Page 45 of My Brother's Roommate (Frisky Business 2)
Laughter ripples through the group, coming from everyone but the birthday boy himself, who is busy staring into the flames.
“Hold on,” he grumbles, furrowing his brow in concentration. “I’m trying to think of a good one.”
A jam-packed kitchen and a chocolate cake isn’t at all what we had planned for Connor’s birthday celebration. Just like every year, we’d planned his annual “Connor Crawl” through a strip of River North bars, complete with T-shirts and a hashtag for posting all our drunken pictures the next morning. If there’s one thing my brother loves, it’s his birthday, so we always pull out all the stops.
But this morning, we all woke up to a group text from him requesting a quiet night in instead. Despite my suspicions that my wild-child brother had been possessed by a demon, I threw out my Saturday morning plans in favor of baking him his favorite chocolate cake with bright blue frosting, and we all made good on his request.
Well, except for the quiet part. The guys seem to be having a hard time getting that suggestion through their heads.
“Tick tock,” Hayes teases, letting out a laugh. “Any day now, Father Time.”
Connor glances up with a weak smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
With each passing second that he stares blankly into the flames, my stomach ties itself into a tighter and tighter knot. I knew something was up when he called off the bar crawl, but my bets were on a slight hangover or a gnarly pimple holding him back.
But from the second I walked through the door tonight, I knew something major was off. All night, Connor has seemed a thousand miles away, even when he’s standing right beside me. Like now, his easygoing smile is nowhere to be found, and he’s studying those burning candles on the cake like they hold all the answers.
After thirty incredibly awkward seconds of Connor staring down his candles, I reach over and pinch his forearm under the table. “Uh, Connor? Before the wax melts onto the frosting?”
“Oh, uh, yeah. Sorry.” He sucks in a big, dramatic breath and proceeds to huff out all twenty-nine candles at once. It would be impressive if it didn’t feel oddly reminiscent of a sigh of defeat.
What’s going on with him? He’s acting like the human equivalent of a glob of melted candle wax in a big bite of birthday cake. Not that anyone other than me seems to be acknowledging that.
“Attaboy, Connor.” Caleb claps him on the back with one hand, fanning away the smoke with the other. “Twenty-nine years young and he’s still got it.”
“Only one more till the dirty thirty,” Scarlett says gleefully from beside me. “Someone get this man a walker!”
Connor shakes his head, huffing a strand of his dark blond hair from his forehead. “If you keep giving me shit, I’m not sharing my cake with you,” he mutters. “C’mon, let’s cut into this thing.”
Wolfie flips on the lights and appears with a stack of paper plates and forks, shouldering his way to a spot at the table to help serve up my masterpiece.
Not to toot my own horn, but I managed to pull off a seriously gorgeous cake in Connor’s favorite colors with only a few hours’ notice. With thick blue piping around the edges and HAPPY BIRTHDAY CONNOR written in a kind of messy script, I might actually fool someone into thinking I bought this at a bakery. Maybe if this promotion doesn’t pan out at work, I should pivot to a career as a pastry chef.
“This looks amazing, Penelope,” Wolfie murmurs as he slices a knife through the thick layer of frosting, revealing the rich chocolate cake inside. “Almost too pretty to eat.”
A chill rolls through me at his word choice. He sure didn’t say that between my thighs last night.
No. Bad Penelope. No sexy thoughts about your brother’s roommate at his freaking birthday party. No matter how incredible he was last night.
Wolfie plates an extra-thick slice, then holds it out to me. I happily accept it, enjoying the prickle of electricity dancing along my fingertips when they brush against his. Likely a side effect of the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago, this man had me gripping my bedsheets for dear life.
Admittedly, I’d drag him down the hall and give his bedsheets the same treatment if not for the fact that we’d have quite the audience out here to hear it all. An audience that includes, of course, my brother. Who is still oblivious to the fact that Wolfie and I are anything but friends.
“You’re really gonna give the first piece to my sister on my birthday?”
Speak of the birthday boy and he shall appear.
Connor tugs my plate out of my hands, giving Wolfie and me some serious side-eye before disappearing into the living room.
