1. Rosie

Chapter 1

Rosie

Forrester Sibling Group Chat

Haydn: What was the name of that movie Rosie made us watch last year at the cabin?

Haydn: The one with the long dresses and all that weird dancing.

Jules: Was it *about* dresses?

Haydn: No. It was a love story though. They did lots of walking.

Haydn: Rosie went on and on about how sexy hand flexing was when the movie was over.

Jules: I remember that! *shudders*

Rosie: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE!!

Rosie: How have I failed my brothers so terribly?

Bennett: I remembered. I was just getting ready to type it, but you were too quick.

Jules: Riiiiight.

Rosie: Why do you need to know, Haydn?

Haydn: Lia and I were talking about movies with ridiculous plotlines, and I couldn’t remember the name.

Jules: It was SO ridiculous. What guy proposes a SECOND time after being told no? Where’s your self-respect, Mr. Doofus?

Rosie: MR. DARCY.

Haydn: And all the long, drawn out pasture scenes? Snooze.

Rosie: I have disowned you all. Dissing Pride and Prejudice is too much.

Jules: You know whose hand flex I liked? Thanos.

Haydn: Dude, that movie was so good. That hand flex actually meant something.

Rosie: You mean the one that killed half the world?

Jules: Exactly.

Bennett : It was more of a snap than a flex.

Jules: Taking out half the world was totally a flex.

Rosie: Do NOT ruin the handflex for me.

Jules: *handflex*

Rosie: UGH!

Rosie: Please check your email at your earliest convenience as you will find a “special” invitation for all of you.

Rosie: I await your RSVP.

Revenge was a dish best served while watching the six-hour version of Pride and Prejudice with my three older brothers.

“I was promised a hand-flex,” Jules said through the lap top screen.

Since we lived in three different states—Alaska, Tennessee, and Washington—we’d continued our long-held family tradition of movie night on the first Friday of the month via video chat. Most of the time I wished we could all be together, but with Jules unable to sit still for the length of a regular movie, much less a six hour one, it was kind of nice to turn the laptop away from my line of vision so his movements didn’t distract me.

“That’s the other one. The shorter version,” Bennett said distractedly. He was on the floor of my apartment, working on a puzzle he’d set up on the coffee table. No, my brother wasn’t a retiree, just a twenty-eight-year-old, bearded fisherman who also happened to love a good puzzle in his free time.

“Shhhhh,” I said. “This is the good part.”

“You’ve said that every time we talk,” Jules mumbled.

I was sprawled on my futon, one hand dangling down to rest in the popcorn bowl for easy access. “It’s all good parts.”

“We missed the Peaks hockey game,” Haydn said. He had his phone way too close to his face and at an unflattering angle, as usual, and in the dark room, the light from the movie kept changing his skin tone to shades of blue. He’d become a huge fan of the Peaks when two players from our small Alaskan town had been signed. Everyone in town was a fan of the Peaks. It was a requirement, even if we had mixed feelings for their star player, Dylan Savage.

“You have no one to blame but yourself for this mess,” I reminded him as I watched Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy walk awkwardly around Pemberley. As much as I would have appreciated watching Dylan Savage skate around the rink like he owned the place (and I definitely appreciated it), I would settle for nothing less than a Mr. Darcy.

Plus I never gave up an opportunity to mess with my brothers.

The boys quieted as Lydia and Wickham’s relationship and supposed elopement came to light, and when Darcy and Elizabeth got together in the end, I wasn’t the only one who sighed.

There was a chance the boys were sighing in relief, but really, what would they do without me?

Thanks to me, they’d watched every classic nineties rom-com and could quote Norah Ephron while catching fish or playing basketball or doing any other manly thing they insisted they loved doing whenever women came around. Every time a girl swooned for one of them, I patted myself on the back.

Once we’d finished the rom-coms, we’d moved on to musicals and period pieces. I was debating entering our Aubrey Hepburn era next.

Did they ever get to choose the movies for family movie night?

Nope.

Did I feel bad about that?

Also nope.

My oldest brother, Haydn, had raised me since Dad left and Mom died—when he’d barely been an adult himself—sacrificing his own dreams for so long, he forgot how to have them. Bennett and Jules stepped up as well, and as a result I was smothered with protective father figures who still saw me as the trembling nine-year-old clutching a stuffed otter at our mom’s funeral, even if I was now a full-grown twenty-four year old. I loved them. I loved getting under their skin. Teasing was our collective love language.

Besides, there were privileges to being the baby. Privileges I took full advantage of. Like secretly listing their vacation cabin as a short term rental to earn some extra money—which was a fantastic idea, by the way, until I rented it out to famous country singer, Lia Halifax, on the same weekend my brothers unexpectedly showed up for a weekend getaway. But since Lia and Haydn were married now, I felt like instead of them bringing it up as a reminder of how my good intentions often led to loads of problems, they should be thanking me. Praising me. Asking me to use my mad genius to get the rest of them married off to women as fantastic as Lia.

And then the man of my dreams—Winterhaven’s dreamy bookstore owner—would fall in love with me, too, and we’d all live happily ever after.