Page 65 of A Little Kissing Between Friends

“You made a sound. You harrumphed. What was that sound for? What are you trying to say, Daddy?”

He shrugged and leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his belly.

“You said something curious so I made a curious sound. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Rolling my eyes, I picked up the acoustic and placed it on its stand.

“Stop beating around the bush and speak your piece, old man.”

A slow grin eased onto his face, cheeks lifting high and making his eyes seem as if they were the sun disappearing behind a mountain. He was enjoying teasing me.

“Well, you said that nothing you’d tried had been working, but you only tried one thing.” He chuckled, clearly amused at my expense.

“Well, I—”

I cut off my excuse the moment he lifted a finger into the air.

“If the one thing you tried didn’t work, try something else. Maybe go to her in person and apologize. Bring her flowers, take her to dinner, and stop pretending to be too cool for love so you can have a chance to salvage things with her.”

I choked on the air. “Daddy—”

He pinned me with a look. “Yes, Star Shine?”

I couldn’t speak. Talking to my daddy about Jucee in this context had me frozen solid. I was but a mere statue perched at a piano.

“Hmm,” Daddy hummed. “I thought you were about to tell me that you weren’t in love with Juleesa. I’m glad you decided against lying.”

A strangled noise might’ve escaped my throat, but that was debatable.

He gave me an amused look. “When you’re finished, let’s go over your plan to get Jucee back. The sooner she starts accepting Carissa’s lunch invitations, the sooner I can get some peace at night.”

Chapter Nineteen

Cyn

Duke It Out

I didn’t hear my phone when it rang, but its buzzing caught my attention, the vibrations making it bounce around on the table in my peripheral. It was two in the morning and I was alone in the studio. Ray and her dude had ducked out about an hour or so ago and, while I should’ve been right behind them, I had some music on my heart that I needed to record. Without pausing the music, I picked it up and turned it over to see my baby brother’s face grinning up at me from the screen.

The sound of me sucking my teeth reached my ears before I even realized I’d performed the action. I was not in the mood to talk to Cody’s ass, so I rejected the call and placed it back face-down. I hadn’t even pulled my hand back when it started vibrating again. Still, I swiped my thumb across the screen. Yeah, a conversation between us was well overdue, but it could wait until after I fixed things with Jucee.

The phone buzzed a third time but I concentrated on the music, not even bothering to ignore the call this time. He’d get the message eventually.

Or so I thought.

The screen of my business phone lit up with a notification. That was worthy of my pausing the music to check it out. It was a notification from the security app. Someone had just entered the front door of the studio. Pulling up the live footage, I groaned aloud at the image of my big-ass, hard-headed-ass, can’t-take-a-hint-ass baby brother grinning up at the camera as he entered a code into the panel on the wall and walked his happy ass through the front door. Rolling my eyes, I swiveled around in my chair just as Cody opened the door.

His eyes swept the room quickly before narrowing in on me.

“Oh, so your ass ain’t in here half-dead, you’re just being an asshole.”

My top lip curled and I shot him the finger.

“How am I the asshole when you’re the one who snuck your snake ass up in here in the middle of the night?!”

Cocking his head to the side, he lifted his left eyebrow. His expression immediately morphed from joking to serious. I blew out a breath, dropping my head back against the chair and running a hand down my face. I’d gone too far. I knew it the moment the words came out of my mouth.

“My bad. I—”