Roommates Box Set #4-6

16. Flynn

16

FLYNN

“Flynn!”

I nearly dropped the stethoscope under Mrs. O’Leary as I straightened up. “Over here.”

My brother had made one of his rare appearances on my property. Usually, he had too much going on at his house to come over here.

Spencer surveyed the large animal in front of me. “Is that the Hutchinsons’ cow?”

“Yeah.” Though the family that lived about a mile or two away claimed they’d gotten her for milking, she’d become a family pet of sorts. A very large sort. “She hasn’t been eating or drinking much lately.”

“Is she going to be okay?” Spencer looked at Mrs. O’Leary with concern, but didn’t get any closer. He had on his good shoes and was dressed for work.

“Should be.” I scratched her head when she leaned against me. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“I’m too old.” It was a standard joke, but he didn’t deliver it with a smile. Things had been chilly between us for a while now. I knew exactly when that had started, and so did he. “I’m here about Alyssa.” Yep, he knew all right.

“What about her?” I brushed off my hands and walked out of the stall.

“You’re not doing your part.”

“My part of what? Picking her up and depositing her around the house, posing her like a doll?” Just because I hadn't been talking to him or Rafe recently didn’t mean I hadn’t talked to the kids.

“She’s going stir-crazy.”

“I don’t blame her.” That much time cooped up inside would drive me around the fucking bend. “But what’s that got to do with me?”

“We need your help. Lyss still can’t get around very well on her own, and she’s frustrated with her lack of progress and bored from the monotony.”

“Lyss?” Since when did my brother give women nicknames?

Spencer ignored that. “We could use some help keeping her entertained.”

“I didn’t agree to be her den mother or landlord-for-life like you did.”

Spencer wasn’t easy to anger, but I’d always had a special knack for inciting it. “She risked her life for your nephew. Remember him? The boy you’ve been crazy about for his entire life?”

I grimaced. That was a low blow, and Spencer knew it. When the twins were little, I’d been the slowest of the three of us to learn sign language. I’d been finishing up my degree and didn’t have much time to devote to something that seemed so incomprehensible. By the time the kids were starting school, it became pretty obvious that I was shortchanging my niece—obvious to everyone but myself. Eventually, I hired a sign language tutor and threw myself into studying.

In the years since, Charlotte and I had bonded over our shared love of horses. My gaze swept over the gentle mare I’d bought a few years ago so I could teach Charlotte to ride. Our relationship was strong now, but I was ashamed that it hadn’t always been. “So what do you need? Do you want me to babysit while you and Rafe take in a game?”

“I need you to do your part,” Spencer repeated. “We owe that young woman everything. She’s hurting. She’s bored. Rafe and I do what we can, but I’m gone all day, and he teaches his classes.” Spencer started to lean against a stall and then thought better of it. Didn’t want to get his fancy clothes dirty. “It takes three of us to keep up with the twins, and we need all three of us to take care of her, too.”

The urge to turn that last part into something X-rated filled me, but then I shrugged off the impulse. I wasn’t mad at Alyssa. How could I be? I didn’t even know her. But seeing her was a reminder that she’d been there when Lucas needed her — and I hadn’t.

“All right, I’ll come over when I can,” I said with a scowl.

Spencer nodded. “Good, because that’s what she needs most right now—a grumpy, reluctant visitor with his head up his ass.”

I stifled the grin that wanted to break out. Spence usually didn’t talk like that. Ever since he’d worked at an elementary school —first as a teacher, and then as principal—he’d eschewed all four-letter words. And since he lived like a monk, it was clear that he’d excised all dirty thoughts, too. After all, he had an incredibly beautiful woman living over there with him, yet here he was browbeating his much better-looking younger brother to come over more often.

“You’re part of this family, and now she is too,” Spencer added.

“I don’t remember adopting her.”

“Fine, argue the semantics. Scowl and cuss and walk around with a dark cloud over your head. But do your part. Help us make things better for her. It’s the least you can do.”

Evidently, I wasn’t the only one who remembered that I’d done the least I could do in the park that day.

“Fine. I’ll come to play candy-striper from time to time. Anything else?” In a show of gracious acceptance, I kicked the nearest bale of hay.

“Yes,” Spencer said, his gaze unforgiving. “The twins miss you.” Then he turned and took himself and his fancy clothes out of my barn.

When you’re pissed at your brother because he’s your brother, he’s annoying, and he’s right, manual labor is a good cure. I mucked out the stalls and gave medicine to the animals that needed it. The first task was mindless; the second required an immense amount of concentration. Both were what I needed, because I didn’t want any other thoughts to intrude.

I was hot, sweaty, and shirtless when my second visitor of the day arrived. Like Spencer, this one was overdressed. But she looked a hell of a lot better in her fancy clothes than my brother did.

“Hello, Flynn.” The woman coming toward me had on a tight pencil skirt that molded to her hips, ended well above her knees, and showcased world-class legs. Her stiletto heels sank into the layer of hay on the ground, but I could hardly complain about what they did to her figure. Her silk blouse had a few more buttons undone at the top than was proper, but hey, I liked that kind of thing in a woman.

“Hello, Lauren.”

I waited as she made her way across the barn. She hated this place, and I could only think of one thing that would make her come in here. “Nobody knows how to dress for a barn visit these days,” I muttered as she neared. Her finely shaped eyebrow rose. “But you look good.”

She knew that, of course, but she still looked gorgeous when she smiled. She put her hand on my bare chest and leaned forward to kiss my cheek. “How have you been?” When I didn’t immediately answer, she took a step back and swept her eyes up and down my body. “You look like you’ve just single-handedly built a barn or two.”

“I just need the one.” I wiped my hands on a rag and tossed it to the ground. “What are you doing in town?”

“Eh, Nana had some things she wanted me to look at. Stuff that used to be my mom’s, or so she said.” Unlike the rest of us who called our neighbor Nana, Lauren was her actual grandchild. “I’ll be here for the weekend. I thought you could use some company.”

I knew exactly what kind of company she meant, and I’ll admit it made my cock twitch. She was an occasional fuckbuddy, and she was damn good at making me see stars. Just like I was fucking good at making her eyes roll so far up in her head they practically came out the other side.

She and Rafe had been an item when they’d been in high school, long before Spencer and I had even heard of this town. But now Rafe, too, lived like a monk, and Lauren had turned her attention elsewhere. Good thing, too, because she was a wild woman in the sack, and neither of them would’ve been able to handle her now.

Yet I always had, and I’d always enjoyed myself and made sure she did, too. So why wasn’t I saying yes? Why wasn’t I setting a time and a place? Hell, why didn’t I just grab her and mess up those sexy clothes for her? I could guarantee that at the end, she’d thank me.

But I didn’t do any of those things. “I’ve got some things I need to do.”

Lauren blinked rapidly, but other than that, she didn’t show her surprise. “Okay. I’ll be here two days if you change your mind.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said, and my body was fully on board with that plan. But my head? That was a different matter, and I couldn’t figure out why. I knew I wouldn't be having a booty call this weekend, in the barn or anywhere else. What I didn’t know was why.

“You could come over for dinner. Nana would like to see you. She says you’ve been too busy to stop by lately.”

Somehow, that guilt was harder to brush aside than the guilt over ignoring a perfect stranger like—what had Spencer nicknamed her? Oh yeah, Lyss .

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I raised an eyebrow as I watched her slow progress back across the barn. She balanced on her toes to keep those ridiculously hot shoes from sinking in the hay. The small steps made her hips sway like crazy—or maybe she was doing that on purpose. “Need me to carry you out of here?” My brother and Rafe weren’t the only ones who could cart pretty women around.

Lauren gave me a flirty little look over her shoulder. “We both know that if you touch me now, we won’t make it out of the barn.”

That was probably true. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d taken a roll in the hay. I gave her a smirk, but I let her leave.

Hours later, I’d worked myself into exhaustion. That made me too tired to think when I was in the shower, and apparently too tired—or too something —to jerk off. Depriving myself of a gorgeous woman like Lauren wasn’t something I normally did.

But I put all that behind me as I got dressed in clean clothes. Then I made a call to the veterinary clinic to see what their case load was like today. Large animals were my specialty, but sometimes I helped out with the regular-sized patients. The receptionist who answered—and Jesus, it was apparently flirt with Flynn day—told me everything I needed to know. I made a quick trip over there, and then I arrived at the back door of the house just as Charlotte and Lucas were eating their after-school snack.

Lucas’s eyes lit up when he spotted me. He nudged his sister, and both kids ran over and pulled open the door. Their enthusiasm made me feel like even more of an asshole for staying away.

“What’s in there, Uncle Flynn?” Charlotte asked.

Even though my arms were full, my first impulse was to sign to her. It still amazed me that a completely deaf child could talk the way she did now. She’d worked her butt off to get to this point, and I was proud of her.

“You’ll see,” I said. “Is your dad here?”

“He’s upstairs. And Uncle Rafe is at the grocery store,” Lucas said.

“What about your houseguest?”

It took them a moment to realize I meant Alyssa, and I wondered how they viewed her. As a patient? A big sister? Or a blonde invader from the north? I had no clue.

“She’s in the bedroom,” Charlotte said.

“Go make sure she’s decent,” I told the twins. For all I knew, the pretty young woman lounged around in lingerie.

The twins ran into her room and launched into conversation with her, so I figured it was visiting hours. I followed behind them.

The twins were sitting on the bed next to her, looking at home and comfortable with her. Alyssa’s pretty pink mouth dropped into an O of surprise when she saw me standing there.

“Hi,” she said, sounding surprised. Jesus, I just lived next door. Was it that much of a shock? “Are you… um… hi.”

Clearly, Spencer and Rafe weren’t keeping her around for her sparkling conversation. But maybe that was just my bad mood talking. I didn’t like doing what people told me to do—especially when that person was Spencer.

“Word on the street is that you’re bored,’ I said gruffly.

“I, um, yeah, sometimes.”

She was wearing a light green dress, of all things. A real dress, not a nightgown. It wasn’t the kind of thing Lauren wore, clothing designed to make a man drool, but it looked good on her. The scoop neck showed a sliver of cleavage. The bottom of the dress flared out and ended mid-thigh. Her long legs were stretched out in front of her. I tried to ignore the bare, shapely one with the smooth, creamy skin. And I managed not to flinch when I saw the heavy cast on the other.

I set the large plastic laundry basket at the foot of the bed, and the twins squealed. You wouldn’t think that Alyssa’s jaw could’ve dropped any further, but you’d be wrong. The look on her face when I tilted the basket forward, spilling seven light blond retriever puppies on the bed, could’ve been next to the dictionary definitions for surprise and delight .