Page 5 of Best Served Cold

It’s SilverStarBabe.

That’s not funny, Jonah.

So she doesn’t know. It makes her blameless and him worse. Do the others know? I haven’t texted GingerBeerBabe yet, but it feels like I’ve run out of time.

Another knock lands on the door as the phone buzzes with a new text, this one from BigCatchBabe.

Well, shit. I didn’t know, but I should have. All the trips. The unavailability. I’m Hannah. Want to cut off his balls together?

A sound escapes me that’s half sob, half laugh.

“Sophie.”

I glance up at Otis as the knock lands again.

I hand him the phone.

His expression firms up. “I’ll guard it with my life. He’ll have to fight me for it.”

It’s a sweet offer, but I have a feeling Jonah would only have to look at him funny for Otis to hand it over.

“I’ll handle this,” I insist through a dry mouth.

I pick up my beer bottle, surprised to find it empty, even though I don’t remember drinking more than a sip or two. Then I get up off the sticky floor and prepare to do something abnormal for me. I’m going to make a stand.

I try to harness the fire of BigCatchBabe as I make my way to the door. Inside, I’m teetering between devastation and fury. I want to latch onto the fury. I need it.

But when I open the door, Jonah’s not standing on my stoop. It’s his brother, Rob, dressed in a black band T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. His dark hair is shaggy, his face unshaven. His eyes are hazel, like Jonah’s, but more yellow than mossy green. He always looks like he’s heading home from a bender or some woman’s bed. He looms over me, several inches taller, even though I’m five foot six, hardly tiny.

Right now, he feels like the embodiment of his brother’s sins. It’s not fair, but I hate him. I loathe anyone with the last name of Price. I’m unimpressed by most people in possession of a Y chromosome, although Otis is currently exempt for being sweet and helpful. I want Rob to sink into the earth and drag Jonah with him. Their cold, intimidating father can join them.

I press a bracing hand on my hip and give him a cool look. I can feel the tears pressing at my eyes now, and I refuse to give into them in front of Rob, of all people. Swallowing all of the awful feelings down, I ask, “What areyoudoing here?”

CHAPTER TWO

ROB

I don’t make a habit of doing favors for my half-brother. Jonah is and always has been a momma’s boy. A complaining, self-aggrandizing baby. A user. A taker. An asshole.

He’s still the kid who broke my stepmother’s standing mixer and blamed it on me. The boy who ran down the family dog with his bicycle, breaking her leg, because he “wanted to see if he could.” Did he cry afterward? Sure. He also cried after he ruined my life a decade ago. Minxy walked with a limp for the rest of her life, and Jonah’s apology didn’t do me any good either.

He’ll never be able to give back what he took from me—and even if he could, I’d probably refuse on principle. I wouldn’t willingly give him any more excuses to think well of himself.

But my father recently made a point of asking me to make nice with Jonah, so when my brother sent me an SOS text from an unknown number, saying he’d accidentally swapped phones with Sophie and was worried his wedding surprise for her would be ruined, I figured I’d come through for him.

My job doesn’t start until afternoon, something he knows and likes to remind me of. I played a late set last night, and his text this morning woke me with a jolt, my heart hammering until I saw it was just him. Waking me up early was his firstsin, and that moment of panic was the second. I wanted to tell him off, but I came anyway, partly because I feel bad for Sophie. Sure, she’s joined the Cult of Jonah and thinks he burps perfume and shits rainbows, just like his mother does, but Sophie comes off as an innocent. Naïve. Sweet. So accommodating she’d give someone her parking space at Trader Joe’s.

The world isn’t built for people like Sophie Ginnis. I should know—my mother’s a bit like her.

A generous man would say it’s to Jonah’s credit that he wants to marry Sophie. She’s pretty in a girl-next-door way. Wholesome. My first impression of her was that she probably thinks needlepoint is a fun way to waste a couple of hours and has a favorite pie she likes to bake. Her thick honey-brown hair is always pulled back primly, and she wears generic clothes that neither compliment her appearance nor take away from it. She’s not a woman my brother would normally “honor” with a second glance. But I’m guessing he sees what I do, a girl next door with a sunny smile, a compliment for everyone, and the deductive reasoning skills of a smiley face drawn on the dirt of someone’s windshield.

I don’t admire or respect her for it.

Still, I like her a hell of a lot more than I like him.

So, here I am, on the doorstep of a blue Arts and Crafts style house that has seen better decades but bears a bright red door and shutters that reek of Pollyanna. I’ve come to do the decent thing, yet Sophie is glaring at me like I’m the spawn of Satan.

“Well?” she presses when I don’t immediately explain my presence at her elderly relative’s house at 8:30 a.m. on a Friday morning.

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