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Sophia made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat and kept her eyes on the floor.
Mark shoveled pancakes like it was nobody’s business, and Sophia studiously examined the checkered flooring. I took the opportunity to give her a long onceover. It wasn’t like the answer was tattooed on her golden skin, of course. But I still searched her like it was.
At least, that was my story and I was sticking to it. I was looking for any clue about why she was acting the way that she was. That was all.
Her wavy hair shone in the morning light poring through their wide kitchen windows, and her narrow shoulders slightly slumped like she was trying to make herself ever smaller than she already was. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear absently, the tip of it a bright pink color.
She was wearing tiny pajamas that made my blood rush south, despite my very best efforts. The bottoms barely hid her pert ass, and the top clung to her round breasts just enough to make my cock twitch with appreciation.
There was cursive lettering on her shirt that read, “It’s a messy hair and pajamas kind of day,” in a deeper shade of blue
than the material was. It was just so perfectly her.
Jesus Christ, Brett. What’s gotten into you? I silently admonished myself. Since when did I have these kinds of thoughts about sweet little Sophia Love?
Scrubbing my hands over the stubble on my chin, I forced myself to focus on the crispy saltiness of the bacon and the sweet, syrup-covered pancakes on my plate.
Mark’s fork clamored to his plate, and his stool scraped on the floor as he pushed back on it. “Okay, I’m done. I gotta go shower quick. Then we’ll head out?”
“Sure thing,” I told him, wolfing down the last of my breakfast.
When Mark moved to the sink, Sophia stopped him in a small voice. “That’s okay. You cooked. I’ll clean up. Go shower. I’m sure you two have plans.”
“That we do.” Mark grinned. “Thanks, sis.”
Sophia shot him a thumbs up and moved silently toward the sink and dishwasher that sat slightly to the left below it. Mark was out of the room a second later, padding to his room at the far end of the hall.
Once again, Sophia and I were alone, and once again, I felt a tension between us that hadn’t been there before.
Crack a joke or something. Lighten this fucking mood.
“So, are you being weird because you accidentally told me I was hot last night?” I asked.
What the fuck? That wasn’t going to lighten the damn mood.
I smirked anyway. At least, my tone was light.
“No,” Sophia said, moving to the stove to collect the pan Mark had used for the pancakes. She still didn’t look at me. “And it wasn’t accidental.”
I nearly fell off the stool. “What?”
Sophia shrugged, placing the pan along with their plates in the dishwater. “What? You know that you are. What difference does it make that I said it?”
What difference? Well, fuck. “I am a handsome son of gun, aren’t I?”
I never had and never would call myself a son of bitch. Not under any circumstances. I respected my mother way too much to even use the figure of speech. My father, on the other hand, could’ve actually been a gun for all that I knew. If it were humanly possible to conceive like that.
I thought of him more like a sperm donor. I’d never met the man that I could remember, since he’d cut and run when I was all of two months old.
Mom never talked about him, and she raised me by herself, completely alone with no one to take care of us but her. And she did a hell of a job at it.
While I was growing up, she worked as a waitress, a receptionist, and a bookkeeper in her nonexistent free time. It turned out that I had her knack for numbers, possibly because I’d always been on the lookout for where possible pitfalls might lie as a kid. It was like risk assessment.
Those two things combined, along with a healthy cash investment from my first boss when I’d pitched him the idea, had now made me a billionaire. It was more than hard to believe sometimes.
I founded BKR when I was twenty-four, rented a shitty office with my previous employer as my only client, and took the biggest leap faith known to man. It paid off.
Five years later, Brett Kelly Risk Management Services was a powerhouse in the industry, even if I did say so myself. I was no longer alone in a dingy building that had paint cracking on the walls, but had hundreds of people working underneath me and clients from all over the country.
