Page 84 of Messing With My Brother's Best Friends

He reached out, pulling me behind him, only to step up to Van.

“Oh, so it’s like that now?” Van said, trying to reach past Connor to get to me.

“Yeah, it is.” Gage picked Van up bodily, carrying him squirming over to his chair and then sitting the other man down, resting his elbow on Van’s head when he threatened to get up. “Eat your damn breakfast. Kendall can’t be late for the first day of her apprenticeship.”

“Well, I haven’t signed anything yet—” I started to say.

“We’ll get the lawyers to look over the contract,” Connor said, grabbing his phone and starting to tap out a note to himself.

“But not yet.” Gage set Connor’s phone on the table and then looked across at me. “We woke up to a gift.” His eyes softened the longer he gazed at me. “Let’s just appreciate that right now.”

I flushed bright red, forced to look away as I waited for the teasing to start.

“Damn straight,” Van added, winking when I glanced his way. “And I get to drive Kendall to work.”

“I’m coming with,” Gage said.

“No, you’re not.”

I smiled and shook my head at the bickering before starting in on my own breakfast.

“Kendall!” Chris greeted me with far more enthusiasm than usual as I walked in the door, before my boss looked across at Van. “Nice to see ya, young fella. Now, love, have you had a think about the apprenticeship idea?”

“Yes.” I said the word with some satisfaction. “I’m keen if you are.”

“Good, good! I put an ad in the local classifieds to find someone else to make coffee…” A jingle of the bells tied to the back of the door had all our heads jerking up. “That’s probably one of them now. Did you want to come and meet them? You’d have the best idea as to who’d be a good replacement…”

If Chris was wondering why Van had accompanied me into the shop, his silent question was quickly answered. My… boyfriend-that still felt weird to think about-tugged me close and kissed me so very thoroughly that Chris had to clear his throat uncomfortably to make Van stop. So with a head that was still spinning, I met the first candidate.

“She seemed to know her shit,” Chris said once Olivia, the girl who’d come for an interview, had left. He sipped the coffee she’d made and nodded. “Coffee tastes good. What do you think? Is she up for the job?”

“Yes,” I replied with a smile.

“Well, all right. I’ll give her a call back and let her know the good news, but in the meantime, how about we make some sausage rolls? The recipe I’m about to show you was handed down through my family for generations, but none of my kids were interested in the bakery business. Too many early-morning starts for them…”

I listened to his chatter as we walked into the kitchen but didn’t really hear it. All that gleaming stainless steel, the smell of flour and sugar and savoury herbs, it felt like coming home. I ran my fingers across the clean work bench as he hauled a massive bowl of sausage mince over.

“So, where do we start?”

It was a tricky day. Chris and I usually occupied our own spaces. He ran himself ragged in the kitchen, and I manned the register. Instead we had less work and more. He went out and served customers some of the time, gruffly telling them he didn’t make fancy coffees when they tried to order something with drizzles of syrup, leaving me to make more sausage rolls than I had in my life. When they were in the oven, baking until golden brown, I moved out the front and tried to soothe the ruffled feathers of our regulars. Time just flew by, right up until Barbie bounced into the shop.

“Hey—”

“I hear it’s yes day!” She leaned on the front counter with a grin. “That means you are coming shopping with me.”

“How the hell did you find out about that?”

Her informants walked in the door then, looking like something from a hot tradie guy calendar or something. Some dirt on their knuckles and some sawdust in Van’s hair and I was sold one hundred percent.

“Ahh, so it really is yes day.” Barbie’s smile widened. “Yes to all that dick.” She jerked away, miming some kind of porn scenario that had me never wanting to look at her search history and I told her just that. “Hey, I’ve been doing research for you.” She poked me in the shoulder. “That’s what besties do. We work out all the weird and wonderful ways you can have a gang bang each night.”

“Shut, and I say this with all love, the fuck up,” I told her.

“You need to keep things fresh.” She shifted gear, now sounding like a therapist or something equally insane. “It’s hard enough when it’s one dude. Like I never thought I’d get into Star Wars role play—”

“Oh my god, really?”

I stared at her openly. Alan was a lot of things, but nerdy wasn’t one of them.

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