Page 6
“Jamie!” Mrs. McDonald (call me Heather) rushed forward as soon as I walked in the door. “How are you, darling!” She clasped me in a big hug, her tiny frame able to squish me all too effectively before she held me at arm’s length. “Looking gorgeous as ever. So did you bring a pair of bathers over? The weather’s just started to warm up and the boys are making the most of it.”
Brock was never one of the boys. Heather had struggled to have more kids after him, it took medical intervention and some years to have further children, and the fertility drugs she’d been given had produced both Millie and the twins, Hayden and Hunter. Millie was the youngest, being Heather’s last attempt to have a girl.
Heather smiled slowly.
“You could join them if you like? Millie’s just grabbing some carrots from the garden for me.”
“Here they are.” Millie strolled in with a basket full of produce under her arm, dropping it into the sink before turning on the water to scrub the dirt from the vegetables. “And we can’t go swimming. We’ve got planning to do.”
“God, if this is more of that juvenile pranking—” Heather said, sucking in a breath, but Millie just grinned.
“Not this time, Mum. Well…” She glanced up at me. “We won’t be pranking anyone in our family at least.”
“So what now?” Heather got the potato peeler and a large bowl out, but her focus was entirely trained on us. “What’ve you two got yourselves into this time?”
Before Millie could answer, the sliding door was wrenched open and wet feet slapped down on the tiled floor.
“Mum, where are the towels at?”
Heather looked up sharply, then rushed forward.
“For goodness sakes! You’re getting water all over the floor, and the towels are in the same place they’ve been since you were knee high to a grasshopper.”
“Yeah?”
Hayden, or was it Hunter, looked up then, realising he had an audience. Hunter, definitely. He caught the lot of us staring and shot us his trademark crooked smile. Half the girls at school would’ve expired on the spot at the sight of that back in the day. Hayden edged closer, looking at his brother in irritation, but that all smoothed away as he saw us.
“Oh, hey, Jamie,” Hayden said with a little wave.
The two of them looked like a stereotype of a golden Aussie beach bum, which was why they had done a little modelling. All that tan skin, well defined muscles, and cheekbones that looked like they’d been formed with the flat of a knife? Yeah, they photographed real well.
“And hello to you, sister dear,” Millie snarked before pausing. Not to glare at her brothers while their mother fussed, producing towels and throwing them at the boys, nor at me when she turned to stare my way. The carrots were dumped in the sink, the water still running as she backed away, grabbing a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses.
“Where are you off to?” Heather asked. “How about helping with dinner?”
“It’s the boys’ turn,” Millie said, grabbing my hand and pulling me along after her.
We’d disappeared up this hallway many times as kids, so I knew exactly where her room was, the walls now denuded of boy band posters, before she pulled me out onto the balcony that ringed the house.
“What the hell?” I asked as she dragged out a chair, then nodded for me to take it. “We can’t let your mum cook dinner on her own.”
“It’s the boys’ job tonight,” she replied, “and I’ll have another for them before the end of dinner. How many guys did you tell your mother you were dating?”
“Three.” I sank down in my chair, feeling like a right idiot. My hand wrapped around the stem of the wine glass when she poured me a drink. “One would’ve had her on the plane over here. Two would’ve?—”
“Had her pitting them against each other in some kind of Hunger Games like ritual,” she said. “So three?” As I nodded, a wicked gleam shone in her eyes, only getting brighter as we leaned over the balcony at the sound of a car door slamming shut. Brock had arrived, dressed now in a clean shirt and jeans, but our inspection didn’t go unnoticed. Somehow he sensed he had our attention, looking up until I was forced to jerk myself back from the balustrade. “Three I can cover. More than that and I’d be forced to ask one of the guys at work and that always gets messy.”
“Ask the guys to do what?” I asked warily.
Millie settled back in her chair and then grinned as wide as the Cheshire cat.
“Pretend to be your boyfriends, obviously.”
“What?”
I was gripping the wine glass’ stem way too tightly, the slender shape, the condensation coating fingers that now felt numb.
“How long’s your mother in town for, a week?” I didn’t know, but I found myself nodding mutely. “Even my dumb-arse brothers could keep it together for that long.” She leaned forward. “Seems like a perfect way around the problem. You fake date them for a week until your mother leaves. They’ll be perfect gentlemen…” She wrinkled her nose at that, as if detecting the very obvious flaw in her plan.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6 (Reading here)
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148