Page 82 of The Puck Stops Here

Eek!

Astrid

Have you been speaking to Bella?

Paige

She may have mentioned you have something of a bad boy addiction…

Astrid winced. Affliction more like. And Bella wasn’t wrong.

Astrid

I have it all under control

Now she just had to make it so…

* * *

‘Dinner Tuesday, sorted.’

Aiden placed his phone down on the breakfast bar and stretched his arms above his head, his naked torso flexing.

‘Jesus, put it away, bro. Some of us are trying to eat their breakfast…’

‘You first.’

Blake glanced down at his semi-naked self and shrugged. He wasn’t the one flexing it. He also wasn’t the one looking pretty smug with himself.

Did his brother really have a thing for her? They’d never gone head-to-head over a woman before, and he wasn’t thrilled about doing so now. Especially when that girl held the public reformation of his character in her dainty and distracting hands. Hands that had given him a surprising hit of comfort when he’d dredged up his past for her to dissect.

‘What’s got you in a mood now?’

Blake chewed over his cereal before answering, half expecting it to get stuck in his throat.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea? Bringing her here.’ He looked around their very masculine, very high-end pad. ‘It’s hardly going to make people sympathise with us.’

‘We’re not looking for sympathy, we’re looking to inspire kids like us to reach for better things… it’s why we got these, remember?’

He threw a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the tattooed Latin script they shared at the base of their spine:Ad meliora. Towards better things. A simple phrase that had meant as much at eighteen as it did now.

‘We can also show her we’re not a pair of hockey neanderthals incapable of keeping their house straight. I mean, have youseenhow half the team live?’

He grunted. ‘But we never bring women back here.’

‘And we’re not bringing one back now.’

Blake cocked a brow.

‘Like I said about introducing her to Mom, this is different. This is business. You know that as well as I do… don’t you?’

Was that his brother’s way of asking if he’d crossed the line in that exec suite? He hadn’t quizzed him on it since. He’d asked how it had gone and left it at that. Was it possible his brother was wholly focused on the article rather than the woman writing it…?

And all his jealously was misplaced?

And that it was all about him being a charity case? The little brother in need of rescuing as ever.

‘Whatever you say, bro. It’s my ass that needs saving, right?’ He spooned up more cereal, though he was swiftly losing his appetite. ‘And what about Sunday lunch at Mom’s?’

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