“The chick Ryan won’t shut up about. You missed her, man,” Nick teased.
“I miss everything,” Frank grumbled.
“Maybe if you left the office every once in a while, you would’ve seen the pretty little thing our brother has the hots for.”
Nick sure was mouthy for being the youngest, but since there was an eight-year age difference between him and me, and Frank was two years older than me, we weren’t around much as he was growing up. Hence the reason Nick wasn’t scared we’d beat the shit out of him for being so lippy.
When Nick added, “She looks familiar too,” my jaw tightened in an emotion as foreign as it was intriguing.
Could I actually feel possessive over this woman I knew nothing about?
“What
do you mean, she looks familiar? Familiar how? Like you’ve seen her on the street, or you slept with her, or what?” I knew I was ranting, knew I sounded like a fucking madman, but I didn’t care.
Nick raised his hands, patting the air. “Calm down, psycho. I have no idea. She just looks familiar. I’m not sure from where, but it’s definitely not from sleeping with her.”
He might have been cool about it, but I felt anything but calm as visions of Sofia and my baby brother going at it filled my mind.
“Dude, I said I didn’t sleep with her. Are you even listening?” He snapped his fingers in front of my face.
I snapped out of it, wondering how he knew exactly what I’d been seeing in my head.
Frank smirked at me. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
I knew all too well how much he was enjoying my current state of crazy. I’d enjoyed his idiotic behavior over his girlfriend Claudia in much the same way before they started dating, and I hadn’t hesitated to let him know. So I supposed I deserved all of this.
“I feel a little out of control and I don’t know why,” I admitted, feeling a little self-conscious. “But she said she’d come back, so that’s a good thing.” I tried to sound chipper, like my normal self, but I was off. My brothers knew it, and I knew it. There was no sense trying to hide it.
Nick’s eyes widened. “She did?”
“When’s she coming?” Frank cocked a brow and leaned against the bar top.
Shit. When was she coming? She didn’t say.
I shrugged. “Honestly, I have no idea.”
Nick and Frank’s widened and they both howled with laughter, and I never realized just how annoying the two of them were until this moment.
“Did you get her number?” Frank managed to ask through his snickering.
“No.”
Nick bent over laughing, holding his stomach. “You’re so far off your game, it’s comical.”
I wanted to be pissed off, but he was right. Normally I was calm, completely cool when it came to women and how I handled them. I never got nervous or intimidated, but with Sofia, I was flailing, a desperate man begging for whatever scraps she tossed my way.
Under my breath, I muttered, “I’m aware.”
“What’d you say?” Frank leaned toward me, cupping his hand to his ear.
Narrowing my eyes, I glared at my older brother. “You heard me just fine the first time.”
“So, what are you going to do about it then?” He lowered his hand and shoved it in his pocket.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” both my brothers said in unison, sounding like an off-key boy band.