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In that brief slice of time, Gavin felt like someone had snuck into his chest to steal every last ounce of breath from his lungs. Yes, the room existed around him, with its familiar photos of Europe lining the walls and the relentless afternoon sunshine streaming in through the front windows. He knew that Bree was standing mere feet away, just as she had been seconds before. But this moment felt different despite its simplicity, as though all the moments that would fall off the clock after it would surely become a lot more complicated.
Because when he nodded in agreement and Sloane’s smile twisted all the way through him with its perfect mixture of sensuality and vulnerability, he knew he was falling in love with her.
23
Gavin gripped the Audi’s steering wheel with a dipping sense of unease. He’d been chock-full of emotions lately with Bree, and while he managed them just fine, they definitely weren’t his thing. Surely, all those residual feelings were rattling his brain. Otherwise he’d never have jumped to that crazy falling-in-love conclusion about Sloane in the living room.
She turned in the passenger seat next to him, delivering the warm, sexy smell of cinnamon spice right to his nose, and he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or just plain cry uncle.
“So, Bree, what’d you do in school today?” Sloane angled her shoulder against the passenger seat to get a good view of Bree in the back, but her body faced him full-on. Okay, he was an adult. He could focus on the conversation. And he could absolutely forget that Sloane was wearing the sheerest pale pink bra he’d ever seen underneath that black sweater. He knew, because he’d taken it off of her just after lunch.
She shifted her weight next to him, and it was all Gavin could do to suppress a moan at the petal-colored strap peeking out from beneath her V-neck in the world’s prettiest taunt.
Bree leaned forward from the backseat, mercifully snagging his attention as she answered. “We’re getting ready to dissect frogs next week in biology, which is totally wrong, not to mention gross. Caitlin and Sadie and I were thinking of boycotting.”
“Boycotting, huh? Well, that’s one way to make your voices heard, I suppose.” The inflection in Sloane’s voice told him she’d chosen her words with care, and it piqued the hell out of his curiosity. Still, no way was he going to let Bree stir up trouble in biology.
He frowned, but held on to his protest for a minute despite the urge to flat-out tell her she had to participate. “Would that save the life of your amphibian subject?”
Bree’s sigh was a gusty, drawn-out number. “No. They’re already dead when they ship them to the school. We asked Mr. Morrison all about it. He said they’re…what’s the word for killing them nicely?”
“Euthanized?” Sloane supplied, and Gavin caught Bree’s nod in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah. Euthanized with a chemical that makes them basically fall asleep first. He promised they really don’t feel anything, and that even with a digital dissection program, we wouldn’t learn the same stuff as doing the real dissection.”
Sloane tipped her head, her dark, silky hair tumbling within his reach. Christ, what waswrongwith him?
“Hmm. Guess it wouldn’t be entirely bad to take it as a learning experience then,” she said.
“Doing animal dissections is where veterinarians start out,” Gavin added. It might have been ages ago, but he firmly remembered an eight-year-old Bree claiming her life’s goal was to care for animals. By the time he’d moved to San Francisco, he’d had nearly every show on Animal Planet down cold just from watching with her during his precious few off-hours.
Bree paused. “I guess you’re right. And it’s okay anyway. Lucas Ford said he’d be my lab partner, and he promised to do the actual dissecting if I’d write up the lab. That way I don’t have to butcher poor Kermit, but I’ll still get credit for participating.”
“That was awfully nice.” Relief flooded Gavin, and he was grateful that he didn’t have to directly intervene to save Bree’s science grade. The emotion was short-lived, however, when he caught the distinctive change in her sigh.
“Yeah. Lucas is pretty nice.”
Oh,hellno. Gavin didn’t care if she failed science ten times in a row. No way was this Lucas kid getting within a twelve-foot radius of his sister.
His knuckles went white over the steering wheel. “On second thought, maybe—”
“Oooh, look! The perfect parking spot,” Sloane interjected, flinging her arm toward the passenger side window and effectively bringing his train of thought to a screeching halt. He maneuvered the Audi between a sleek, red sports car and a minivan, realizing only after the fact that the lot was littered with empty spaces. He opened his mouth to revisit the argument in his head with fresh vigor, but Bree was already happily chatting with Sloane about some reality TV show they’d watched together the other night, and his window of opportunity had clearly passed. It might be just as well, though. If Bree was only willing to give this Lucas kid two seconds of airtime, he probably wasn’t worth having an argument and wrecking their afternoon.
“Okay. What do you two want to shop for first?” Gavin asked, sliding out of the car.
“Shoes,” Sloane said, with a look that suggested this was the only possible answer to the question.
“A new cell phone,” Bree added excitedly, and he nearly pitched to a stop on the pavement.
“You have a cell phone so you can reach me if there’s an emergency,” he reminded her. “And it works perfectly fine.”
Their feet kept time on the black pavement in the parking lot, and Bree jumped over a crack between two spaces. “My cell phone is a total dinosaur.”
“It still works, right? Texts, emojis, email, all fully functional?”
But she set her face with a pleading expression, and damn, it took a potshot right at his ribs. “But if I had a new phone, then I wouldn’t have to borrow Sloane’s to do all the really cool stuff.”
He swung a look of surprise at Sloane. “You let her use your phone?”
