Too Sweet (Hayes Brothers #3)(20)
Never touch your brother’s girl is one of the top rules among the Hayes. Mia’s not technically Cody’s, but I’ll be damned if I’m the reason he doesn’t get the girl he wants.
No dibs on chicks is in the rules, too, but it only applies if we met her at the same time.
We didn’t.
He was first.
The last time I saw Mia was Monday when she got a mouthful and dress-full of coffee from my client’s daughter outside college. I thought shit like that only went down in high school. It did when I was a teenager.
Looks like a lot has changed since then.
I don’t need drama. My life’s already overwhelming, fast-paced, and challenging. I hardly ever stop working. If I’m not at the office, I deal with emergencies, manage Q, the Country Club, my restaurant, and four cocktail bars. I solve issues with vendors and contractors. I deal with employees, clients, and partners. On top of that, I have six brothers, three of which live in my house. They all need me, be it for help, advice, or a chat.
And then there’s my mother.
After Logan got Cassidy pregnant, she changed her tune from ‘I don’t want any women stealing my sons’ to ‘all my sons should make many, many babies so I can spoil them rotten.’ I’m dodging her cupid alter ego at every turn.
It’s exhausting. I’m running on fumes and desperately need a vacation before my brain melts, but I don’t trust anyone enough to leave them in charge while I switch my phone off for a week or so. What’s the point in taking time off if I can’t relax?
I’ve got enough on my plate, but fuck... seeing Mia sprint inside the building, her pretty face a gnarly shade of pale green, made me feel about as calm and comfortable as a father waiting for his teenage daughter on prom night. If Cody hadn’t followed her inside, I’d have been there, holding her hair while she puked.
Later that day, I almost called Blair’s father to tell him he should take his business elsewhere or teach his daughter not to be such a bitch, but I talked myself out of it. Whatever the deal between Mia and Blair, it’s not my fucking problem.
My assistant, Jasmine, enters my office around five in the afternoon to give me an end-of-the-week run-down. I’m thankful for the distraction. I can’t focus on anything other than Mia lately.
The attraction grew so swiftly that I missed when it became an idiotic obsession. Erotic fantasies turned more vivid since the self-defense class instructor Nico Hayes taught in his living room last week. I can’t stop recalling how perfectly her sweet-smelling body molded into me.
She’s Cody’s! I school myself, not for the first time. Not even the hundredth.
If anyone asks how fucked I am on a scale of one to ten, with one being not at all and ten being incredibly fucked, I’m around forty-seven.
This is wrong. The thoughts that plague me, the inappropriate dreams that have me slamming my phone to snooze the alarm and spend a little longer watching Mia writhe beneath me as I drive into her.
The cold, harsh truth is that I’d break her five different ways if she let me close.
It’s time to get off my ass and find a distraction.
◆◆◆
“What’s going through that head of yours?” Logan asks, snapping me out of my thoughts and back to reality. Back into my house, packed with family and friends.
It’s my birthday today. The last hurrah. Three hundred and sixty-five days from now, I’ll no longer be twenty-something. I’ll be thirty.
As soon as I stepped through the threshold, after ten hours at the office, everyone yelled surprise as if all their cars in the driveway didn’t tip me off.
Out of all my brothers, only Shawn isn’t here yet with his husband, Jack, and their son, Josh, but they’re not why my eyes are drawn toward the door every few seconds. I’m waiting for a particular blonde to get here already so I can get my fix of her pretty face. The triplets organized this party behind my back. I assume she’s been invited.
“Long day,” I lie, taking a Corona out of the fridge. “How’s Cassidy doing? She still want to cut your dick off?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Nah, she’s better now. I think she’s starting to forget. Give it another couple of months, and she’ll let me knock her up again.”
“Don’t rush her, Logan. She’s been on bed rest for three months and in labor for three fucking days.”
I spent those three days in the waiting room at the hospital, working on my laptop from the comfort of a blue plastic chair. I was there, serving as Logan’s punching bag, errand boy, and verbal abuse outlet while Cass was in agony for sixty-nine hours, bringing my godson into the world. There were problems with dilation, Noah’s position, and a bunch of other things I didn’t want to hear but can never unhear.
“At least wait until Noah’s crawling and eating something other than her boobs.”
“Don’t,” Logan clips, his tone artificially stern. He’s thirty-one, but you wouldn’t guess it with how the mention of boobs has him biting back a smile. He slaps my shoulder, squeezing hard. “Don’t talk about her boobs.”
“Did I hear boobs?” Theo enters the kitchen with a beer in hand and a high-alert look on his face. The Hayes stop maturing around college graduation. Then we just grow old. “Whose boobs are we talking about?”
“Mine.” Logan proudly points at himself, then chugs half his beer.