Page 18 of Baby for my Best Friend's Brother

“Law shows,” I said.

The sound of my voice cracked through the silent room like a whip. How long had we been standing there, staring at each other?

Quinn blinked, but her gaze still looked fogged over. “What?”

“You ask what I watch. Law shows.”

“LikeJudge Judy?”

I snorted, and the world lurched back into focus. Gravity, which had previously been pulling me toward her, settled back into place. I took a step back “No, likeLaw and Order.”

A small grin was working at the corners of her mouth. She was fighting laughter. “Callum, you’re telling me that after a long day of lawyering, you relax by watchinglawyers?”

“Are you telling me you don’t listen to music to relax even though music is your living?” I challenged.

She tilted her head and her long fall of red hair slid off one shoulder. “I guess that’s a fair point.” The smile she was fighting finally emerged. “Did anyone ever tell you you’d make a good lawyer?”

There it was again. The charge in the air. That loaded silence. The nearly irresistible urge to close the space between us and slide my hands into that fiery red hair and let it burn me.

But that would be a very bad idea.

I cleared my throat. “I’m not the kind of lawyer who makes many points. I mostly negotiate contracts.” I heard how officious my voice was even before I saw Quinn’s face change. In an instant, I was back to being Renee’s annoyingly responsible older brother. The one who would never buy them beer and told mom that the smell around the tree house wasn’t from a skunk.

She spun away and wandered back into the library. I watched her eyes travel over the spines. “You read a lot of John Grisham and Michael Connelly,” she observed, a laugh trembling at the edge of her voice again.

“I also have a first editionTo Kill a Mockingbird.” I nodded toward a thin glass case that held the few valuable books I owned.

Quinn’s laugh rolled out, as full and unabashed as I remembered. The light was back in her eyes when she looked over at me. “Callum, is there any part of your life that doesn’t revolve around the law?”

There wasn’t much, but looking at her wide-open face, the gold glints back in her eyes, I thought that maybe there should be.

Just then, I heard Renee’s voice calling from the foyer. “Special delivery!”

I heard the sound of Noah’s footsteps pounding across the wood floor. “I’m home, Dad!” he hollered unnecessarily. Gymnastics class meant he’d be wired for the next three hours and then sleep like the dead tonight. “Dad, where are–”

His small face appeared at the door to my office. His eyes were bright, his skin still pink with exertion. His white-blonde hair was damp. He’d gone hard today. Maybe we’d only have two hours before he crashed. When he spotted me in the interior room, he barreled through the office. I caught him a couple steps past the library’s double doors and swung him up into my arms. He was warm and getting heavier every day. I couldn’t believe he was already six.

“Dad, I–oh!” He spotted Quinn over my shoulder. “Aunt Quinn, I can do a handstand!”

“Show me!”

Noah wriggled down and would have shown her right there and inevitably put his foot through my glass case, but Quinn quickly said, “Maybe outside! In the grass.”

While we sat on the low stone wall that ringed the patio, Noah tumbled around the yard for almost an hour. The kid was a ham, and I knew I needed to make more time like this for him. Emma would have. By the time he finally got too tired and dizzy to go on, it was dinner time.

“I’ll cook,” I said, not giving Renee a chance to say she should head home. I needed her here right then. I needed something to keep the silence and the tension from building back up between Quinn and me.

She and Quinn helped Noah with his homework in the living room while I threw steaks on the grill and made a salad. It was so easy it was boring. When I had time, which was almost never, I liked to really cook. Still, Renee shook her head in amazement, as if she’d stumbled into a Michelin-starred restaurant by accident.

“It beats McDonalds, doesn’t it?” I ribbed her.

She rolled her eyes and didn’t answer.

Too soon, we were done eating. The dishes were done, and Noah convinced each of us to read him a bedtime story. Then I pulled his bedroom door shut and walked down the stairs to see Renee and Quinn standing in the grand foyer. Renee already had her bag on her shoulder.

“Nightcap?” I offered, half joking, half serious. I didn’t usually drink on weeknights, but I wasn’t ready for my sister to leave. More accurately, I wasn’t ready to be left alone with her best friend. The woman I was supposed to be helping, but who I couldn’t stop thinking about.

“Oh, there will be a nightcap,” Renee said. “But not until I’m snug in my own living room, watchingBachelor in Paradise.”

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