Sweet Twins For My Brother's Best Friend: An Enemies To Lovers Romance (The Sweet Twins Collection)

Chapter Five

Hannah

The next few days are the same as most of my days are now.

I stay busy.

I work on my art, I play with Lucy, and I go to work. I haven’t taken Lucy back to that dog park since that man, Scott, talked to me. I’m too afraid I’ll see him again and he’ll remember me, and I won’t know what to say.

I sit at my desk eating a toasted bagel with a microwaved egg on top as I read an email. It’s from Tom Dougherty, a client I’ve been working with for a while.

He runs a nonprofit in town that provides toiletries for various organizations like food banks and foster homes, and I help him at an extremely discounted rate.

He’s a bit needy, and I’ve learned that I can likely only manage one nonprofit at a time because they require so much auditing.

Frankly, most people at nonprofits don’t know much about financial issues or how to plan or manage within their budget. They seem to run on dreams and good intentions. I think that for Christmas I might give him and his team a few dream catchers. I can’t decide if that would be funny or rude.

His latest email is a request to check to see if they qualify for a grant that they’re looking into. I responded that I’d get to it sometime today and get back to him within the week.

My fingers fly across the keyboard while I hold my bagel in my mouth and a little piece of egg slides off and between my ‘d’ and ‘f’ key. Groaning, I try to pick it out and another piece falls into my lap, so I stand to wipe it off and onto the floor.

Lucy gratefully runs to it and greedily licks it off, her tongue flat against the wood.

Looking around, I realize I don’t have a canister of compressed air, so I pick up my laptop and shake it.

Of course, Chris picks this moment to prance in, a smile across his face and his hair sweaty again.

My shoulders droop when I notice him and, for a moment, we just stare at each other, me with a bagel in my mouth as I shake my laptop, him still in the doorway, pulling the headphones out of his ears. “Do you need help?” he finally asks.

“No, I’m good,” I say, but with my mouth full it sounds more like, “Nnnmmmgd.”

He steps forward and pulls the bagel out of my mouth. “Does that help?” he asks with a laugh and sets it down on my desk.

I smile awkwardly without teeth. “Thank you.” I wipe crumbs off my pants. “What are you doing here? You don’t have an appointment, do you? Wait, do you?”

Anxiety shoots through me as I wonder if I missed something in my calendar and I open it up, still standing.

“No, no,” he assures me. “I didn’t know I needed one. I need one?”

He sits down in the plush chair across from my desk. It’s a wingback chair with red velvet upholstery that’s seen better days, but it’s all I can afford at the moment. The feet are elegant swirls of cherry-stained wood.

I shoot Chris an icy look.

Setting my laptop down, I sit back in my chair, shooing Lucy away from repeatedly licking the no longer egg-y spot on the floor.

“Well, I don’t know, Chris, do people need an appointment to see you in a professional capacity?”

Grinning, he says, “Well, look, you’re lucky, aren’t you? You would have been stuck in bagel limbo if it weren’t for me.”

“Chris, I gave you my email for a reason, all right? Please use it. Do not show up here unexpected. It isn’t fair to me or respectful to my schedule.”

I use my firmest voice, which is admittedly not very firm, but I hope the firm words make up for it.

Admittedly, I may be laying it on thick because I feel a bit awkward right now.

Seeing Chris floods me with memories of last night’s fantasy, remembering how I touched myself while thinking about him licking my pussy. Right where we are now.

I feel vulnerable and on display somehow, like he could somehow know my thoughts and is teasing me because of them. I’m afraid to look, but I sense that my nipples are hard, and I know my panties are damp.

“You know, not to be rude, but I’m sort of a high-profile client. You should count yourself lucky to have ended up with me, and you’re acting instead like I’m some sort of burden.”

His voice has an edge to it like he really means what he’s saying. He’s shaking his leg a little. I don’t respond to the ridiculous sentiment.

“I just came by to bring you the documents but fine, sure, I’ll come back when it’s more convenient for you.”

He stands up quickly and his chair scrapes across the floor a little. “Sorry about that,” he murmurs as he makes his way to the front door.

“Christ, just give me the documents already,” I groan, holding out my hand. When he hands me a manilla folder, I lean back in my chair and begin reading. “Well, sit down. This’ll take a bit.”

He nods and sits quietly. “The thing is…”

I look up at him and again my eyes zip straight to his mouth. I force myself to look into his eyes. It feels like dragging rocks up a mountain.

“I really just came to drop them off. I didn’t mean to…for you to read them all the second I walked in the door.”

Shame fills my body, that dreadful heavy embarrassment, as Lucy goes over to him and sniffs at his legs. He turns his gaze to her, to her soft eyes that always seem to know just how someone is feeling. She really drills into your soul when she looks at you.

“Oh,” is all I say, and I set down the papers. “Well. Thanks then.”

“Yeah. Of course. I mean, thank you.”

He stands up, and Lucy again jumps at him, placing her fat paws right on his stomach. He grips her paws and dances with her while she bounces on her back feet to steady herself. “Were you lying when you said she doesn’t jump on people?”

“No, she really never has before. She’s always been so well-mannered.”

“What kind of dog is she?” he asks, wrapping Lucy’s paws around him and grinning at her big, square head.

“Um, I don’t know, tell you the truth. I found her in a dumpster. She looks like a black lab mix to me.”

I lean back a little and bounce my pen against my thigh, a bad habit that annoyed everyone all throughout my school years.

“Right?” I ask, looking at him to verify for some reason.

“She does, yeah. A bit big for a lab, though. I was just wondering. She looks a lot like my old dog did, but she was a mix – never knew what she was, either.”

“You had a dog?”

The random self-disclosure surprises me. I’ve known Chris since he was a college boy and I was about 10 years old, and I’ve never known him to have a dog.

“Just for a few months.” His answer is mysterious and his voice strained, and for a moment I see pain across his face. I’ve never known Chris to be so serious.

“Ah, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, yeah, well, it’s okay. I just – I had a puppy with Julie, but she took her with her when she left. Well, anyway, who knows if my dog would have looked like Lucy? She was so little then. But you know, doggie parents have a sense of what our little guys will grow up to look like.”

I smile at the sentiment. I know what he means. I’ve often pictured Lucy older, her face smattered with gray across her nose the way my freckles fall.

“We do, yeah. Hey, I’m sorry about your puppy. You never saw her again? So you and Julie don’t share custody?”

I remember the wedding – well, the almost wedding -- clearly. It was the most intense thing I’d ever been a witness to.

I’d been Tyler’s plus one that day, and the silence had been agonizing, crushing while Chris stood at the altar waiting.

Julie never showed, and the moment had stretched out in front of all of us until it seemed like it would never end.

Eventually, someone went up to him and whispered something in his ear, and he walked out tearfully.

His dad told us all that he’d refund the people from out of town and that he was sorry, but there wasn’t going to be a wedding.

He’d said it was open bar and we should all drink and party, that we should not waste the day, but continue to spend time with friends and family, anyway.

At that point, both the bride’s and groom’s families left.

After an awkward few moments, one brave soul stood up, gathered her purse and cardigan, and walked to the bar. Others then followed.

I had only been 20 back then, so I opted to leave at that point, calling an Uber and high tailing it out of there, leaving Tyler to catch up with old college friends of his and Chris’.

I know it was hard on him; I can’t imagine going through something so publicly humiliating.

He laughs bitterly. “No, I never saw Julie again.”

“Ever?!” I shriek accidentally without thinking. “Sorry, oh, my God.” I clamp my hands over my mouth in embarrassment.

“Nope.” He flips his lower lip out of his mouth casually and shrugs. “I went to Cancun by myself.” He grins at me.

“And I got laid like every day of my honeymoon.”

My hands slither down from my mouth into my lap. “Chris, that’s bat shit crazy.”

“I know.”

Silence fills the space between us, and I go back to answering emails, giving Chris a moment with Lucy. I know personally how healing she can be. I swivel back around in my chair. “Your dog’s name was Noodle?”

He’s winding Lucy’s ears around his finger, and she seems to be falling asleep in his lap as she lets him do it.

His grin is infectious, his dimple deep and his teeth strong and white. He has one small freckle on one of his lips that I find myself drawn to.

“Yeah.”

“That’s adorable.”

“It is, isn’t it?” He looks down at the sleeping Lucy. “Uh oh, I think I put her to sleep. Now how am I going to leave?”

I shrug. “Don’t. Just stay here and keep me company.”

The words slipped out of my mouth so easily, and I’m a little surprised at myself.

I’ve never invited a man to keep me company before, let alone a man about whom I fantasized about just the night before.

I pat my cheeks to discourage the blush I feel rising in them.

“I mean, if you don’t have anything else to do. You’re probably busy.”

“No, no, I’m not busy. I can stay and…keep you company.” His voice is soft, guarding Lucy’s sleep. His smile is just as soft.