Page 27 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

“Hey, Bonox, that timber order has come in!”

One of the blokes on our current worksite, a guy I employed, shouted that out, he and his little buddies cackling. That was because Australian blokes loved to give people nicknames, and mine was now Bonox.

Fuck my life.

“You know you didn’t have to tell everyone what happened this morning,” I growled at Van, who just grinned like the gormless twit he was.

“Yeah, I did.” That smile just got wider. “The look on your face, and then the one on hers… It was so good!”

“Kendall is getting revenge for what we did to her.”

Gage’s perfectly flat tone had us turning around.

“I know.” Van didn’t seem pissed at all by that fact. “I can’t wait to see what she does to me.”

“Do you have one of those BDSM kinks?” I asked, waving a finger around as my eyes narrowed.

“You mean a humiliation kink?” Van corrected, then shook his head. “Nup, but this gives me hope. If she can be bothered to go to all the trouble of pulling a prank on us—”

“Maybe she still gives a shit about us. Or maybe she’s just finally getting revenge for all the bullshit we pulled.”

We both stared at Gage, the tight flex of his jaw muscle the only giveaway to what he was feeling. The big guy was stressed, and I knew exactly how he felt. I was somewhere between Van’s optimism and Gage’s pessimism, and that wasn’t a comfortable place to be. I admit when I realised why my shower stank like beef soup, a vicious kind of pleasure ripped through me. The kind that always came from playing dumb tricks on each other, but also… Kendall was always the victim of our schemes, but her standing on her own two feet and striking back at us? Yeah, I liked that a whole lot.

“There’s a whole lot of maybes right now,” I told the two of them. “But right now, they don’t matter.” I saw Johnno come jogging over. I’d asked him and his brother to take a quick look at Kendall’s car and give me a ballpark figure to fix it, but right as he approached, Finn strolled onto the building site, still in his nice meeting clothes. “Fixing that death trap of a car needs to be our first priority.”

“Fellas,” Finn said as he came to stand beside us. “How’s things going this morning?”

But before any of us could get a word out, Johnno arrived.

“Look, boss, the car’s pretty fucked,” he said.

“Just like the owner’s likely to be, eh, Bonox!” one of the dickheads called out from the scaffolding. I narrowed my eyes to work out exactly who was mouthing off.

“Bonox?” Finn looked me up and down. “You been drinking that shit rather than coffee or something.”

“Nah, boss, he showers in it,” Johnno told him. Gage and Van stepped closer, glaring meaningfully at the guy, but Johnno didn’t know when to shut up. “He’s got this hot new house mate that’s just moved in, and she put a stock cube in his shower head.” He rubbed a hand across his chin as he started to smile. “We’ve got a pool going, betting on which one of them bones her first.” He winked at me. “I’m betting they all do.” His hands moved through the air as he tried to draw an approximation of Kendall’s curves and failed. “Woman like that, she’d be able to take the lot of you and come back for more.”

When Gage’s hands shot out and wrapped around Johnno’s wrists, it was as if my own did the same, like I could feel the other man’s bones grinding together as Gage snarled at Johnno.

“Don’t fucking talk about her like that.”

“OK, boss, calm the fuck down…” Johnno spluttered.

“Looks like this girl’s got at least two of you hot under the collar.” If Cheryl, Finn’s wife, saw the glimmer in her husband’s eye right now, she’d have thumped him hard, and I would’ve held Finn still, to make sure he took his punishment. “So what’s she like?”

“Redhead,” one of the guys called out. Our ‘workers’ were dropping from scaffolding and drawing closer like middle school girls ready to spill the tea. “Big tits…” He demonstrated how big a little too accurately, which had all three of us letting out a guttural sound. “And what’s her name?”

“Shut up, Smithy,” I said, advancing on the man like he was a rabid dog, not my employee.

“Settle down, Bono,” someone in the peanut gallery said. “Was it Kelly? Nah, that’s not it…”

“She’s none of your damn business is what she is,” I snapped. “And if you’ve got time to flap your gums—”

“Kendall! That’s it.”

He looked so damn proud of himself, missing the moment Finn’s lascivious smile turned to fury. One of my best mates turned to me with a look so familiar, it was seared into my brain from the last time.

“Kendall? Red hair, big…” Finn’s hands lifted right before he shoved them down by his side. “My sister, Kendall.”

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