They felt… soft.
It was deeply strange.
“Surely,” he told his sister, “it is good that mywifeand I are getting along.”
He thought this was said with an appropriately neutral tone, so he was irritated when Clio gave him a knowing smile.
Did these women know some kind of secret language? Did they have some sort of magical powers that men couldn’t understand? Why were they always giving him theselooks?
“It is good,” she agreed. “I like her.”
He tried not to grumble, really, he did. “Yes, that’s perfectly apparent.”
Clio laughed.
“You know, there’s no reason to be jealous, brother,” she told him. “You could spend more time with her if you only—and this is going to sound completely mad, I know—werenice to her.”
“I’m notjealous,” Aaron protested, ignoring this latter bit, which was also obviously nonsense.
“You are profoundly talented at missing the point,” Clio said sardonically. “But then again, you are a man.”
“Why do people keep focusing on that?” Aaron demanded. “First Jacob, now you?—”
“I always did like that Jacob,” Clio said.
“I miss the navy,” Aaron said with a sigh. It wasn’t entirely true.
Mostly.
Clio smiled at him in a way that could only be described as indulgent.
“Since it’s Christmas, I’m going to give you a gift of some good advice,” Clio said. “Women like it when you talk to them. Theydon’tlike it when you push them away due to idiotic masculine pride. I am quite literally begging you to think about this the next time Phoebe asks you a very normal question about your past. Because if you keep pushing her away, eventually, she’ll listen. And I don’t think you actually want that.”
Aaron’s logical mind wanted to argue. He wanted to protest that he didn’t do things that he didn’t want to do.
But some instinct held him back. And when he probed that instinct, he started to wonder if maybe Clio wasn’t right. Maybe he was being more proud than terribly rational.
Maybe.
He wasn’t going to admit it, though. He might have spent years away from Clio, which might have meant that he was out of practice when it came to being an older brother, but he still knew the basics. You didn’t admit that you werewrong. Not if you didn’t want to hear about it for the rest of your bloody life.
Besides, Clio looked smug enough just at his silence.
“Stop that,” he told her.
She grinned broadly.
“You don’t know anything,” he said.
He could see all of her teeth now. Everyone. It was alarming in the extreme.
“Go away,” he said tiredly. “Let me wait for my wife in peace, would you?”
At that, Clio surged to her feet with an adorable little hop that reminded him of when she’d been a much younger girl.
“Those are the magic words,” she told him, crossing the room to peck a kiss on his cheek. “Extend my greetings to Phoebe.”
He hid his smile as she left the room—just for the look of the thing. But that same instinct, the one that had warned him not to protest, the one that had kept him alive so many times, the one that he had learned to trust—that feeling was extremely satisfied by the idea that he had made his little sister happy for once.
