“What about Miss Katy, have you had your breakfast?”
Closing the door, she kept her head down and started moving toward the stairs. “I’ll just shower.”
Looking back at the baby who was watching her aunt, I moved to the kitchen and saw the remnants of toast on the tray attached to her highchair. “Did you keep your aunt up all night, young lady? Poor Aunt Katy’s tired.”
With a wiggle of her body that indicated that she wanted to be let free to roam, I popped her booty on the ground and got myself a cup of coffee from the machine while I watched her. She seemed small for age, but then from the two Crew females that I’d met, height wasn’t really something that they had, so maybe it was normal. Elodie shared the same hair color as her aunt, but instead of the thick, straight sheets that Katy had, Elodie had what looked like hundreds of tiny curls on hers. She also had dark brown eyes, unlike her aunt’s blue ones.
What stood out was that the girl was smart. She went straight to a box that had toys in it, picked out a shape sorting one and was finished in about thirty seconds. Then she picked out one that had a maze of wires on it with beads and had them around the maze faster than I could do it. After that, she picked up a book and sat with it like she was actually reading it.
Moving closer to her, I sat on the couch and put my cup on the coffee table. “Hey, Elodie girl, are you a genius?”
Swear to god that little baby looked at me, grinned, shrugged in a ‘what can I say’ way, and then went back to it.
* * *
Three days later…
I was the definition of confused with how things were between me and Katy. Ever since she’d gotten Elodie, she’d been aloof and distant. I’d wondered initially if she was adjusting or doing it for her niece’s sake, but when she’d acted like normal with everyone aside from me and even my brothers, I’d realized it was more than that. She wasn’t rude or anything, just reserved and quiet with us all, and even they were confused by it.
Sighing as I pulled my truck into my drive, I was relieved that today was over. The author of the book I was working on had asked for it to be completed sooner, so I’d been working on it until the middle of the night for the last three nights. I was drained.
Looking over at Katy’s house, I saw four vehicles that I didn’t recognize, and one that I did – Canon’s. My brothers weren’t quitters, and the more Katy withdrew, the more they’d push for her to give in, which was what they were doing now. Hopefully, if they figured it out, they could help me fix whatever the problem was between us.
Climbing out, I thought about going over, but I was too tired. All I wanted to do was drag my ass to my couch, lie out on it, put something on television that didn’t require any brain function and pass out.
Katy
“So, what did he do?” Bond asked, scooping some salsa up with a chip. “Was it bad? Do you want us to hurt him, ‘cos we’ll do it for you, Katy. You just say the word.”
I’d come home to find my brothers, my sister, my parents and the Kline brothers at my house with dinner ready and waiting, instead of the peace I was looking for. I hadn’t slept properly for the last three nights, listening to Jarrod with his woman or even women for all I knew.
Seeing how tired I was, Mom had taken Elodie for her bath while Dad and Aura cleaned up the kitchen and my brothers did ‘man shit’ in the backyard, leaving me with Things One to Three.
“Who are we talking about?” I asked, curling up in a little ball in the best part of my sectional – the middle bit where it curved round.
Sitting down heavily beside me, Canon threw his arm around my shoulders. “Our brother. It’s obvious he’s done something, so tell us, we’ll hurt him and make him cry, and then it’ll all be good again.”
My ability to find comfort was now gone, so I twisted until I was sitting normally on the cushions. “He didn’t do anything.”
“Sure he did,” Reid argued, sitting on the coffee table in front of me and stretching his long legs out either side of mine. “Did he forget your birthday?”
“No, asshole, because if he did that then we forgot her birthday, and we wouldn’t do that,” Canon snapped, and then turned around to look at me in a panic. “Shit, we didn’t forget your birthday, did we?”
Chuckling at how smoothly they interacted with each other, I shook my head. “No, it’s on May fourth.”
There was a moment's silence while they mulled that over, but it was Bond who figured it out. “That’s freaking awesome,” he chuckled, double dipping his chip in the salsa. Ew! “May the fourth be with you.”
There was always one. In fact, there was normally more than one.
Once they’d laughed it out, Canon gave me a quick squeeze and then positioned himself so he was now facing me head on. “Tell us what he did.”
“It wasn’t what he did,” I tried to explain, “and it’s going to sound really lame.”
“Katy, it’s not going to be lame,” Bond argued. “Jarrod likes you and we think you’d be great for him. We also like you and know he’d treat you like the princess you are. So if we can sort this shit out and get him to fix his fuck up that’s bothering you, then how’s that lame?”
I wasn’t sure what to say, and then it became a case of being physically unable to speak let alone breathe when a voice yelled, “Incoming!” And the full weight of my asshole brother landed on me as he jumped over the back of the couch.
Wiggling around like he was trying to get comfortable, he looked at the three Klines who were staring at him like he was a freak show. “What are we talking about?”
Wheezing, I dug my nails into Major’s shoulder to try to get him to move, but he didn’t even flinch.
“Man, you’re crushing your sister,” one of the Klines snapped, and I saw Bond’s face squeeze between the cushion and Major’s back. “You ok, honey?”
“My sister? Where is she?” Major asked as innocently as he could, considering he was squeezing the life out of me and he knew it. “She needs to get a new couch, this one's all lumpy.”
There was only one thing that would get him moving, and that was a small area of hair that always grew longer than the rest, which was seriously sensitive. We didn’t know why it grew like that or why it made him freak out when it was pulled, but it had been the last resort for the rest of us since we’d made the discovery when we were little. Reaching up, I caught hold and yanked as hard as I could, making sure I did it better than I’d ever done before.
Letting out a shriek, Major jumped off me, but I wasn’t letting that hair go. This was now war.
“Get her off, get her off!”
“Say sorry,” I growled, yanking even harder on it. “And that you’ll only do that to Aura from this second on.”
“I’m sorry and I’ll only do that to Aura,” he whined, still trying to get free. “Holy shit, let go, you Satanic turtle.”
“I hate those things,” Aura screeched from the top of the stairs.
“Shit, wrong sister,” Major muttered, finally getting a grip on the hand I had holding the lock of hair. “Ok, I promise never to do it again, now let go.”
I released the hair and sat back with my arms crossed on my chest, glaring at the big shit brain who was rubbing the area and glaring right back.
“I thought we were bad,” Bond snickered, looking between us.
“You haven’t seen it when Major and Ammon both sit on me at the same time,” I snapped, looking around to make sure the other one wasn’t sneaking up on me, and spying him sitting on the couch beside Canon.
That sobered the Kline men up. “Man, your sister is one of the tiniest things I’ve ever seen,” Reid growled, and I struggled not to take offense at that or roll my eyes. I really wasn’t that little. “And y’all are at least a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than her.”
“We didn’t want sisters,” Ammon sniffed, looking down at his nails. He was also talking out his ass because he adored the two he’d been given and we knew it. “We wanted a d
og.”
Bond’s head snapped around to look at me. “Whatever Jarrod did can’t be anywhere near the level of assholery coming off these two. Now, let us fix it before I make it unfixable when I drown one of them in the bathroom behind me. You’ve got five seconds…”
“Wait, who upset you?” Major asked, looking pissed.
“Five…”
Ignoring my brother and trying to stop Bond counting, I looked at Canon. “Help me.”
“No way, little one. I’m with my brother on this.”
“Four…”
“It really isn’t that bad,” I tried, watching Reid get up from the table and look at Major like he was going to jump on him.
“Three…”
“Why don’t we have a cup of tea or coffee, something nice like that and discuss it like adults?”
“Two…”
Standing up, I threw my hands in the air. “Ok, all right. You say he likes me,” I pointed at Bond, “but I can’t be with someone who brings women home every night and does what he’s doing to them. I mean, it’s not what he’s doing to them that’s the problem – if I’m honest. It’s the fact that I can hear it through my wall, and that just isn’t nice, ya know? And I don’t know if it’s the same woman, a different woman, or hell if he has a whole line of them down the hallway every night that he goes through like one of those restaurants with the sushi on the conveyor belt.”
When I ran out of steam and pushed my bangs agitatedly off my forehead, I looked between Jarrod’s brothers, watching them blink while they processed this. Yeah, think how I feel hearing it, boys.
Looking at his brother, Canon asked, “He’s doing sex things with women at night, you say?”
“Yeah.”
“Every night?” he clarified.
“Yeah. Last night was the longest one, and he didn’t finish ‘til four.”
His eyes widened at this. “And you’re sure it’s Jarrod?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, but are you sure it’s Jarrod’s wall and not your other neighbor’s?” Reid asked, looking like he’d solved the puzzle.
“Considering it’s only our two houses that are joined together – yes.”
Frowning over at Canon, Bond asked, “Did we ever have the sex talk with Jarrod to explain what it was?”
None of them had an answer for this and just looked at each other expectantly.
“And you’re sure you heard a woman’s voice in there with him? While he was doing the sex stuff?” Reid asked, sounding like I was talking about something impossible.
“Yes!”
This time when they looked at each other, there was a glint in their eyes.
“Shotgun,” Bond yelled, jumping up from his seat and running toward my door with the other two behind him. The only issue was when they all tried to run through the doorway at the same time and it ended up with them pushing, shoving, and slapping each other.
Watching all of this from his space beside me now, Ammon mused, “I’m glad we’re not as weird as they are.” And then followed it up by shifting so that most of his body was lying across my lap. “Scratch my back, sissy.”
I wasn’t sure my uncle had made the right call entrusting me with Elodie, even if it was on and off until he sorted out a long-term plan. With the way it was going, she was going to end up scarred for life.
Jarrod
I was just falling asleep when it sounded like fifty hands were hammering on my front door at the same time. I’d thought moving here would get me away from that shit and give me a peaceful life, but I was wrong.
Getting up, I crossed over to the front door and had only just unlocked it when it burst open and my three cretin siblings fell through it.
Catching himself before he landed, Canon shot up and pointed a finger in my face. “You’ve got the best one I’ve ever met in my life, and you’re doing that shit to her? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Not going for words, Reid and Bond jumped on me and we went down on the floor in a tangle of long limbs. While Bond was trying to find a spot on my abdomen to hit, Reid was wrapping himself around me like a sloth, trying to get a chokehold on me.
It went without saying that we’d fought a lot – a lot, a lot – over the years. Some of it was understandable, some of it was fueled by hormones, some of it was just because we needed to blow off steam, but not once had I been left wondering what the hell was going on.
“She can hear all of it through the walls, you stupid son of a bitch,” Bond growled, finally landing a hit beside my belly button but not with enough force to wind me.
“You just insulted Mom,” I wheezed, reaching over my head to find Reid’s and pulling it. “And I’ve got no fucking idea why.”
Using his foot to find purchase on the floor, Bond tipped me so that I was now on my back on top of Reid and jumped on top of me. Reid started panicking at the extra four hundred pounds pushing down on his chest and tried waving at Bond to let him up. Not that it made a difference – he was a man on a mission.
“Katy,” Bond snapped, punching me in the ribs and inadvertently bouncing at the same time, which made Reid gasp. “You’re bringing bitches back to do sex shit with them, and she hears all of it. Way she said it, it could be a number of bitches all lined up waiting.”
“I’ve not had anyone back here,” I yelled, jerking my torso to get him off and getting a huge amount of satisfaction when Reid groaned as we landed on him. There you go, fucker!
Throughout all of it, Canon had been pacing around us, but at this he swung back. “She heard it, Jarrod. Fucking heard all of it, so don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying!”
“What, are you renting out rooms by the hour then?” Bond sneered and then sat up and looked around the place. “I mean, I’m not sure how much you’d get for that, but it doesn’t seem like a bad way to make some extra income.”
Using this distraction, I shoved on his chest as hard as I could, and grinned when I heard the thud and groan that came out of him when he hit the ground. As a final fuck you to Reid, I went to stand up, and then dropped straight back down on him.
“Fucker,” he rasped, rolling to the side and holding his stomach when I got to my knees beside him.
Standing up, I turned to Canon now. “I haven’t had a woman back here, man, not one. I’m not sure what she’s heard…” and then it hit me. “Oh, fuck!”
Still in pain, Reid rolled to face me and only just managed to ask, “Is it porn?”
How to answer that. Technically, no it wasn’t, but on another technicality it was word porn, so if I said no was that a lie?
“Dude, if you’re doing porn in your home, that counts as having a woman back,” Bond said as he got to his feet beside me. “Either way, Katy deserves better than that.”
Walking over to the couch, I flopped down on it and covered my face with my hands. This was such a monumental fuck up. I didn’t want to explain it to these three, but I was going to have to say something.
Unfortunately, the only thing I could come up with was, “It’s not what you think, or what she apparently thinks.”
Jesus, a line of women in the hallway? What the fuck?
“Well, what is it? If you explain it to us we can help you translate it into words that’ll work with a woman like Katy,” Reid suggested as he crawled across the floor to one of the recliners. I wanted to say he was being dramatic, but I’d been in his predicament many times and that shit took a while to get over. He’d be feeling it for days.
Groaning at the prospect of telling them what I was doing on the side and thus ending the dream of having something that was just mine, I tried to stall. “She really thinks I’ve got women here every night? In the room next to hers?”
“Yup,” Bond said seriously as he joined me on the couch.
“But that’s my study.”
They all looked at each other, but it was Bond and Reid who had the ‘what the hell does that matter’ looks on their faces.
Not
losing focus, Canon leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Well?”
In for a penny… “I narrate books and this week I had a dual narration job, which means that I was reading my parts while a woman called Karen was reading hers. That’s what Katy must have heard.”
Sitting back, he crossed his arms and glared at me. “Well, if you’re not going to tell the truth then your fucked. I like Katy, I’ll take her.”
“I’ll fight you for her,” Reid snapped, bracing for Canon to say the word go.
“We all know she’s into me,” Bond shrugged. “And she gave me her number earlier.”
And this was why I wanted peace and quiet. This was why I wanted something that was just mine. I’d spent the last twenty-seven years with this shit, and as much as I loved my brothers, I just wanted less of the crap that came with it.
Standing up, Canon started walking to the door. “Y’all are such amateurs. You don’t text a woman like Katy, you court her. Courting means treating her like a princess, making her feel appreciated, giving her the time and attention she deserves – all of which none of you can do.”
As soon as he got the last word out, he swung open the door and I realized I had to move now. For once I let my age drop so that I was at the same level of maturity as them, and I hurdled the recliner that Reid was getting out of and pushed Canon out of the way. Once I was outside, I did the same with the little fence and got to Katy’s door.
Not knowing what to say to explain it didn’t matter at all, what mattered was getting Katy. So I knocked on her door, doing my best not to sound like a maniac. Fortunately, she was the one who opened it with Elodie on her hip.
In a split second I knew what I had to do, and I did something I’d never done before. I put myself out there big time and leaned in and kissed her, doing my best not to crush the baby. Initially Katy froze and her mouth was unyielding against mine, but the second I lifted my hand to the back of her neck with my thumb on her pulse, she melted and it opened, giving me access which I took advantage of. As soon as the taste of her hit me, I wanted to take it further, but… Elodie.
Talk Flirty To Me: Cheap Thrills Series Book 4 Page 8
