Page 12 of Protected By my Brothers Best Friend

“Collette knows you have a thing for me?”

She rolls her eyes. “You have a thing for me too.”

“Okay. So, Collette knows I have a thing for you as well?”

She nods. “Yeah, but not Kenzie. She only knows that I’ve talked about you for years. She doesn’t know about you being into me, though I didn’t tell Collette not to say anything.”

I smile. “Okay… so that’s half the family. What did they say about it?”

“Nothing damning. They’re just worried about Bryan. He’s the loose cannon in our situation. He’s not likely to take this well at all.” She leans back and sighs as she says, “I worry his anger will go beyond your friendship. Bryan works on the board for the town, right? He approves all the permits that come through Rugged Mountain. That means, he could not only give you trouble with the family, but also professionally. You’ve worked so hard, Cooper, to let that happen.”

I glance away, thinking over the right response. My knee jerk reaction is to say that I don’t care. Sure, it will be hard, and I realize I’ll have a lot of apologizing to do, but I love his little sister. It wasn’t planned, and I didn’t ask for it. It just happened. If he can’t understand that, then… he can’t. Living without Iris isn’t an option. “That would be hard,” I finally say, “but I think he’d forgive us.”

She tilts her head to the side. “Why do you think that? He’s still holding a grudge against the neighbor because he looked at me funny four years ago. We didn’t even date, and I had no feelings for him at all.”

“Well… maybe it’s because of that. You do have feelings for me, and he loves both of us. He’ll see it our way.”

“And my mom? We’re totally glazing over the fact that she’s extremely traditional and will be totally skeeved out that I’m dating someone twice my age. I can’t stress her out this year. She’s going through so much since my dad passed.”

“Does the age thing bother you?”

“No! God no! I love it. You’re like my everything. You know what to say, how to act, who you are. Guys my age are clueless. They do that thing where they make women feel like shit, so they don’t leave. They don’t understand romance, and they can’t lead to save their lives. I hate it, but my mom won’t see it that way.”

“If we give her time, she’ll come around too.”

“You have a lot of faith in something you know nothing about.”

“I know I’ve loved you for years and that’s all I need to know at this point.”

She bites back a smile. “What do you want with your life?”

“You. Your dreams. A family. A Christmas morning with kids running for the tree and you holding coffee, curled up on the couch next to me, ready to watch a life we’ve built.”

She drags in a deep breath. “What about work? I thought you were chained to your laptop.”

“There’ll need to be some readjusting there… for sure. I need to hire a few people and learn to delegate tasks instead of taking everything on myself, but I’ll do whatever it takes for that life, Iris. That’s what I want more than anything.”

A tear rolls down her face and I reach out to catch it.

“Why are you crying, baby girl?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably because I know how much I want this too and I know deep down that it can’t happen, not like we want it to.”

She looks away as the baby monitor hums. “I think it’s time for Sienna to eat. Can you warm up a bottle? I’ll go grab her before she wakes up Shanna and Bryan.”

I nod and stand from the couch, wondering if this is the closest I’ll ever get to being happy.

Chapter Seven

Iris

“I want to fuck him so bad,” I whisper into the phone as I lift Sienna from her crib. Thank God she doesn’t understand English yet or I’d be a terrible auntie.

“You two are crazy. Maybe you deserve each other.” Collette laughs as she fiddles with something metallic in the background.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry. I’m putting together a crib. What are you going to do?”

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