Bran’s hand slides slowly away after one more stroke of his thumb, and he returns to his seat on the couch. That was the other thing that kept me off-balance—my physical response to him. It was nothing I’d experienced before, and I didn’t have a clue what to do with it.
There were downsides to being a child prodigy. I’d gone to college when I was fifteen and graduated when I was seventeen after an accelerated program. I’d never had the experience of dating my peers, either the brief time I attended the local high school or during the couple of years I spent on a college campus.
Not that any of the guys in either space would’ve been interested in me. As quickly as my brain developed, my body developed with equal slowness. I was flat as a pancake until I hit nineteen and suddenly grew a pair of tits.
Now, I was little more than a brain in a woman’s body that had yet to be tried. I had yet to experience all of those things that normal girls were pros at by the time they hit twenty-one.
I blow an imperceptible breath out and will my response to Bran’s presence to settle. There’s too much working against us to even be thinking about this stuff. Even if we were free to explore this weird something between us, he wouldn’t be interested in a virgin.
Irritated with the direction my thoughts have taken, I open a different tab. “I can’t just pack up all my stuff and take it somewhere else, you know. I need to be here so I can work.”
“I’ll make sure you have everything you need to work.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m here to protect you, not reassure you or stroke your ego.”
“Stroke my—!”
A knock on the door saves him from almost certain violence. We both go on instant alert, me tensing in my chair and Bran rising and moving soundlessly to peer through the peephole.
“Try not to scare her,” I say. “She’s mostly sunshine and carbs.”
“She’s married to Brodie,” he says. “She’s seen worse than me.”
I’m not sure I agree. Bran has a very specific kind of presence—like a warning sign shaped like a man.
A knock sounds a second later. Three quick taps and a little singsong, “It’s me, don’t shoot, I brought food.”
“Relax,” I tell Bran. “If Henry’s mastered Cotton’s impression, we’ve already lost.”
I undo the locks and open the door.
Cotton breezes in on a swirl of cold air and cinnamon, cheeks pink, platinum hair a tumble under her beanie. She’s carrying a casserole dish swaddled in a towel like a baby.
“You look like a raccoon someone dunked in coffee,” she says by way of greeting, eyes sweeping over my face. “Have you slept at all?”
“I napped with my eyes open,” I say. “Hi, hello, come in, this smells amazing.”
“It’s French toast casserole,” she says. “Emergency carbs for when serial killers come back to town and men twice your size move into your living room. I figured all you had were donuts and yogurt.”
She looks past me and spots Bran.
“Oh,” she says, blinking. “Wow. You’re…a lot.”
Bran, to his credit, doesn’t take offense. “Kelly,” he says, standing enough to be polite. “Bran. We met a while back.”
“When you helped save my best friend’s entire existence,” she says. “Yeah, I remember. Hi. Welcome back. Please feel free not to break my cousin.”
“I’ll do my best,” he says.
Cotton sets the casserole on my counter and pulls me into a hug. She smells like sugar and baby shampoo and some kind of expensive organic laundry detergent.
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
“Hey,” she murmurs into my hair. “You okay?”
There it is again. God, I hate that question.
