Page 70 of Resonance
For a fraction of a second, I thought it was Dan, that he’d left the tour behind and come home early. Shoving the guitar aside, I leapt up, belatedly realizing that didn’t make any sense. “Hel—” I paused to correct the annoying reediness in my voice and tried again as I crept toward the front of the house. “Hello?” I searched fruitlessly for a weapon of some kind. I didn’t imagine burglars usually said hello, but what did I know.
From the entryway, a man eyed me up and down. I returned the favor cautiously. He was tall and lanky, someone who could easily slip around corners unnoticed, with chocolate curls that dusted his cheeks and curved over his collar. A square jaw was speckled with stubble.
Jesus, he was a younger, dirtier, more feral version of Dan. The tension limning my shoulders relaxed and then drew tight again. “Are you…?”
“Aiden, Dan’s brother.” He canted his head. He had the same keen manner of looking at a person that Dan did, like they scoured over the surface of physical appearance until it thinned and revealed what was beneath. “Who’re you?”
“Owen. And I don’t think you’re supposed to be here.”
“‘Supposed to’ is relative, Owen.” Oh yeah, they were definitely related. Aiden gave me a crooked smile. Completely charming but with less inherent warmth than Dan’s.
“I dunno, it sounds pretty finite to me. He didn’t say you were coming, and…”
“Didn’t know I was coming and yet, here I am.” He scratched his jaw, then thumbed over his shoulder. “Spare key was under the rock. If Dan had been serious, he’d have removed it. He’s done it before. So I consider it a fluctuating directive. This time in my favor.”
“Honestly, he probably left it there anticipating me losing the house key at some point.” I regarded Aiden suspiciously as he spun around and took two steps back toward the porch to haul in a suitcase and a guitar case.
Aiden shrugged as he dropped them. “Whichever. It was there and I’m here. And still a little confused about who you are and why you’re in my brother’s house.” He aimed a finger at my tee. “Agree with the sentiment, though.”
I glanced down distractedly at the shirt, which read, “I like long walks away from other people,” then whipped my gaze back to him as he started dragging his suitcase toward the room I was staying in. “Hey! That’s my room.”
“Funny, pretty sure I spent a lot of my childhood occupying it.”
I trailed behind him. “I can’t stay in Dan’s room, that would be weird.”
“So, not his boyfriend, then?” Aiden flicked a look of casual assessment over me. “Not his usual type, I guess.” I bristled at that. “Houseboy? Struggle to see him getting into that, either.” He chuckled to himself.
I felt my cheeks pinking angrily under the scrutiny and his demeanor in general. “Do people actually like you?”
Aiden tossed his guitar case carelessly on the bed, making me wince in empathy for it, then turned to me, giving me a disarmingly frank stare. His eyes had the same alluring depth as Dan’s, but there was a stoniness to them that Dan lacked. “Not many, nope. You?”
“I have plenty of friends.” I sniffed.
He did that up-and-down look again, recognition finally dawning. “Owen… you’re one of his employees at the store. He trick you into housesitting for him out here in the sticks?”
“No, my apartment flooded and Dan offered to let me stay for a while and then…” I struggled with how to finish the story because my mind kept trying to detour to kitchen sex, then den sex. Walking together. Shower sex. Playing together. Morning sex. A lot of sex. “Tour!” I blurted, then left it for Aiden to patch all that together as I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling him.”
“Anything I can say that’ll convince you not to do that?” Aiden proposed it smoothly, like he wasn’t attached to the answer either way but had to try. And it had an effect, I’ll admit. Like Dan, he had the kind of aura that beckoned and a velvety cadence to his voice that made you want to say yes immediately. Damn genetics.
Aiden must have noticed the flicker of hesitation on my part and latched on to it. “I’ll be gone before he gets back. Not here to cause any trouble, just need a place to stay for a little while until I get some shit sorted. I’ll stay out of your way if you do the same.”
I shook my head and punched the contact on my screen. “He’d be pissed as hell at me.”
Aiden made a gesture of annoyed surrender and turned back to his suitcase, tugging on the zipper. The nylon was fraying, one of the zip-up pockets torn.
I didn’t expect Dan to answer, because they’d had a show scheduled for the night and they’d likely just be getting offstage, but he did, albeit a little breathlessly.
“Everything all right?”
“Yes, Jesus. You have so little faith in me?”
I walked into the kitchen, putting some distance between Aiden and me when the glance he turned over his shoulder at me became a longer look.
Dan chuckled. “Nah. I just had a weird dream last night. Got me out of sorts. I was fixin’ to call you in a few once we got back on the tour bus. Check in and all.”
“That dream involve your brother showing up?”
He swore into the receiver.