Smith

The first thing I saw when I walked into the bar was all those damn curves.

Full, round ones.

Tall, slim ones.

And my personal favorite—short, sturdy ones. Just right for three fingers of Scotch, neat.

I eyeballed the rocks glass like I could call it to me using my mind if I tried hard enough.

Hey, beautiful.

Come over here and see Daddy.

I slid my travel-weary body onto one of the empty stools and leaned on the glossy mahogany bar top with a groan. Jet lag from hell had my head throbbing like mad, and I waved the bartender over, hoping my rudimentary high school French would at least get me a drink.

“Uh, Scotch, s’il vous plaît?” I made a gesture to the bottle and waited hopefully.

The bartender shot me a broad grin in return and nodded his ponytailed head. “Oui, monsieur.”

I gave him a clipped nod of thanks and set my briefcase on the empty chair beside me.

It had been a hell of a day. My flight was delayed more than once, but I was bound and determined to get here. My buddy Cullen was counting on me, and there was no way in hell I was about to let him down. He’d been there for me since I was six years old. We’d skinned our first knees together. Shared our first beer together. Hell, our first kisses were even with the same girl. From as far back as then, no matter how much we both thought we liked her, even Suzie Hammerschmidt couldn’t come between us.

Which meant I really needed to get my head out of my ass and stop thinking about Cullen’s little sister, Evie.

I squeezed my eyes closed and scrubbed a hand over my face in frustration.

Fucking Evie.

She was seven years younger than us, but that never stopped her from wanting to be in our way, all the time. We used to call her Evie Knievel like the stunt guy, but it was done totally tongue in cheek. As kids, she’d follow us around wearing her shiny white shoes and little lace dresses, her honey-blond ringlets bouncing. The only time she ever unplugged her thumb from her mouth was to warn us that whatever it was we were about to do, we were going to get hurt doing it. Thinking on it now, I could feel a smile tugging at my lips.

“If you guys walk on that ice, you’re gonna fall through and die.”

“If you guys light those firecrackers, you’re gonna blow your hands right off.”

“If you guys try to climb that tree, you’re gonna break your necks.”

Only it had come out like neckth because she’d had a lisp when she was little. It was almost as annoying as she was, but looking back, it all seemed pretty adorable.

Not unlike Evie herself.

Shit.

The bartender slid the glass of amber liquid before me, and I nodded my thanks and took a deep pull. The liquor blazed a path of heat down the center of my chest and settled nicely into my stomach, radiating outward. For the first time since I’d left my house more than fifteen hours ago, the tension that had been knitting my neck and shoulder muscles together began to loosen.

It was either pop some pain reliever and go to bed, or hope the alcohol would put me in a pleasant haze. It wasn’t even dinnertime, and I was meeting Cullen and his sister soon.

I needed to stop being such a chickenshit. This was no big deal. All I had to do was get through this dinner and brief visit, and Evie would be off backpacking with her friend again. Then Cullen and I could focus on the business at hand.

Simple.

I tugged out my cell phone to see if I’d gotten any messages since I arrived, but before I could scroll through, a loud voice echoed through the bar.

“Smith, you son of a bitch! It’s so good to see you.”

Cullen strode toward me, his infectious smile cranked up to an eleven. Despite that, there was no denying he looked harried. There were lines around his eyes I hadn’t seen the year before, and dark smudges beneath them. As the king of workaholics, I recognized stress when I saw it, but we’d tackle that soon enough.

I stood and returned his man-hug before gesturing toward the empty seat next to me. “Good to see you too, man. It’s been too long.”

We’d done a good job of staying in touch over the years, but the last couple had been tough. Once Cullen took over the day-to-day running of his family’s company, he worked hard to grow it enough that they could expand. And expand, they did. All the way to Paris. Now, though, they were going through some growing pains, and I was here to help him iron them out.

“I wish you’d let me pick you up at the airport,” Cullen said, taking the offered chair and waving to the bartender. He held up one finger and then pointed at me before turning on the stool in my direction. “It would’ve been no problem to take off a little early.”

“You say that, but you’re obviously under a lot of strain. I’m here to help, not add to that strain. Besides, it was a nice cab ride over. The driver spoke to me in French the entire time. I don’t even think he realized I only understood about ten percent of what he’d said.”

Cullen chuckled and then glanced at his watch. “Evie should be here any minute.”

I took another swallow of Scotch and nodded without comment. It was stupid to half wish she’d be delayed and not make it at all. But call me stupid, because here I was, wishing it. Somehow over the past couple of years, annoying Evie had morphed into curvy, hot-as-hell, infiltrating-my-dreams Evie, and it was slowing killing me. On the flight over, when I should have been crunching numbers, I’d nodded off and promptly had the most erotic dream of my life.

We were at the lake near their family summer house, and even though I hadn’t actually been there with Evie since she was around ten, dream Evie was all grown up. I was taking a swim on a moonlit night. She walked up to the water’s edge wearing a man’s dress shirt—my dress shirt—and nothing else.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as she unbuttoned the shirt one painstaking button at a time. Almost in slo-mo, the sides of the shirt opened to reveal what had to be the most banging body of all time. Gorgeous, full tits. Hips big enough for my hands to get a good grip on, and trim, toned legs that were killing me because I couldn’t decide whether I wanted them wrapped around my waist first or my face.

Evie.

I’d woken with a start right as she’d stepped into the water, buck naked, and pressed the full length of that soft body against my oh-so-hard one. And lucky thing I did, because things were about to get sticky in first class.

“You want to order a couple appetizers while we wait?”

I jerked my gaze back to Cullen and cleared my throat. “Sure, whatever you feel like.”

Could I be more of an asshole right now? The guy was thrilled to see me after almost a year, and here I was, picturing his sister naked. Not that it had really been her body I was picturing. No possible way could she be that sexy under those clothes.

Could she?

Just as my blood started draining south again, I slammed the door on those thoughts and reached for my briefcase.

The best cure for sex on the brain was work.

“So, talk to me about what’s going on at Sophia’s. I ran through the numbers you sent me, and it seems like the expansion may have been a little premature.” Sophia’s was the lingerie company started by his grandmother when Cullen was still in diapers.

Cullen winced, but I held up a hand.

“Don’t freak out. Things were looking really good, and it’s not catastrophic. I think it can be fixed, but you’re going to have to get creative. It would be a major plus if there was a way to increase sales before the end of the year in order to beef up cash flow a little.”

“Funny you mention that,” he said, taking a sip of his Scotch. “We’re already looking at new sales avenues, expanding our reach on social media and trying some new advertising. That part’s all still in its infancy. Before Nana died, she was against all of that. It was like pulling teeth for her to even consider monetizing the website. She was old school. She wanted people to come in and touch the fabrics, have the boutique experience. No matter a woman’s body type or age, she wanted them to walk out feeling beautiful.”

Cullen’s smile was tinged with sadness, and for a second, I envied him. Yes, he’d lost his grandmother, but when she was alive, at least they’d had that close-knit bond. The whole Reed family did.

I had been lucky enough to get adopted at the age of six into a loving family, but my parents had been in their mid-fifties at the time, and my adopted siblings were all much older than me. I was really only close with my youngest sister, Pam. I loved them all dearly and would forever be grateful for all they’d done, but I’d always felt like I’d been missing something, always felt like the odd man out.

“This company was your grandmother’s baby, and I want to make sure that we never lose that core concept. That’s the brand. So we’ve got to maintain that personal feel of a boutique on the front end while making the back end function much more efficiently businesswise,” I said, hoping I was calming his nerves.

I never imagined I’d be working with Cullen, but running a small part of my own family’s well-oiled machine left me with some down time. I was the type who’d rather fill that time with something productive rather than laze around. I guess you could call me type A.

Cullen’s grin widened and he shot me a wink. “That’s where you come in. Can you help us figure out how to make the capital we do have stretch a little further to get us through the winter? Once spring arrives and all the fashion shows come to Paris, we’re going to be golden. But for now?” He shrugged. “Things are lean.”

I popped open my briefcase and pulled out the file folder I’d spent last week preparing. Then I slid it across the bar in front of him. He opened it and scanned the summary page quickly, and then shot me an incredulous glance.

“Seriously?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

“I’m as sure as I can be. Investing isn’t an exact science, but I’ve got the capital to play with. I’ve looked at your holdings and the projections for spring, and I agree with you. Next year is going to be great. You just need a little help to get over the hump.”

Cullen looked away for a second, the tension seeming to roll out of him in a wave as he blew out a breath. “I can’t tell you what this means to me. It’s . . . it’s everything, Smith. You’re the best friend a guy could have. There’s no one better.”

The words felt like nails being hammered into my chest, one by one. If I was such a good friend, I wouldn’t be imagining your baby sister straddling my lap, or with something a lot bigger than her thumb in her mouth.

But I kept my thoughts to myself because I was going to beat this thing. Not the over-aroused fucker in my pants. Although, depending on what Evie showed up wearing, I might have to beat that too.

No, I was going to beat this attraction to her. Wrestle it to the ground, put it in an arm hold, and make it my bitch.

And nothing was going to stop me. Not even sexy, curvy-hipped, Evie.