Page 6 of Borrowing My Bestie's Brothers

“Jamie!” Mrs. McDonald (call me Heather) rushed forward as soon as I walked in the door. “How are you, darling!” She clasped me in a big hug, her tiny frame able to squish me all too effectively before she held me at arm’s length. “Looking gorgeous as ever. So did you bring a pair of bathers over? The weather’s just started to warm up and the boys are making the most of it.”

Brock was never one of the boys. Heather had struggled to have more kids after him, it took medical intervention and some years to have further children, and the fertility drugs she’d been given had produced both Millie and the twins, Hayden and Hunter. Millie was the youngest, being Heather’s last attempt to have a girl.

Heather smiled slowly.

“You could join them if you like? Millie’s just grabbing some carrots from the garden for me.”

“Here they are.” Millie strolled in with a basket full of produce under her arm, dropping it into the sink before turning on the water to scrub the dirt from the vegetables. “And we can’t go swimming. We’ve got planning to do.”

“God, if this is more of that juvenile pranking—” Heather said, sucking in a breath, but Millie just grinned.

“Not this time, Mum. Well…” She glanced up at me. “We won’t be pranking anyone in our family at least.”

“So what now?” Heather got the potato peeler and a large bowl out, but her focus was entirely trained on us. “What’ve you two got yourselves into this time?”

Before Millie could answer, the sliding door was wrenched open and wet feet slapped down on the tiled floor.

“Mum, where are the towels at?”

Heather looked up sharply, then rushed forward.

“For goodness sakes! You’re getting water all over the floor, and the towels are in the same place they’ve been since you were knee high to a grasshopper.”

“Yeah?”

Hayden, or was it Hunter, looked up then, realising he had an audience. Hunter, definitely. He caught the lot of us staring and shot us his trademark crooked smile. Half the girls at school would’ve expired on the spot at the sight of that back in the day. Hayden edged closer, looking at his brother in irritation, but that all smoothed away as he saw us.

“Oh, hey, Jamie,” Hayden said with a little wave.

The two of them looked like a stereotype of a golden Aussie beach bum, which was why they had done a little modelling. All that tan skin, well defined muscles, and cheekbones that looked like they’d been formed with the flat of a knife? Yeah, they photographed real well.

“And hello to you, sister dear,” Millie snarked before pausing. Not to glare at her brothers while their mother fussed, producing towels and throwing them at the boys, nor at me when she turned to stare my way. The carrots were dumped in the sink, the water still running as she backed away, grabbing a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.

“Where are you off to?” Heather asked. “How about helping with dinner?”

“It’s the boys’ turn,” Millie said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along after her.

We’d disappeared up this hallway many times as kids, so I knew exactly where her room was, the walls now denuded of boy band posters, before she pulled me out onto the balcony that ringed the house.

“What the hell?” I asked as she dragged out a chair, then nodded for me to take it. “We can’t let your mum cook dinner on her own.”

“It’s the boys’ job tonight,” she replied, “and I’ll have another for them before the end of dinner. How many guys did you tell your mother you were dating?”

“Three.” I sank down in my chair, feeling like a right idiot. My hand wrapped around the stem of the wine glass when she poured me a drink. “One would’ve had her on the plane over here. Two would’ve?—”

“Had her pitting them against each other in some kind of Hunger Games like ritual,” she said. “So three?” As I nodded, a wicked gleam shone in her eyes, only getting brighter as we leaned over the balcony at the sound of a car door slamming shut. Brock had arrived, dressed now in a clean shirt and jeans, but our inspection didn’t go unnoticed. Somehow he sensed he had our attention, looking up until I was forced to jerk myself back from the balustrade. “Three I can cover. More than that and I’d be forced to ask one of the guys at work and that always gets messy.”

“Ask the guys to do what?” I asked warily.

Millie settled back in her chair and then grinned as wide as the Cheshire cat.

“Pretend to be your boyfriends, obviously.”

“What?”

I was gripping the wine glass’ stem way too tightly, the slender shape, the condensation coating fingers that now felt numb.

“How long’s your mother in town for, a week?” I didn’t know, but I found myself nodding mutely. “Even my dumb-arse brothers could keep it together for that long.” She leaned forward. “Seems like a perfect way around the problem. You fake date them for a week until your mother leaves. They’ll be perfect gentlemen…” She wrinkled her nose at that, as if detecting the very obvious flaw in her plan.

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