Page 76 of An Endless Memory

With my dick in my hand? Thankfully not, but I couldn’t say that out loud. “No. I’m sitting at the island.” I continued to glower at Jasper. He turned from the fridge. His hoodie said King Oil and had a giant oil well in the middle. When he’d arrived, he’d dressed for the job like the other guys. I couldn’t place him in an office working on a computer all day. “And he’s raiding my fridge.”

Jasper leaned back to peer at me. “I bought groceries last week. Why are you so grumpy?”

Another light chuckle came over the line. “Cockblocked by my brother. I’m going to bed, and I’m going to finish what you started.”

I made a choking sound. Could I ask her to record it? Send me a picture? Dammit! I would miss out. “Don’t you dare.”

Jasper narrowed his eyes at me like he was afraid I was talking to him.

“Don’t what?” she asked innocently and damn if that didn’t get my blood flowing to all the wrong places when I was in the same room as her brother. “Don’t come really hard while thinking about you?” she purred.

“I didn’t know you had a mean streak,” I growled into the phone.

Jasper let the fridge door fall shut. “Did I walk in on something I shouldn’t have?”

I ignored him. “Lily—Halloween.” I said it like a warning.

“I look forward to it. I might even show you what I’m going to do to myself in bed tonight. Good night, Eliot.” She disconnected. Who knew when I met that girl she’d be the ultimate tease?

I squeezed my eyes shut. How the hell was I going to last until Halloween without taking three showers a day and jacking off? I hadn’t even been that bad in high school.

I clicked my phone off and buried my face in my hands. I could not hurt my wife’s brother. He was my family, if only until the summer, and he was my employee.

“I don’t want to know, do I?” Jasper asked.

“No.”

He contemplated me. All that rummaging in the fridge and his hands were empty. “So you two are actually a thing?”

Crankiness was setting in. Yes. No. Sort of? “We’re married.”

“On paper. But come on, man.”

The arousal from earlier was doused as thoroughly as a week-old campfire. “Come on, what?”

“I love my sister, but we all know you caught her when she was a train wreck.”

I bristled at his description.

He just shrugged. “You can’t convince me that a freshly divorced mom, with a newborn no less, a house that still smells like my grandma, with vet school debt that her douche of an ex made sure stayed in her name before he married her was exactly the kind of woman you were looking for.”

“I wasn’t looking.”

He gave me a steady stare.

What would they think if they knew we’d gotten physical? Neither of us wanted to hear that maybe fooling around when we were supposed to be married in name only wasn’t a good idea. Lily wouldn’t want her family to know. Mine did, but we understood, and my siblings would stay out of her life.

“I like her.”

His gaze stayed steady. The most serious I’d seen him. “You like her, or she’s convenient?”

If he wasn’t looking out for his sister’s best interest, I’d want to deck him. “I like her. And it’s none of your business.”

“But it is. She’s my sister, and I care about her.”

“She’s my wife, and I care about her.”

“And when the year is up?”

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