The loud, angry beating on my front door the following morning startled me so badly that I nearly jumped out of the cute bunny slippers my niece got me last Christmas and almost spilled my freshly poured coffee down the front of my robe.

The pounding continued to the point that I was just about to call the cops when I heard my sister’s voice calling through the thick, heavy wood. “Sutton Marie Briar! Open this door right now, or I swear to god, I’ll beat it down!”

I scurried across the hardwood floors as quickly as my bunnies would carry me. I threw the deadbolt and yanked the door open before she woke every one of my neighbors at eight on a Saturday morning.

“Jeez, Brina. What’s going on? Are you all right?”

Sabrina shoved inside my house, and I had to shuffle a step back as her kiddos scampered in after so as not to be run over.

Spinning around, she pierced me with a look and a point of her finger. “You got some ’splaining to do,” she demanded in the worst Ricky Ricardo impression I’d ever heard.

“What the he—” I stopped and looked to my niece and nephew before pulling back the cuss word that almost spilled out of my mouth. “—heck is going on?”

“What’s going on is that I had to find out my little sister was on a date last night with Camden freaking Knight while reading through the gossip sites during my first cup of coffee!” Oh shit. “You said it was a work thing! You lying shit.”

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” my nephew Liam shouted exuberantly, jumping up and down as he repeated his mom’s curse like it was the best word he’d ever heard in his short little life. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Sabrina looked to him and cringed. “Shit—shoot!”

I crossed my arms over my chest and scrunched my lips to the side in a disapproving glare. “That’s what you get for having a potty mouth. Bryan’s gonna tan your a-s-s,” I spelled.

“Bryan isn’t gonna do sh—crap. Not since he taught our son and daughter c-o-c-k-s-u-c-k-e-r last month.”

“In his defense, he was in traffic, and the guy cut him off,” I justified. I always took my brother-in-law’s side. It was just too much fun to mess with my sister like that. Bryan and I both got a kick out of pushing her buttons.

Secretly, I think she enjoyed her little sister and husband teaming up like we did. She and I hadn’t had it the best growing up, what with our father wanting not one thing to do with us, and with him being such a flake our mother had to work multiple jobs to support us. So seeing that Sabrina had married a man who embraced her family as his own so wholeheartedly gave her a sense of comfort that no amount of agitation at our antics could touch.

Sabrina knew she had it good when Bryan never once waivered in his love for her, no matter how many times she tried to push him away. And there had been many. He never gave up, never backed down, and eventually penetrated that wall she kept around her heart. It took him a long time to do it, but like me, he knew my sister had the biggest, warmest heart in the world, and he was determined.

Each and every day since then, he showed her in actions and words that she’d chosen wisely by taking a chance on him.

I had to admit, I was envious that she’d been able to lower her defenses enough to let someone in. It was a concept I still struggled with, but then I had yet to meet a man who was worth taking that risk. And I was beginning to think I never would.

“You always take his side,” she grumbled, the fight weak as she tried her hardest not to smile.

“Of course I do. I like him better than you.”

She lost the battle and beamed outright. She did that a lot, pretty much every time she thought about her husband, and I loved that for her. Especially considering she hadn’t had much reason to smile while we were growing up.

Our father, or lack thereof, had really done a number on the both of us. It didn’t help matters much that his abandonment had created a bitterness in our mother that she didn’t bother hiding in front of us. Oh no, she pushed that shutdown our throats, constantly going on about the evils of the male race, and how we should never, ever trust a man or open our hearts to them.

When Sabrina finally hooked up with Bryan for good, our mother had become unhinged, making her dislike for him clear as day, even though she had no reason to hate him other than he was a penis-carrying member of society.

My sister’s relationship with our mother grew even more strained to the point that she hadn’t even called after going into labor with my niece, Annabeth.

The saving grace in all that was Bryan. Against my sister’s wishes, he’d called our mother, demanding she come to the hospital to meet her new granddaughter. But he’d given her a warning. She was never to upset his wife again. If she did, they’d be done. She could hate him silently for all he cared, but she wasn’t to make her animosities against him obvious to Sabrina. If she could agree to that, he’d sweep everything else under the rug and forget about it. All he cared about was his wife’s happiness.

His protective instincts were a thing of wonder, and he managed a fragile truce with my mother that day. But my sister and I knew that the smallest thing could send that truce crumbling to the ground.

“Whatever,” Sabrina mumbled. “Stop changing the subject. What the he—ck is going on? Camden Knight?”

I moved into the kitchen, Annabeth and Liam on my heels, and pulled down the stash of animal crackers I kept in my house just for them. I poured a couple handfuls out on the kitchen table, and the kids hopped up in their seats to snack while I headed back toward their mother.

“It’s not what you think,” I started. “I can explain.”

She crossed her arms and cocked her hip, shooting me that stern motherly look she’d perfected since Annabeth hit two. “Then you better start explaining before I call the cops and report that my baby sis has been taken over by a pod person.”

“You’re being dramatic,” I scoffed with a roll of my eyes.

“Not sure I am,” she argued. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it you who said you’d rather have your period three times a month than have anything to do with another celebrity for the rest of your life?”

“Well can you blame me?” I looked to the kids to make sure they were still consumed with their animal crackers, then lowered my voice to a whisper. “ I mean, come on. We know firsthand what that kind of shit does to a person. Look at what our bastard of a sperm donor did to us and Mom.”

“Exactly. So what the hell?”

I let out a breath and dragged a hand through my sloppy bed hair. I hadn’t had time to brush my teeth or have coffee, let alone untangle the rats’ nest on top of my head. “Look, it’s really not what you think. Nothing’s changed. I stand by my initial opinion of celebrities. But this really is a work thing.”

“Really?” she asked skeptically as she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and clicked it to life. “’Cause this doesn’t look like a work thing at all. In fact, it looks like he got a pretty damn good taste of what you had for dinner.”

She shoved the screen of her phone in my face, showing a closeup shot of our tongue wrestle in the restaurant. Obviously one—or several—of the photogs had a telephoto lens that easily photographed us from outside the front windows.

“Shit,” I hissed, snatching the phone from her hand and holding it closer. There was no mistaking what was happening. I couldn’t even claim the angle was bad. No way in hell. His tongue could be seen clear as day plunging into my mouth.

“Yeah. Shit is right. So how exactly is that a ‘work thing’?” she asked, using finger quotes.

She really wasn’t going to like this. “Well, um… he got into a bit of trouble with the press—”

“Uh, yeah!” she scoffed in disbelief. “Because he’s a freaking perv.”

“He’s not a perv,” I insisted vehemently. “Liking what he likes in bed doesn’t make him a perv. Everyone’s allowed their own preferences. She was a willing participant, so I don’t see what the fuck’s so wrong with what he did.”

Her head jerked back in shock. “You know, for someone claiming this isn’t what I’m thinking, you sure seem defensive of this guy.”

“I just think he got an unfair shake is all.”

“So how did feeling sorry for this dude lead to a tongue-jousting match?”

I chewed on my bottom lip anxiously before answering, “Tate and her public relations expert decided he needed to be seen with a nice, normal girl to clean up his image.”

“And that girl just so happens to be you?”

“Yep.”

“So… what? You two are just pretending to date?”

“Pretty much. And I really don’t have a clue how this is gonna work. We can barely stand the sight of each other. All we’ve done so far is fight. With the exception of that kiss.” And the end of the date. But I’d thought long and hard about that and decided it best to put it out of my mind and pretend it had never happened.

My big sister looked at me with concern, two deep indents forming between her eyes. “You sure you know what you’re doin’, babe?”

Not even in the slightest, but I wasn’t going to admit that to Sabrina. All she’d do was worry, working herself up into a frenzy that Bryan and I would struggle to pull her out of.

“I’ll be fine. And Tate has my back, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. I swear.”

She watched me for several seconds, as if she didn’t believe me but really wanted to. “Okay. But you promise me, if there ever comes a day where you can’t handle it, you get out.”

“It’ll all work out.”

“Promise me,” she demanded, having entered protective big sister mode. It was a mode ingrained in her since we were little. With a working mother and an absent father she’d been forced into the role of caretaker, and she took that role way too seriously, even to this day.

“I promise,” I answered, the lie making my stomach feel sour.

Fortunately, that seemed to settle her. “Good,” she said with a relieved puff of air.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” And just like that, Annabeth and Liam’s chant from the kitchen ended the uncomfortable situation.

“Crap,” Sabrina grumbled. “Bryan’s never gonna let me live this down.”

I gave her a sinister smile. “As he should. Some kind of role model you are.”

“Shut it,” she sniped with a narrow-eyed scowl. “You don’t worry about my kids cussing like sailors. You have more pressing things to worry about.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Like what you’re gonna do when Mom finds out you’re dating Camden Knight.”

“Fuck!”

And thanks to Auntie Sutton, my precious niece and nephew learned their second curse word of the day.