Page 24 of My Brother’s Best Friends Entanglement

She says it so matter-of-factly I can't help but let out a guffaw. "Hey, not only would I not blame you — I'd be the first to admit every single one of us had the exact same fear. Probably has something to do with the rule that Marcus is never in charge of making sure the stoves are turned off at the end of the night."

She laughs at that. Actually laughs. "Ironic, since he's the only one of you who can cook."

"Hey." I put on an offended look. "I can make toast."

"Really? Better than Leon's?"

"You mean, can I make toast that doesn't require you to get dental work done?"

She snorts at that. "Yeah. Though I don't know why I'm laughing, I'm not much better."

"Oh, I remember."

She throws me a glare, but there's no real heat behind it. "Did you ever worry it would be hard to work with your friends?"

So many people had told me we'd have problems working together. But no one had ever bothered to ask if I thought we would beforehand. "Nope."

"That was emphatic."

"So is our friendship. It went without saying it was worth a thousand successful businesses. Working from that foundation, we built a business relationship that worked. Didn't take that long actually." I pull out a stool and push it over to her. She doesn't sit, just watches as I pull out another one for myself and slide onto it. "We're all good at different things. And there are things some of us turned out to be better at than others. And that's okay. But no one feels left out, no one feels taken advantage of. Your brother, for example, is some weird savant when it comes to finding the right location. Like he can sniff them out. Then he works with Anna, a real estate agent at EM Industries, to lock down the site. Marcus and Hunter go in and do the fit-out. Rhys helps with the hiring, takes care of the contracts and the lawyers. Everything the rest of us would rather die than do. And I run the bars once they're up and running. We've pretty much got it down to a well-oiled machine at this point."

She looks wistful as she listens. "That's nice. You guys are lucky to have found each other."

I nod. "I know."

She takes a deep breath and glances toward the archway leading into the bedrooms.

Classic sign of looking for an exit strategy.

But I'm not ready to give this up yet. This time with her. This feeling like she's slowly forgiving me, warming back up to me. Stopped hating me.

I've missed this. Missed just sitting talking to her. Missed coming across her when we were hanging at the Rileys' and plopping down on the couch next to her and having a conversation about everything and nothing. She never had trouble keeping up with us, didn't matter that we were older. She was always sharp as a whip, could debate anything, running circles around us.

But it was more than that.

She wasn't just brains.

She was heart too.

And I could've had it all. Even for just a second.

"Anyway, I sh⁠—"

"Wait." I slide down from my stool and jog over to the pantry, grab the pack of Tim Tams off the hidden shelf, run back out to her. "Look. I need you to do me a favour."

She cocks an eyebrow.

"I need you to stay." I drop the packet on the bench between us. "Don't make me eat this entire packet alone. My trainer will absolutely tear me a new one."

She looks at the Tim Tams. Then at me. There's a beat where she's deciding, I can see it, the small war going on in her mind.

So I do the only thing I can think of. I lift my shirt and pat my bare stomach. "Don't make me ruin these abs I worked so hard for."

She looks. Then laughs.

I open the packet before she changes her mind, throw away the outer wrapping so she knows I'm serious, that between the two of us, we're going to eat all eight double-coat Tim Tams in the packet.

"Welcome home, Lex Luthor," I say with a grin, and push it over to her.