Page 29 of Enemies with Benefits (Finding the Right Brother #1)

God, I really hated hotel pools.

So, of course, today, the weather was absolutely garbage as it was too often in this part of the country.

The panels were closed, keeping the pool sealed up, which trapped the caustic smell of chlorine and chemicals in the enclosed space, made worse by the fact that the heat was on, so the half-naked swimmers weren't frozen by the air conditioning.

"Why are you wrinkling your nose?" Dominic asked as he reclined in a seat next to me. My brother was clearly immune to the sound of screaming children, content as could be as he relaxed.

"Dude," I said. "It's like being stuck in a sauna, but one that dumps pool water on the rocks."

"Mmm, a sauna requires steam."

"Close the fuck enough if you ask me."

"Something tells me you just want to bitch, and there's little in the world that can stop you."

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Whenever one of us ends up with like...cancer of the lungs or whatever because we've breathed in these chemicals for too long, you're not going to be so dismissive."

He eyed me. “Should I remind you that that's in poor taste? Or would you like to remind yourself?"

"Fuck off."

"That's what I thought."

Ugh, sometimes he could be as smug as me, which was fine except that he only did that when he was right.

..which happened more often than I liked.

But only one person could beat Moira when it came to knowing me best and longest, and that was Dominic.

He had been adopted by my parents about a year before my father shuffled off the mortal coil.

Having a new sibling had been hard enough for us at the time since all we'd known was one another.

And no one would have been blamed if they thought things only got harder when, a year later, Moira and I lost our father.

In a way, a rather fucked up way from the right viewpoint, that tragedy made us grow closer to Dom.

It certainly hadn't hurt that we were only about a year apart, so it wasn't hard to relate to each other. But what had really done it was that he had been up for adoption because he’d lost his parents a year before.

In more ways than one, his loss had become our gain, but for Moira and me especially, it was nice to have someone who understood what it meant to lose a parent at a young age.

Looking at Dominic, you wouldn't know the bastard was actually one of the biggest-hearted people you could know, especially when you took into consideration that he was a professional MMA fighter and was doing damn well in the sport.

He was actually a little like Jace, in the sense that he was a big guy, with dark features and a hard expression, but in every way that mattered, he was utterly unlike Jace.

Once, he’d been in a bout against some guy who had talked a lot of shit leading up to it.

The match hadn't lasted long, and the other guy had lost miserably.

He also had to be taken to the ER because of a few nasty injuries.

We'd tried to tell Dom that that was the nature of the sport, pointing out that it was why we worried about him doing it at times.

Dom, however, made it his mission to visit the guy, even spending time with the guy's wife and kids, and still maintained a friendship with the family years later.

Hard fists, soft heart, that was Dom for you.

Another childish shriek cut through the air, and I winced. “God save me."

"That's our nephew you're grumbling about," Dom pointed out, staring at the tattoo of a chain winding its way up his forearm and poking it.

"I'm aware," I said with a roll of my eyes.

"And I’m thrilled that he's remembered that he's not in fact a geriatric old man ready for the retirement home and that it's okay to have fun like.

..well, like a kid. That does not, however, mean I'm going to enjoy the sound of him shrieking. Seriously, why do kids do that?"

"Have fun?"

"Shriek like they're being murdered, except they're having fun. I swear, up till puberty, they have this special shriek that feels like it drills directly into your skull, bypassing everything to find the pain center of the brain."

"Sometimes I can't figure out who's more dramatic, you or Milo."

"That hurts, Dom, that really hurts."

"As much as the sound of a child having fun?"

"Mmm, when you put it like that, I sound like a terrible person."

"No, just an asshole."

"It says something about you that you think there's a distinction between the two. I'm not sure what it says, but it does say something."

"It means that, unlike some people, I know you're not a bad person. You just tend to be an asshole on occasion."

"Don't think I didn't see your eyes dart to someone when you said that."

"Mmm."

That someone being Jace, of course. He was the one currently making Micah scream like he was being burned by the pool rather than just being tossed around like he weighed nothing.

Then again, other than being tall for his age, he wasn't all that big, and Jace wasn't a weak man, as I could attest personally.

The result was Micah being tossed around like a ragdoll and clearly having the time of his life.

While I was settled on how I felt about Micah, I was glad the kid was having a blast, even if it meant blowing out my eardrums in a room that was practically built to amplify sound.

I was still trying to sort out how I felt about watching Jace.

On the one hand, in the couple of weeks since our little.

..well, I suppose I could call it a rendezvous for the fun of it, in the supply closet, I'd been trying to figure out my feelings about him.

I was normally pretty good at figuring out how I felt, and even when the feelings conflicted with one another, like Micah's noise making, I was still good at accepting that apparent conflict, or in some cases, ambiguity, and moving on with my life without being troubled.

Not so much with Jace, though. He had always been a source of vexation, and clearly, something decided that wasn't going to change. Well, I suppose it had changed, but now it was just the way he vexed me.

He still got on my nerves by simply being himself, which had always been a gift he was apparently never going to be rid of, and I wasn't going to be rid of it either, since he was clearly warming up to the idea of sticking around.

No, now I had the added layer of dealing with that old, if not outright familiar, feeling of annoyance on top.

As I watched him emerge from the water to give Micah another toss, I was given an eyeful of a prime example of that new.

..layer. My eyes, thankfully hidden behind a pair of dark glasses, roamed over him instantly and without the slightest permission from me.

For a moment, I felt a familiar and normally welcome sense of hunger as I took in the sight of his body, hard and toned from diligent training, water from the pool clinging to the dark swirls of hair on his chest and the small but thick patch that slid down out of sight beneath swim trunks that were clinging to his body from the water.

Of course, back when our feud had been strong and ongoing, I would have denied he was attractive in any way, shape, or form, mostly because I was still in denial about finding any guy even remotely attractive.

Denial was one hell of a potent force, even for someone who grew up with a mom who had been as comfortable with anyone outside of the norm as she was wearing clothes, and a dad who had apparently had a couple of boyfriends before falling in love with my mom.

The rest of my denial would have come from the fact that it was Jace, and why the hell would I give him any credit, even if it was winning the genetic lottery?

I was not that same stubborn teenager who refused to admit things that were right in front of him.

Now I was a stubborn adult who had learned at least a little to admit, however grudgingly, that even someone you despised could still be attractive.

Of course, that was perfectly fine in my book.

Still, the water got a lot more muddied when you realized you not only admitted that person was attractive, but you were actively, overwhelmingly attracted to them.

Yet here I was, practically stripping Jace out of those skintight board shorts with my eyes, and glad I was old enough that even being attracted to someone didn't automatically create a boner.

Of course, if I let my thoughts obsess too much over what I was seeing, then the inevitable physical reaction would creep up on me, and lying on the pool chair would no longer be feasible.

Well, not if I didn't want to give everyone in the vicinity a show, and considering some of the people around were my family, it was probably not a good idea.

"So," I said, bringing the conversation back before I let my thoughts get out of control. "Were you trying to say I'm an asshole to him? Or were you calling him a bad person?"

"Really?" Dom asked with a snort.

"What? Both ideas have merit."

"One a lot more than the other."

"Him being a bad person."

"Jesus," Dominic groaned, and despite the annoyance, I had the distinct impression there was some amusement in his voice.

"Seriously, what is it with you two? I mean, you can't have a normal conversation about him that he's not even a part of without taking a shot at him.

And he can't look at you without looking like he's trying to summon a lightning bolt to smite you on the spot. "

"Look, if he had that kind of in with the Almighty, he would have me...is it smited or smitten?"

"Smote."

"Really? Weird."

"English is weird."

"Yeah, well, glad I don't have to rely on using it for a living. I'd be fucked."