Family Bonds: Coy & Angel (Amore Island #20)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

“ W hat are you doing here, brat?”

Angel wanted to grind her teeth at what her brother, seven years her senior, had just called her. Just because he was in his second year of college and she was in middle school didn’t make him all-powerful.

“Maybe I wanted to see you,” she said. “Not sure why when you call me a brat.”

Spencer walked over and rubbed his knuckles on her head, messing up her ponytail. Would he ever see that she’d grown up?

“That’s my job,” Spencer said. “That and looking out for you. Which is why I asked why you came. Shouldn’t you be home resting?”

She would have stomped her foot, but that would only cause her brother to make another comment about her being a baby. Like she’d gotten most of her life.

Babied.

“I don’t need to rest anymore,” she said calmly. “I wanted to come with Mom and Dad to see you here at college. They let me do things now. Why do you have to be this way?”

Last year she could barely get out of bed without being exhausted. She’d lived her life with this worry. The old watch-and-wait game.

Until the symptoms were so bad that there was no more waiting.

But that was all behind her!

At least she thought that and hated that no one let her live her life like a normal kid.

“Spencer,” her mother said. “Angel is doing well. I tell you that all the time when you call and ask.”

It was nice to hear that her older brother cared so much. If only he wasn’t such a jerk about it to her face.

“It’s hard to forget everything,” Spencer said, shrugging.

“I’m not a baby,” she argued and crossed her arms. “I don’t need to be treated like one either.”

“I know all too well what that feels like.”

Angel turned when she heard a male voice. She hadn’t realized someone else was in the place.

Her brother lived in a quad on campus. Shared living areas in the middle, two bedrooms, and one bath on each side.

“Coy,” Spencer said. “You’ve never met my sister. This is Angel.”

Her eyes might have popped out of her head at the sight of the guy who was Spencer’s best friend. The one that Spencer went to spend two weeks with last summer on some island off of Boston.

No one told her that he looked like he could be on a poster she'd want to hang in her bedroom.

Brown hair that was styled perfectly.

Dark eyes that seemed to have a ton of humor in them.

She didn’t know what was so funny.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Coy said.

“How do you know what it’s like to be babied?” she asked.

He shook her hand, giving her the respect of an adult.

Something no one ever did.

Not that she was an adult, but the fact he wasn’t treating her like a twelve-year-old went a long way in her eyes.

“I’m the youngest of three boys,” he said. “My older brothers like to rub that point home all the time.”

“It sucks,” she said, scrunching up her nose.

“Don’t I know it,” he said, laughing, and leaned down close. “My mother always says it means they care, but I don’t know about that.”

“I care for my sister, you ass,” Spencer said, shoving Coy.

Coy laughed and winked at her. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m glad to meet you.”

Her smile fell. That meant that Coy knew about her health issues and was probably pacifying her because of that.

“I’ve heard a lot about you too,” she said. “Did your family discover the island you live on?”

“They did,” Coy said. “We work hard to keep building it too. My brothers are in real estate like my father.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?” she asked.

“Nope. I’m doing my own thing like I always have. I’m going to be a dentist.”

“Really?” she asked. “On your island?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll do my part there too, but I’m going to do it my way.”

She nodded her head.

That was going to be her new motto too.

She was going to do things her way.

“Angel,” her father said, coming into the room. He’d been in Spencer’s room doing something and returned. “Are you getting hungry? I thought we could take the boys out to dinner with us if you don’t mind spending more time with Spencer rather than just visiting now.”

“Sure,” she said. Even though she’d said she didn’t want to on the way down. “Are you going too, Coy?”

“I was going to,” he said. “If it’s okay with you? Or would you rather spend the time with your family?”

And give up the time to talk to him? No way. She needed to somehow find a way to sneak a picture so she could go back and show her friends so they’d believe her when she told them how hot he was.

“I’d rather spend time with someone else who has been in my shoes with an annoying older brother.”

Coy smiled and now she knew what all her friends meant when they said they had a crush.

By the end of the night, she knew it wasn’t merely a crush.

This was going to be the man she’d marry!