The brown-eyed cutie giggled as her fingers brushed across my waist. “My auntie warned me about you Comfort men.”
I’d never seen this girl in my life before I’d walked in to find her sitting behind the front desk. She’d explained that she was a temp and I’d figured that she was new to town. I had no idea that she had people in Firefly. “Your auntie?”
“My Auntie Caroline.” Her brown eyes twinkled as her fingers continued to explore my torso.
“Caroline Shaw?”
“Yep. That’s her.”
Miss Shaw was in her late sixties and a staple in Firefly. For decades, she’d owned Pretty in Peach, which had been the sole beauty salon on the island until the Montgomerys bankrolled The Beauty Mark for their daughter Kendra. It was the family’s attempt at “rebranding” her, which had become necessary after their only daughter was “cancelled” as an Instagram model after a brief stint as a spokesperson for diet pills that caused major organ failure.
“What did your auntie warn you ’bout, honey?” Miss Shaw had always been kind to me and my brothers, which was a hell of a lot more than I could say for a lot of people in this town. I figured it was because she’d been engaged to my Uncle Henry before he’d been killed in a plane crash.
“She said that y’all were cursed.”
Naturally athletic physiques weren’t the only thing that was passed down in the Comfort bloodline. The “curse” ran three generations deep.
The story went that Lucille Abernathy, of the famed haunted Abernathy Manor, had been engaged to my grandfather, but he fell in love with my grandmother and left Lucille at the altar. She’d put a curse on him that day, folks said, dooming any male in his bloodline who found love to either die or to lose that love tragically.
The “Comfort Curse” was not something I put much stock in. But if anyone would believe in it, it was Caroline Shaw, considering my uncle had been killed a month before they were set to walk down the aisle.
“And she said,” she continued, “that all the Comfort men had strong jaws, wide smiles, big hands, and kissed like the dickens.”
Those weren’t the words that were normally used to describe us. We were well-known for being associated for descriptors that started with F.
I ran my fingers along her jaw, and bent down ready to show her that I lived up to our reputation. “Is that right?”
My lips brushed across hers as she whispered, “And that you and your brothers were known for three things. Fighting. Flirting. And fucking.”
There it was. The three Fs. My older brother was the fighter. He could knock anybody out cold with one punch. My little brother flirted with anything with a pulse, and that left me. And as far as the last F…well hell, there was a reason that my nickname was Panty Dropper, and had been since high school.
She tilted her head and met my eye, a coquettish smile playing on those luscious lips. “Wonder which one you’re known for?”
I grinned. “Well, darlin’, I think it’s time to find out.”
She had just dipped her hand inside my pants when the door of the closet flew open.
There, standing on the other side and holding the handle, wearing his usual baleful expression, was my oldest brother Hank. The fighter. His jaw was set and his tone flat as he spoke, “Put it back in your pants.”
It was more words than he normally strung together and I knew playtime was over. Avoidance had fueled me, allowing me to be sidetracked by the temp receptionist who ended up being Miss Shaw’s niece, but it was time to face what I’d been running from and get down to business.
I had a will reading to attend.