Chapter 2

Van

I moved around the massive couch and plumped up the pillows then started to move them around. Girls seemed to love pillows. Every girl’s place I’d ever been to had mounds of the bloody things, which was why I’d bought more. This was a kind of Field of Dreams moment. Like if I built a female-friendly lounge room, she would come. A female flatmate rather than the fucking pigs we’d had living with us before.

Blokes were sneaky fucks.

Our last flatmate, Jared, had turned up to the place looking like a sane, normal person. We’d even had a beer with him before we sealed the deal and moved him in. He wore clean clothes, didn’t stink like an old gym sock, and seemed like the kind of bloke that could piss standing up without getting it all over the floor.

How wrong we were.

When we were finally forced to evict the guy due to unpaid rent, we’d discovered the source of the stink from the spare room. All three of us guys worked hard and weren’t afraid of getting our hands dirty, but the minute we opened that door, we’d all staggered back.

Bottles and cans covered every possible surface. On the bedside tables, the bedhead, on the en suite sink and all across the floor. It was as if he thought his dick would get shorter each time he tossed an empty bottle into the bin. Then there were the piles of festy clothes.

Each one of us guys worked hard at physical jobs. We owned a construction business with our best friend, but we didn’t just stand about ordering our employees around. We swung tools just like everyone else, so we often came home reeking of stale sweat. But there was a special kind of funk that comes from letting those clothes pile up and… mature over time. I’d gagged, and so had Gage and Connor, right before we’d wrapped bandanas around our face and removed everything, taking it straight to the bin.

A woman wouldn’t be that gross, we reasoned. Women seemed to clean up after themselves, look after their living spaces. They always smelled nice and their places did too, so I kept tweaking the pillows then adjusting the new throws we’d bought to put over the backs of the couch to make it look softer and more engaging when Connor walked in.

“First person’s coming around,” he announced.

“Really?” I eyed the couch, wondering if the pillows had worked their magic already.

“Bloke called Ken.” He watched me frown at him then shrugged. “He had his girlfriend call us about the room, so I figure any bloke that’s got a girl that would put up with him—”

“Jared had a girl,” I said as Gage walked in with a frown. “So did Sammy, and Macca—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Connor held up his hands, ready to ward me off. “I figured we’d meet the bloke and…” He looked down as his phone started to buzz, tapping on the screen before answering it smoothly. “Connor speaking. Hi, yeah, the room’s still available…”

Gage and I watched him walk out of the room, his chatter slowly fading away.

“We’re gonna end up with some dickhead bloke here again,” Gage growled.

He was a big fella, something that always stood us in good stead at school. Being such a tall guy stopped anyone from messing with Connor, me, or our best friend, Finn, when we started high school. Then when the rest of us filled out, plenty of people did. Blokes wanted to take us on, work their way up the pecking order by taking us out, and girls… I fought the urge to smile, remembering how that went. The four of us were tight, which meant girls came to us in packs.

Or sometimes she decided to claim the four of us for the night.

I shook my head, trying to dislodge that thought. It’d been some time since we’d shared a girl and the need to do so was like a persistent itch. I had no business feeling like that right now. Any woman who was dumb enough to rent a room with three blokes was well and truly off limits. Don’t shit in your own nest—that was our motto.

Right up until now.

When I heard a car pull up in the driveway my head jerked up, and Gage turned around. We heard the click of the front gate latch, and we moved as one. Maybe Ken would be a good bloke, one with references, we’d made sure to specify that. A guy who could be relied upon to pay his fucking rent on time and…

My brain flatlined the minute I saw who our prospective flatmate was.

She was walking in with another girl beside her, but whoever the friend was, she didn’t even get a second look. The cock that had twitched at the thought of sharing another girl went to full mast, straining against my zipper in a silent salute to her beauty. Kendall was fucking hot when she was just Finn’s little sister—somehow all the hotter because she was completely forbidden, because Finn was savagely protective of her.

But the woman.

A low groan from Gage told me everything I needed to know. Those full curves, those rounded arms, those thighs thick enough to bury my face and get lost in. They’d tormented me during the day at school and then haunted my dreams, leaving me waking up gasping, hard and sweating under the sheets. I just never expected the woman they belonged to would come walking up my front footpath.

And neither did Kendall.

I knew every one of her smiles, because god knew I’d spent enough bloody time cataloguing them. This one was the well practised polite one she saved for teachers and parents, but it was the light in her eyes that had mine following her gaze. She took in the garden beds and the facade of the house with a look of surprised pleasure. We worked hard to keep the place looking presentable, particularly now, hoping better curb appeal would bring us a better quality of house mate, but part of me wanted more. For those lips to curve wider, for her to look at me with the same look of pleasure, but the moment her eyes swung my way, it all went to shit.

“What..?”

Her friend shot her a sharp look, probably because Ken planted her feet halfway up the path, not willing to take another step forward. That was fine because I rushed to close that gap. We didn’t talk about Kendall, ever. Finn would lose his shit if he ever heard us discussing his sister, because like the average Aussie bloke, talking about feelings was just not done. But most of all, if I started talking about her, I’d never fucking stop.

I had a thing for my best friend’s sister all through high school and apparently that hadn’t changed.

My heart was beating too fucking fast, my hands forming fists as I forced them to stay by my side. Otherwise I’d wrap them around her shoulders and pull her tight, just to breathe her scent in before I—

“No.” Kendall’s sharp tone cut through the little moment I was having. “Oh no. No, no, no—”

“What the fuck, girl?” the friend asked, looking at Kendall then us. “Are you having some sort of aneurysm, because—”

She reached up to place a hand on my girl’s forehead but that was quickly slapped away.

“This…” Kendall’s finger shook as she stabbed it into the air. “This is your house?” She glanced at me, then Gage, then Connor when he came walking out the front, the conversation he was having instantly forgotten the moment he saw her. “You’re the ones looking for a bang maid?”

“Bang…maid?” Gage turned slowly to look at me.

“You’re looking for a place to rent?” I asked, trying to keep my cool and failing utterly. “Well, come in. The room’s huge. It’s got an en suite which we recently renovated.” And we’d rip it out and redo it all over again if it didn’t suit Kendall’s needs. I’d retile the bathroom myself if that’s what was required. “There’s a pool out the back. Did I mention a pool?”

I turned to lead her inside the house, thinking that if I just kept talking, she’d keep coming, but when I looked over my shoulder, I saw a familiar stubborn expression.

Because all three of us had worked hard to get her glaring at us like that throughout our childhood.

What had been born from a childishly cruel glee at provoking Finn’s brat sister, turned into something else when we all hit puberty. I couldn’t think of anything smooth to say to get her sighing in my direction, so I’d just yank her ponytail, stick my foot out when she was walking past, just to get a reaction. Kendall was always fucking beautiful, but when she was pissed something else happened.

My heart stopped beating, and I had that weird feeling, like I was on the top of a rollercoaster, about to go rumbling over. I was terrified and elated all at the same time. My hand rose, doing something it’d wanted to for so fucking long, reaching out for Kendall, despite a voice inside my head screaming that this was a bad, bad idea. Something that seemed to be confirmed by Connor and Gage’s looks of concern.

Don’t fuck this up, I communicated silently, glaring at each one of them before smiling at her. Do not fuck this up for me. Because it had to be fate that brought Kendall to my door. I’d bought new pillows and blankets in the hope of bringing someone clean and tidy into the house, but I got something so much better.

The only woman I’d felt anything for.

I shot her a cheeky grin, hoping to dispel the tense mood, before wiggling my fingers.

“C’mon. Let’s go inside.”