned in one piece, too. Besides, a little danger is what keeps life interesting.”
“Yeah, I can tell you like to flirt with danger. Whatever you’re doing with Tanner, it needs to stop. Immediately.”
“Huh? What are you talking about? I’m not doing anything with Tanner.”
“Really? The nudging and come-hither smile wasn’t your attempt at flirting with him?”
“Oh, that.” I give him a light pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”
Brody swears under his breath. Taking my shoulders in his hands, he gives me a firm (yet surprisingly gentle, given his size) shake. “I don’t play games, Charlotte. If you’re using my brother to get a rise out of me, then it needs to end now.”
“Wait, what? Getting a rise out of you?”
“Unless bouncing from brother to brother is your thing. In which case, it’s been fun and I wish you luck. You’re going to need it since the Connors brothers don’t believe in sharing or taking turns.” He pivots and starts walking back towards the group, but I hold onto the edges of his shirt and yank him back.
“Whoa. Time out. First of all, that sharing thing sounds absolutely disgusting. Do women really do that? Intentionally sleep with a group of brothers? Don’t answer that,” I quickly add when he opens his mouth. I don’t think I want to know. “Even if I wasn’t grossed out by the very idea of being passed around like a hooker at a stag party, I would never in a million years sleep with Tanner. I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but once a guy’s called me a whore, any sexual attraction I might have felt has delved down into the negatives. I’m talking negative infinity here. There’s a greater chance of a dinosaur getting struck by lightning while he’s doing the Macarena than there is of me even considering looking at Tanner in that way.”
Rocking back on his heels, his lips curve into a smug half-smile. “Do they say stag party in New York? Can’t say I’ve heard that phrase in a while.”
“Seriously? That’s what you got out of all of that?” Fuming, I stomp off. At this point, the group is nowhere in sight. Likely inside the house already. Meaning I’m stuck with Satan for the remainder of the walk. Lovely.
“What was your second point?” he asks from beside me. Damn him and his long legs. There’s no way I can outwalk him. “You said first of all you would never sleep with Tanner...”
There’s a smile in his voice and have to fight the urge to look at him. The man is too handsome when he smiles and I’m already off my game. What the hell are we even talking about? Oh, yeah. The Tanner Situation.
“Right. Secondly, I wasn’t trying to get a rise out of you. I was trying to get a rise out of Mina.”
“Mina?”
“Shh!” I can’t risk someone overhearing my plan. “Mina likes Tanner,” I whisper. “I’m trying to help her.”
“By flirting with him? How exactly is that being helpful?”
“Easy. I’m trying to invoke the green-eyed monster in her. Once the beast has been awoken, she’ll make the first move and finally get out of this weird limbo friend zone they’re in.”
“That’s the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“What!” I gasp. “No way, it’s perfect!”
“What makes you so sure Tanner won’t reject her?”
“Because Mina’s young and attractive and awesome. Only a complete idiot would turn her down.”
“You realize we’re talking about Tanner, right?” Well, he has me there. “Why are you meddling anyway?”
“To make Mina happy, of course.”
“And you think meddling will make her happy? Openly flirting with a guy she likes is going to have her waking up with a cheery smile on her face?” We’ve reached the front door so I signal for him to drop the conversation.
“The ends will justify the means.” I unlock the door and four pairs of eyes immediately latch onto us. “What?”
“Everything okay?” Fallon asks. “You two took so long getting here, we were afraid you got lost.”
Shit. We’re doing a piss poor job of being inconspicuous, huh?
“I’m not that ditzy,” I joke. A quick survey of the room reveals just how long we’d taken. All of my stuff is already in the foyer, waiting to be carried upstairs. But I hone in on one item in particular.
Leaning against the far wall is a 4’ x 3’ cork bulletin board with a map of the world pinned to it. Pushpins mark every city I’ve visited, color-coded by the amount of time I spent there. Seeing it usually gets me excited, the anticipation of visiting some new far off place enough to give me a high no drug ever could.
But looking at it now, I feel nothing. Except for maybe a little irritation because someone is going to have to help me lug that thing up a couple of flights of stairs.
“Can anyone help me carry my travel board up to my room?”
Crickets. A tumbleweed rolls across the floor, like in one of those old spaghetti westerns. Tanner and Kyle won’t even look me in the eye, both pretending to be fascinated by the closest bag or suitcase.
Without a single word, Brody walks over and hefts the thing straight up into the air. “Tell me where to go.” And then he takes to the stairs.
Jogging ahead of him, I reach the top of the stairs first and hold open my bedroom door. “Just lean it up against the bed,” I instruct.
Brody’s barely stepped inside when he pauses and swears under his breath. “You weren’t kidding with the whole Kensingtons don’t clean bit, huh?”
I shrug. What? No use in being embarrassed. It’s not like I didn’t warn all of you.
“Maid’s got the year off. The board can go on the side of the bed.”
Cocking a brow, Brody lowers the board to the ground and surveys the scene. “Where? Every inch of the bed’s perimeter is covered in clothes. It looks like a category five hurricane blew through town and spit out the contents of everyone’s closet in this one room. Who owns this many clothes anyway?”
Okay, so maybe I’m a teensy bit embarrassed.
Face sizzling, I kick some clothes away from the foot of the bed. “It’s not that bad. Here. I made some room.”
Wordlessly, Brody sets the board down on the spot I cleared. We both stand there, silently studying my board. Brody speaks first. “What were you looking for?”
Frowning, I tilt my head towards him. “Looking for?”
“When you were traveling. What were you looking for?”
“What makes you think I was looking for something? Maybe I was running from something instead.” It’s what everyone assumes. Running away from my responsibilities, from my famil
y...from my past.
“No,” Brody shakes his head. “If you were running away, you wouldn’t have come back after each trip. You would have stayed in one place. But you kept jumping around from place to place, sometimes staying as little as a few days.” He points to a purple pin over Kiev and another over Port au Prince. “Or as long as a year.” This time his finger lands on the red pin over Paris. “What were you looking for?”
How? How can he have possibly figured out that much about me in the five minutes he spent in the same room as my board? Even my own parents and twin brother, who have known me my entire life and spent years analyzing my board for any patterns or explanations, haven’t gotten as close to the truth as Brody just did.
Last year, my best friend Liz told me her then drunken-accidental husband (long story there, but they’re very much still happily married, in case you were wondering) scared her emotionally. I hadn’t understood what she meant. Honestly, Liz is a bit of a stick in the mud and a worrywart to boot. Love the girl, but she has a tendency to overreact if things don’t go according to plan.
And falling for a stranger you married in a Vegas chapel while blacked out drunk? Yeah, definitely not according to plan.
But now, I get it. Brody is essentially a stranger, someone I’ve known for barely a month now. Yet he’s cutting right to the heart of the matter, hitting so close to a nerve I had buried deep. Letting him get any closer absolutely terrifies the shit out of me.
Fortunately, years of practice have made me an expert at throwing up smokescreens.
Curving my lips into the brightest smile I have in my arsenal, I beam up at him. “What was I looking for? Adventure, of course. Luxuriating. Indulging. The usual.”
Despite my urge to flee, I force myself to saunter out of there with a flick of my hair and a little bounce in my step, just like the ditz people believe me to be.
Sometimes playing the part of the dumb blonde has its advantages.
Chapter Fifteen
I know we’ve been gone too long the second I reach the bottom of the stairs and catch Mina and rest of the Connors family whispering. About us. And I know it’s about us because when Brody clears his throat from behind me, the group scatters like a bunch of roaches.
We really do need to learn to be more discreet.
“Such progress, fellas,” I drawl as I take in the room. Everything is pretty much exactly where it was before Brody and I had gone upstairs. Something that is different though is the fact every single one of them has their phone out. “You guys taking before and after pictures?”
Looks are exchanged before Fallon steps forward, extending her phone to me. “I hope you don’t mind, but we Googled you.”
Every single cell in my body freezes. There’s so much garbage printed out there, I’m half afraid to ask. “Oh? Find anything interesting?”
“Did you ever date Ryan Blake?”
Not what I was expecting. Even so, the name draws a complete blank. “Who?”
“Ryan Blake,” Fallon repeats. “The movie star.”
“I have no idea who that is.”
Fallon shoots me a look of disbelief. “There’s a picture of the two of you hanging out at the Met Gala last year. They say you two spent the entire night canoodling.”
“Do they?” I murmur, but I glance down at the picture on her phone. Ah. That guy. “Oh, you mean Sir Slurs-A-Lot.”
“Sir Slurs-A-Lot?” Tanner asks while Kyle howls with laughter.
“Mmhmm. He spent the entire night running back and forth to the bar. Every time he came back, he was slurring even worse than the last time. It got to the point where we couldn’t understand a word he was saying. Hence why my bestie Liz and I dubbed him Sir Slurs-A-Lot.”
“So...you weren’t canoodling?” Fallon asks in confusion.
“Absolutely not,” I retort with an indignant sniff. “They probably only wrote that because he kept blacking out and every time he saw me, he would lean over to ask if anyone had ever told me I looked just like Grace Kelly.”
“What about Brooks Astor? The rock star?” Mina has to add after yet another blank stare on my part.
“Guys, I’ve been abroad for, like, ninety percent of the last ten years. I don’t know any celebrities.”
“But the pictures...” Mina holds up her phone with a picture of me and who I presume must be Brooks Astor, the rock star. He’s actually kind of cute, if you’re into the whole overly coiffed hair look.
“Jesus Christ, you can’t even light a cigarette around him with all the hairspray he must use,” Brody says from over my shoulder.
Laughing, I shake my head at the two ladies. “Liz and I nicknamed him Mirror, Mirror because he spent the entire night checking himself out on any shiny surface he came across. Now, are we going to move this stuff or what?”
We did move the stuff, though they kept asking me about different guys I’ve been photographed with. Who knew I’d met so many celebrities in my lifetime? Some of them, I’ve heard of. Even I know who the Hemsworth brothers are, though sadly neither one of them was single when I met them. And I recognize tennis star Maxim Ivanov from my time spent in Europe. I even watched him win Wimbledon a couple of years ago.
But have I dated any of these men? The answer is a big fat NO.
“I don’t get it. How can the media get it wrong every time?” Fallon asks, looking mighty crestfallen after the final trip upstairs. With all these extra hands, we were able to get everything done in two trips.
“They report what they think will sell and sex sells,” I shrug, having long since accepted the blatant lies the media prints about my family. “But as a rule of thumb, if some tabloid says I slept with a guy, there’s a 99.99% chance I didn’t.”
“Okay, last question. I promise,” Fallon pleads after a mock withering look from me. “Who is Eddie Rockwell?”
“Eddie? He’s my best friend Liz’s twin brother. Why do you ask?”
“He comments on all your pictures on Instagram,” Kyle observes. “Like, seriously, all of them.”
“We’re friends and our families go way back. He’s good friends with my twin brother Jackson and actually, he was my date to cotillion and Jackson was Liz’s date.”
“Wait. Cotillions still happen?” Mina looks positively tickled by the idea.
“Wait, so you dated your best friend’s brother? I mean, he’s cute, but boundaries! You could have ruined your friendship,” Fallon teases and I know her comment is more for Mina and Tanner’s benefit.
Both of who pointedly ignore her.
“Yes, cotillions still happen and no, I never dated Eddie Rockwell. I don’t date. Liz and I had trouble finding escorts because...well, Liz can be really uptight and I can be a little crazy-”
“Just a little?” Brody interjects.
I ignore his comment. “So when we discovered we both had twin brothers, it was like fate. Just swap the brothers and boom! We both had dates. Liz and I became besties and Jackson and Eddie are still pretty close. The rest is history.”
“What does one wear to cotillion in the 21st century?” Mina muses and I immediately pull up pictures on my phone. While us girls ‘oohed’ and ‘aaahed’, the men said their goodbyes.
Actually, Brody didn’t say a word. He merely sent me a heated look that promised naughty things sometime in the future.
Honestly, I can’t wait.
I couldn’t help but notice though that while Kyle hugged me, Tanner nearly jumped back a foot when I so much as turned towards him. He barely stuttered out his farewell before fleeing.
“What the hell’s gotten into Tanner?” I ask the second the door closes behind them. “He’s acting super weird around me.”
Fallon snorts out a laugh. “Probably trying to avoid another black eye.”
Ah, yes. Tanner’s mysterious black eye. “How’d he get one in the first place?”
Both girls exchange a look before exclaiming, “You mean, you don’t know?”
“No,” I answer impatien
tly. “Who gave it to him?”
“Brody,” Fallon answers, much to my surprise. “When he found out what Tanner said to you after the staff meeting. Brody said he was just trying to talk him into apologizing, but next thing you know, Tanner comes out with a black eye.”
He gave his brother a black eye over something he said about me? I’m not even sure if he likes me half the time, yet he hit his brother to defend my honor.
Brody the Protector. Just thinking the nickname has me smiling.
I got a glimpse of my new super hero the following Monday at work.
Ever since we hooked up, there’s been zero mention of sharing a calendar. Nope, we meet every morning to eat breakfast together and go over his schedule for the day. The entire thing is pretty normal.
Well, normal for us anyway. Which is to say full of sexual tension, eye-fucking, and conversation that’s just this side of professional (“Do you find my office to be a bit chilly this morning, Miss Kensington?” Brody asked one day as he stared directly at my boobs. Or, more precisely, my pebbled nipples that were on display since I had neglected to put on a bra that morning). Not enough to arouse suspicion from anyone who happened to walk by and overhear, but just enough to get the blood going in the morning.
After an hour of that, my hot and semi-bothered self retreats back to my desk. As much fun as fucking on Brody’s desk was the other day, we both agree a repeat performance would be unwise. The chances of getting caught are too high and his siblings’ weird behavior the other day still makes me nervous.
So I slave away at my desk, ironing out a few more of the party details before trying my hand at making my own flyer.
Let me just say, I can totally see why people hire graphic designers to do this type of stuff for them.
By midmorning, I’m ready to give up. If I had the budget for it, I would hire someone. I’m not creative enough to do something like this. Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but I really want this party to be a success. To prove to everyone I’m not a flake.
