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“No, I’m not going to kick the little pain in the ass out until I know what’s going on,” Reed bit out with a glare at the annoying bastard who had somehow managed to sneak past him and made it into his room without him knowing.
“Then what’s the problem?” Matt asked, frowning in confusion as he gestured lazily around them. “She needs a place to stay and we have plenty of room. Plus, you need to find someone to replace Miss Dawson.”
“No.”
“Why not?” Matt asked, frowning.
“She’s a fucking nightmare,” he said, rubbing his hands roughly down his face.
“She’s fucking adorable,” his brother said with a heartfelt sigh that was going to get him killed.
“She’s a menace,” Reed said still trying to figure out why he was doing this.
He’d barely survived one night with her. There was no way in hell that he was going to be able to handle a year with her living under the same roof and there was no fucking way that he was hiring her. He’d lose his fucking mind if he had to deal with her every day.
“She can’t be that bad,” Matt said, already looking bored and for one very good reason.
He’d been too young to fully understand how lucky they were to have survived Joey Lawson the first time around. While Reed had spent most of his time trying to avoid the little pain in the ass and making sure that no one followed through with their threats to strangle the little brat, Matt had been too busy annoying the shit out of everyone to care.
“Because she’s an annoying pain in the ass that destroys everything in her path,” Reed explained with a heavy sigh because he didn’t need this right now.
He considered sending her Jackson’s way, but he had too much shit going on with work to keep an eye on his sister. Plus, he tended to overreact when it came to his sister. They didn’t have any relatives and Reed sure as hell wasn’t sending her to her father. It would be a cold day in hell when he let that piece of shit near her again. That left her with her friends, and something told him that wasn’t an option or she wouldn’t be here. That meant that whatever had sent her back here had to be bad, he realized even as he tried to tell himself that it was none of his business. But if she was in trouble…
Shit!
“Did she tell you why she came back?” Reed asked, hoping that whatever trouble she’d gotten into was going to be an easy fix.
Matt shook his head. “She didn’t say.”
“And you didn’t ask,” Reed guessed, biting back a curse.
“It wasn’t my place to ask,” his brother said with a shrug, earning a glare, which had his brother’s lips twitching. “You glare a lot when she’s around.”
“Which is just one more reason why she shouldn’t stay,” he said, wondering if there was any way that he could-
“She has nowhere else to go,” Matt said and before he could respond his brother said that one thing that guaranteed that he didn’t have a choice. “And you promised Grandma Lawson that you would look after her.”
“This isn’t a good idea,” Reed bit out, wishing like hell that he hadn’t made that promise.
“Why not?” Matt asked, looking genuinely confused as Reed rubbed the back of his neck, still trying to figure out why her comment had bothered him when they both knew that she was right. She was an obligation. For the next year, whether he liked it or not, and he really didn’t like it, it was his job to keep her out of trouble.
“You won’t even know she’s here,” Matt promised.
“Trust me, I’d know,” Reed said when a thought occurred to him. “We don’t have any extra beds.”
Matt shrugged it off. “I’m sure that we can find something in the barn. Until then, she can sleep on the couch,” he said, which meant that she was going to have to stay in Reed’s bedroom.
“She can’t stay,” Reed said hollowly, trying not to think about what it would be like to have her back in his bed.
“You can’t throw Jackson’s little sister out and we both know it,” Matt said, but he really could, he decided even as he tried to figure out the best way to do it when his brother stressed, “She has nowhere else to go.”
“Besides,” the little bastard said before he could respond, “you need the help.”
“I have it under control,” Reed said, trying not to think of all the paperwork waiting for him, the meetings, phone calls, and all the interviews that he had with kids barely out of college filling up the rest of his week.
“Doesn’t she have a master’s degree?” the little bastard asked, earning a murderous glare and making him wonder why he’d promised his mother that he wouldn’t smother the little bastard in his sleep.
“She has two Ph.D.s, but I’m still not hiring her,” Reed said, shaking his head because this wasn’t fucking happening.
“Why not? You’d be able to keep an eye on her and keep her out of trouble,” Matt pointed out with a satisfied sigh and for a moment, he was actually tempted to say yes.
“Where is she going to stay?” Reed asked, hoping to distract his brother while he tried to figure out what he was going to do about her.
“She can sleep in my room,” the little bastard said, drawing his attention to the smug little bastard looking way too fucking pleased with himself. When Matt caught the murderous expression on Reed’s face, he rolled his eyes and sighed heavily with a, “Fine. I’ll set up your old room.”
“You mean the room right next to mine and the one that shares my bathroom?” Reed asked before shaking his head and saying, “No fucking way.”
“Fine,” Matt said, trying to bite back a smile, “then she can use the old guest room.”
“You mean the one right next to yours?” Reed bit out as he checked to make sure that his bedroom door was still closed before he returned his attention to the little bastard.
“The very one,” Matt said, making him glare.
“No.”
“Technically it makes the most sense since she’s my guest,” Matt explained innocently.
“Is that what you’re going to tell Jackson?” Reed asked, noting the way that Matt slowly nodded and said, “Your old room it is,” before Reed sighed heavily and pushed away from the wall, deciding that it was time to get some answers.
Chapter 13
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Making as many bad choices as humanly possible,” Joey couldn’t help but admit as she hung there, squeezing her eyes tightly shut while doing her best not to think about the ground rushing up to greet her and really hoping that the large man that hated her would pull her up for old time’s sake.
“I can see that,” Reed murmured, but something, mostly the fact that he left her hanging from the window, told her that he really didn’t.
He did, however, grab her by the back of her pan
ts just in case the window that was currently keeping her pinned in place decided to finally budge and released her for what promised to be a very memorable experience.
“Why don’t we have a talk?” Reed asked as she hung there, really wishing that she hadn’t leaned out so far.
Then again, she really wished that she’d known that someone had removed the old rose trellis before she’d come up with this plan. She should have just walked out the door, but since that hadn’t ended well the last time she’d figured that her best bet was to sneak out the window, make her way next door, find her keys, and leave before the large man currently dragging a chair closer by the sounds of it, could find her.
“When did you remove the old trellis?” she asked, hoping to change the subject before he started asking questions that she’d really rather not answer.
“It’s on the other side of the house,” he said, making her groan as she tried to shimmy back inside only to give up a few seconds later when nothing happened. If only her feet reached the floor, she thought with a sigh as she resigned herself to hanging there at the mercy of her brother’s best friend, who wasn’t exactly fond of her.
“Why are you here, Joey?” Reed asked, ruining all of her hopes and dreams that he would just let her leave.
“Tried to escape,” she said before following that up with, “Any chance that you’d be willing to let me up before I pass out?”
“No,” he said, making her sigh as she hung there, regretting so many things. “Why do you think you’re an obligation?”
“Because I am,” she grumbled.
“I see,” Reed murmured thoughtfully, “and you feel that way because…”
“Because it’s true,” she said with a shrug and a sigh as she opened her eyes and quickly closed them at the reminder that she was deathly afraid of heights, which of course was another reason why trying to escape by climbing out of a second story window really hadn’t been the best decision.
“And that’s the reason you don’t want me to call your brother and tell him you’re here?”
