Clearly, we couldn't go on like this. The answer was to stay away from each other, but that wasn't working. If I was completely honest with myself, I didn't want to stay away from Noel. It made no sense because I was sure that he was being deceitful with me.
His comments seemed to suggest he thought the same about me. Perhaps this was something we could talk out. I didn’t have any illusions that we’d have anything more than great sex, but if we could get along outside of sex, that would be nice.
Except…he was working for Bran. I couldn’t engage in an affair with Noel knowing he was simultaneously watching me. Maybe he'd drop Bran.
The fact that he hadn’t done so suggested he wasn’t interested enough in me to get rid of the conflict of interest that came with sleeping with me.
Ugh. This was all Bran's fault. He was the one that I needed to confront. Whatever happened with Noel, I needed Bran to stop interfering in my life.
If I could get Bran to call off whatever he had going on with Noel, then maybe me and Noel could come to an understanding, or he’d go away. Either solution would be better than this back and forth that he and I were going through right now.
The next day I woke up early, did my workout, showered and dressed, and then headed down to Bran's office. It was time for me to confront him on what I knew and make him back off once and for all.
I was let in immediately. It was a perk of being his sister. As far as I could tell, it was the only benefit.
Bran rose from his desk and held out his arms warmly greeting me. I let him give me a hug, but it was stiff on my end.
"Ut-oh. Why do I have the feeling I'm in trouble?" He looked at me with humor.
"Because you are."
He let out a sigh and I resented how he would act like I was being unreasonable when he was the one always meddling in my life.
"Do you want some coffee?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No. I want to get this out."
He motioned for me to sit on the couch in his office while he took a chair sitting across from me. "What did I do now?"
"I know that you owned my house before I bought it."
Bran's face fell. "You had to do some digging to find that out. Even so, it's still the perfect house for you."
"Did you own my neighbor’s house too? Is that why you've been so interested in me getting to know my neighbor? You have done some pretty wild things Bran, but to maneuver things so that I'm living next door to the man you've hired to be my bodyguard is a step too far."
He held his hands up in surrender. "That's not what's going on here.”
“Oh really. Do you have cameras and microphones around the house?” Maybe not since he would have an earful when Noel fucked me on the kitchen table. I couldn’t imagine Bran not mentioning something like that to me. Then again, maybe he did hear it and confronted Noel. Maybe that’s why Noel left like he did last night.
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Really. So what was Noel doing skulking around my yard?”
His expression turned hard. “What?”
“Well, maybe not Noel.” I remembered when I confronted Noel he was dressed differently, and it would have been difficult for him to change so quickly after my seeing him in my yard and then in his house. “Someone was prowling around.”
“If you want me to stop from trying to protect you, telling me you have a prowler isn’t the way.” He rose from his chair and went to his phone.
“What are you doing?” God. I could picture it. He was going to hire a militia to guard my house.
“I’m calling to find out where Kerby is. He’s out on bail and he's not the type of guy to let a TRO stop him.”
I hadn’t thought of Kerby. His court case was coming up soon, but he’d been out on bail.
“You’ve been tracking him?”
Bran gave me a hard stare. “Don’t give me grief about that, Harper.”