“I love waking up next to you, my fake brother.”
His laughter carries across the room and out the open window, toward that family picture on his dresser.
“That felt a little porny if I’m your brother.”
“As if creating a clay mold of my cervix last night in class wasn’t inappropriate enough?”
“It certainly was interesting when that instructor took your cervix and shoved the plastic doll through it.” He shudders as he drinks his coffee, his shoulders round and contoured, corded tendons popping out as he moves. I don’t need Netflix.
I just need Andrewflix. Twenty-four seven. I could watch him all day.
I shudder, too. “She seemed way too enthusiastic about perineal massage.”
His hand goes for my naked hip. “I don’t know. I’m not sure you can ever be too excited about that part of a woman’s anatomy.”
“You have an endless supply of frat boy lines.” I can’t stop giggling. He joins me, his deep chuckles rippling on the air, weaving with my laughter to form a cloud of contentment that fills the room.
“What were you really doing at the hospital last night?” I ask. We didn’t exactly, um, talk much last night after the childbirth class was over. In fact, I think my panties are still in the limo. Now that I have coffee and we’ve thoroughly reacquainted ourselves with every inch of each other’s skin, it’s time to turn to conversation.
“Board meeting.”
“Sunny said something about a cancer wing.”
He blinks fast, suddenly, and his neck tenses. “Right. Dad’s donating to the hospital. Wants to help bring new technology to the cancer center.”
“To help him?”
“To help everyone. He’s always had his hand in smaller philanthropic causes, but for this one he wants to pour a ton of his personal fortune into the new wing.”
“How do you feel about that?”
Andrew shrugs. “His money. His choice.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ask questions like this,” I say, suddenly feeling like I’ve gone in the wrong direction.
“What?” He holds my hand. “No. Nothing wrong with talking.”
“You seem closed off.”
“I do?” He purses his lips, eyebrows tilting down in an expression that’s not quite a frown. “I guess...I just don’t talk to people like this. It’s new.”
“Like what?”
“Like a human being.”
“You are one, you know.”
His eyes light up with mischief, little flecks of amber shining in the sunlight. “I’ll have to drive that out of me. Such a weakness.”
The heavy moment is over. I take a big gulp of my coffee and stay quiet.
He squeezes my hand. “You can ask me anything, Amanda. No subject is off limits.”
“Really?”
“Really. For instance, you could ask me about that family resemblance the instructor noticed last night—”
“Can we change the subject? You are so not my brother. Not even my fake brother. I’m an only child.”
“Lucky.” He drinks a big sip and looks at me. “You never had to compete for attention.”
“Nope. Just me and my mom.”
A shadow passes over his face. If I weren’t staring at him, I’d have missed it.
“Right. For us, it was just the three sons and our dad and our tutors and his assistant, Grace.”
“You mean Declan’s assistant.”
“She is now. But back then, she worked for Dad.” Andrew’s face goes wistful, the light stubble on his face the only manifestation of adulthood holding him back from looking like a teen as he remembers. “Grace was the one who helped keep us functioning after Mom died.”
I look at the family picture. He looks at me.
“Have you seen that?”
I nod as I drink more coffee. A salty gust of wind lifts up and into the room, carrying my heart with it, lifting so high in my chest it seems to cry out as it bangs against its limits.
Crawling to the end of his bed, he stretches and grabs the frame, then settles next to me, holding it.
“She—” His voice cracks like a preteen’s. Having him sit here, post night-time lovemaking, drinking coffee in bed while going into the very vulnerable center of his being is a gift. I want to spend the rest of my life just sitting next to him. Holding his hand. Drinking coffee.
Just being.
That feeling rolls through me with a resounding certainty that clears my mind.
“She what?” I ask, urging him on. This is like having a windowless room turn out to have an enormous skylight buried under three feet of snow that has just thawed.
“Nothing. Not important.”
“It’s important to me.”
The fluttering of his eyelashes as emotions fight against each other within him makes me ache for what his life must be like on the inside. Andrew McCormick, CEO of Anterdec. He’s a wheeler and dealer, the young CEO everyone is watching for his first big mis-step, eyes of the business world on him not in admiration but with a smirk, just waiting for him to screw up.
And here I am, in his bed, listening to him talk about missing his mom.
“She would have liked you.” His hand crawls under the sheet, seeking mine again. The threaded pull of our ten fingers intertwined like roots makes me smile.
The stinging pain of unexpected tears and a protective tenderness towards him makes me inhale slowly, like discovering a new flower so beautiful you have to smell it.
“I’m sorry I never got to meet her.”