Page 4 of Double the Fun
“Harper, are you here?” I spot her purse lying on the hallway table but she doesn’t come out to greet me like she normally does.
“Harper?”
She wouldn’t go anywhere without her purse, would she? I'm sure most people would be like ‘Oh I knew she was kidnapped because she never leaves her fill-in-the-blank here’ but Harper isn’t like that. We spent two hours looking for her phone only to have a stranger call mine and tell us she left it at the store. If it’s not attached to her, she doesn’t do a very good job keeping up with it. But that’s something I love about her. Harper has priorities and things, as in objects, aren’t one of them.
I head down the short hallway to her room thinking I might have caught her having a mid-afternoon nap. I’m highly aware of the hot sexy man following me. I try to tap down the power that comes with that and focus solely on Harper.
I’m almost to her door when I get the surprise of my life. Out of her room falls not just Harper but Colm’s brother too. My first reaction is one of stunned silence while right beside me Colm himself puts everything into words for me.
“Oh shit!”
I can’t believe my sister lost her virginity before I did. I can’t believe sweet little, innocent Harper is getting action and I’m…still stuck where I’ve always been. Too afraid to do anything about the weight of my cherry I carry around with me.
Then reality catches up to me. This is way too much like a sitcom scenario to be real.
“Turn around!”
Normally I would be all swoony over a man giving out commands like that but somehow not when Colm’s brother does it. He says it again and Colm turns but he is laughing his ass off as he does.
“You too.”
“What? I’m her sister. I’ve seen her naked hundreds of times.”
“I don’t care.”
I turn but not before giving him narrow eyes. But when I turn a part of my heart turns over too. That is a man who cares about my sister. Damn it, now I’m going to have to be nice to him even if he is a demanding little shit. Not that there is anything small about him, or Colm. Both of them are…well, perfect. Perfectly tall, perfectly built, and apparently perfectly alpha when it comes to a woman they care about.
I glance over at Colm. Would he be as demanding if it were me with my tits out? If we were caught in a delicate situation where others could see me? I see the grin on his face and think probably not. Colm is way too laid back to be so uptight about something like that. He would probably laugh it off and make a joke about it so everyone could move past it but he wouldn’t command everyone in the room. That’s just…not who he is.
Why does that make me a little jealous of what my sister has? No way do I want her man and I am super happy for her that he seems to be totally and completely taken with her. I just wish somebody would care for me like that.
“Um, bro…you planning on maybe…could you…what exactly are you doing?” Colm starts shifting from foot to foot like he wants the story of how this happened and what is going on as badly as I do.
I hear his brother huff out an exasperated breath before giving us the all-clear. I take the two in, Harper sitting in his lap with his shirt on her now and something lacy hanging from Colm’s brother’s arm. “Anything you want to tell me, Harper?”
She turns bright red and hides her face. Maybe I read it wrong and this isn’t sitcom funny but they really were trying to…
“No, I can’t really think of anything off the top of my head.”
I squat down being mindful to keep my skirt good and tucked in everywhere and hold up his arm. Dangling from the end of it is…my sister’s bra. I fight back a laugh as I go to work freeing it. Sitcom funny is back as an option. I hold it up so Harper has to reach for it but get the second shock of the day when he snatches it away from both of us and pockets it. Oh, that’s hot. He’s keeping that for laterMy sister’s eyes meet mine and I tell her my thoughts with just my eyes.
“Are you sure you two aren’t twins?” It’s Colm who says it. It shakes both of us out of our silent communication and we end up laughing together with even the boys joining in with us.
That eye thing, it’s something we’ve always been able to do with one another. Even though I’m older by a full year and a half, I can’t remember a time I didn’t have Harper with me. It’s always been us against the world. When we were little girls people used to joke and say we should marry twins because then we would have people who understood how close we were.
The distant memory has me straightening up and smoothing down my skirt. Marriage would not be on the table for someone like Colm. He hits me as a good-time free spirit kind of guy. And now I’m inexplicably sad again. For me, marriage would be a must. I want the whole fairy tale…everything.
I brush away the sadness and start laughing my ass off as Harper starts telling us what happened. Just like I thought, it is sitcom worthy. And I finally learn that Colm’s brother is named Cade. Cade and Colm. Harper and Harley. It would look good on a wedding invitation. I immediately slam on the brakes in my mind and wipe the very image of those sexy black paper with white lettering invitations right out of my mind. Or I at least try to.
I focus on the nagging part of the story. Cade didn’t know where his ex-girlfriend lived. That’s not weird or screams emotionally unavailable at all. I start to worry about who I let close to my sister when he answers with just the right thing and turns the questioning back on me and his brother.
“I was walking out of work and ran into Colm on my way. He was nice enough to walk me home so I didn’t have to put up with Jeff.”
My sister meets my eyes again and we have another one of our secret conversations. She hates Jeff. Hell, I hate Jeff. I don’t know anyone who likes him but he’s still my boss until I can find something better, which I am looking for currently.
“Do you ladies want to hang out with us this Friday night after work? Not officially or anything just so we can keep the creeps off you and you can keep the creeps off of us. Because all four of us are all so hot and creep-bait.”
Creep-bait. I check in with myself to find out how I feel about his invitation and to make sure my inner slut isn’t running away with my virgin ass getting both of us in trouble since we live in one body after all. Yeah, I think I’m alright with that.