Love Untouched (Unexpected) (4 page)

Peter interjected, “Yeah, we have to go back to our dates, you know.”

We filed ourselves into the elevator. Jeff was loudly snoring now. The rocking motions of the moving cart must have calmed him. His mouth was partly open.

When we stopped by room 414, Kieran dug out the hotel key from Jeff’s shirt. We all got inside, and the guys dumped—yes,
dumped
—Jeff on the bed. Jeff answered with an even louder snore.

“Thank you so much,” I expressed my gratitude to the guys as we all left Jeff’s room.

Peter and Duncan nodded their heads as they walked towards the elevator.

Kieran walked slower with his steps matching my own. “I’ll walk you to your room.”

I merely nodded, but heard Duncan again, before getting into the elevator, “312. Alone. Kieran. 312.” His green eyes were teasing, while Peter just smiled at me.

Kieran was quiet. We walked inside the other elevator to shuttle down to the third floor.

When we reached the door of my suite, he let out a loud sigh.

I turned my head to the side then looked up to see his face. His eyes were stormy, and he looked as if he was struggling with unnamed emotions. He lowered his gaze to my lips and his eyes darkened even more. He lifted his hand and touched his thumb to my cheek, and muttered, “If only, Brynn...”

I hitched a breath, and whispered, “If only what, Kieran?”

It took him five beats before he lowered his hand, and with a loud resigned sigh, he said, “If only you weren’t Milo’s sister.” With that, he turned around and walked towards the elevator.

I wrestled with immediately asking him to come back, just letting him walk away as I went inside my suite. Rationality won as I swiped the magnetic stripe of hotel key over the sensor, walked inside, removed my shoes, and laid my body on the bed. It was a long time before sleep found me.

“I dream of dancing in the beach with my ballerina shoes.”

~A.J., age 12, acute lymphoblastic leukemia

“Bee, you make the most delicious pancakes. I am so fucking happy that you signed with Arizona State Medical Center for two years.” My brother, Milo, expressed his glee through a mouthful of some of the blueberry pancakes that I had spent at least half an hour making.

Milo has called me ‘Bee’ since I was a baby. He had tried to imitate my dad’s pet names for me –
Bella, Bellini, Bellisima
– but Milo couldn’t pronounce them. All he could manage was Bee; the name stuck through the years.

“Milo, I was hired by the hospital, not signed.” I shook my head at him as I cut my pancake with a fork. “Can you please curb the potty mouth?” I scolded. It didn’t matter how much I reminded him, the “F-word’s” still flew out when he talked.

He zoomed his green eyes at me. The eyes he inherited from our half-Italian dad. Actually, he also inherited our dad’s naturally tanned skin that I envied so much. I’d have to burn to a crisp in the sun for hours before my fair skin would ever compare to his.

He smiled wide, his white teeth flashed, and it was obvious this was the look many girls, and women alike, have fallen victim to. He was my brother, but I could not deny the fact that he was also a ladies’ man. At 6’4”, he was bulky and muscled. His coach once told him that he didn’t have a swimmer’s body, more like a boxer’s body. Milo had disclosed that to me while cursing the high heavens because he didn’t know what a “swimmer’s body” was supposed to look like. All he knew was that he loved to swim and he could care less about being a boxer. I advised him that it was probably a compliment. He threw me a snide look and his own exact words were, “Bee, swimming’s my life. If I were thrown inside a ring, I’d want that ring to be filled with water. Just make it an enclosed aquarium, and I’d kick that motherfucker’s face.”

“Did you make more?” He asked as he stood up and walked towards the kitchen.

I shook my head. “Milo, I made like 24 pancakes. You want more? How do you not get fat?”

“I burn through these in three hours. You should know this by now.” He washed his plate over the sink after checking out the stove and the refrigerator for any evidence of leftover pancakes.

I stood up from my chair and heaved myself up on the kitchen counter into a sitting position, swinging my feet. I loved having these one-on-one moments with my brother. When he was happy and relaxed, I was the same. We were connected to each other ever since we were children. Milo was the other half of Brynn. Brynn was the other half of Milo.

He was also my number one protector. In third grade, a boy stole my lunch and by the end of recess, that boy was sitting without shorts on in the middle of the school playground. He was tied to a tree by his shoestrings. In high school, when a guy teased me for still being a virgin, this guy’s car was defaced with “LOSER” written on his front windows, and this same guy had a hard time chewing on the right side of his mouth. It was well known that I was Milo’s little sister, all throughout school. This fact scared guys so no one had the courage to date me. I got really upset at Milo about this and he simply said, “Good.”

“Bee, you working this weekend?” He asked as he sat on the couch after having dried the plates and storing them in the cabinets above the top of the sink.

“No, why?” I asked, now sitting across from him, leafing through my newest issue of
Elle
magazine. My best friend, Ava, had gifted me a five-year subscription.

“You wanna watch an action movie? Leif and I are going.” He stretched himself out, planted his legs on the dark brown ottoman in front of him. I bought the ottoman at Ava’s advice. She claimed it was modern and hip.

“Actually, Ava’s visiting over the weekend so I’ve got girl plans with her,” I answered and looked directly at him.

The light in his green eyes dimmed. “I don’t know how you stay friends with her. She’s just slutty and high maintenance.”

I threw the couch pillow at his face. He barely dodged the pillow, which flew over his black as ink head of hair.

“Stop calling her slutty. She is not slutty. High maintenance, yes. But, not slutty.” I constantly had to defend her from Milo. She was far from the ‘slutty’ persona that he was thinking of, she was actually the ‘virgin’ out of the two of us.

“Whatever,” he snickered, his expression bereft of any praise towards my best friend. “I cannot believe that after all these years, you stuck with Miss Las Vegas.”

Milo called her “Miss Las Vegas” because she really was Miss Las Vegas. She was the daughter of Las Vegas’s number one promoter and co-owner of various successful entertainment ventures. In the society pages, she was often depicted as “spoiled, bratty, and slutty.” She was spoiled because she was the only daughter. She was bratty to other people, but never to me, and gave me everything she could. She was painted as slutty because she dressed like a model. She usually wore the skimpiest, tightest outfits but that was because she had a body for them and she liked to feel good.

“Milo, she will always be my best friend. From the moment she grabbed Lisa Letter’s hair in first grade because she teased me about my freckles, Ava will be my front, back, and sidekick,” I reminded him. This was getting exhausting. I never understood why Milo was always annoyed and irritated with Ava. She was nice to him,
sometimes
.

He stared at the TV, which was presently showing Food Network’s
The Next Iron Chef
. “You’re ditching me for her.” He pouted, actually pouted.

I threw a throw pillow, and this time, it caught him right on his face.

“I didn’t even know you were going to ask me to go to a movie with you and Leif.” Leif was his training partner and they had been friends since college. They had both attended University of Connecticut. Milo attended UConn after receiving a full ride scholarship. At first, he didn’t want to go because he didn’t want to leave me in Nevada. It was only after I was able to reassure him that I would be fine, that it would be dumb to turn down the scholarship, and that it was part of the steps to achieving his Olympic dreams that he relented. He did call every day, though. I had missed him a lot.

On the upside, I was able to date a few guys in college. Most of them were good guys and we became friends in the end. There was always something missing with them – the spark in a kiss, the tingle from a hug, the longing to be with that person. None of those ever happened with any of them. Now I was refraining from dating until I felt at least something that would make me want to actually be with that guy for a period of time.

“C’mere, Bee.” He patted the sofa cushion next to him, his eyes imploring me to sit.

I pouted my lips then frowned, but sat down beside him. He wrapped his long arm around my shoulder and said, “I missed having you with me. Thanks for taking the traveling nurse position here.” I accepted the hospital’s offer mainly because of him. I did my internship at New York State University, and they had actually offered me a job. I could have chosen to be thousands of miles away from him but I knew he wanted me to be here. He trained in Arizona, and after spending years away from each other due to college, I wanted to be close to my brother.

I smiled and leaned against his shoulder. “You know this means you get to treat me every night, right?”

He laughed loudly, replied, “Nursey, you’re the one making the big bucks,” and then pulled on my hair.

I slapped his hand away. He liked to tease me by pulling on my hair. “Big bucks? You’re the one with the sponsorships here and there. I make a hundredth of what you pull in with those underwear commercials and energy drinks.”

He barked in laughter, “Shit, Bee. Those are not underwear commercials. Those are for the U.S. Swim Team!”

I laughed. “I know. Speaking of the U.S. Swim Team, do you know anything about Kieran Stone?”

He quickly removed his hand from my shoulder and I was forced to face him.

His green eyes looked utterly murderous. “What about him?”

I swallowed. Kieran’s dislike for my brother was obviously reciprocated. “Well, he’s your teammate, right?”

“Not my teammate,” he ground out, voice hard, “just another member of the team. Why do you ask about him?”

I swallowed again. “Remember my roommate in New York, Sedona?”

He nodded. “The hot chick with the amazing eyes. Yeah, why?” Milo had seen her photo on my phone but never met her in person. Sedona was traveling back-and-forth to Minnesota or to Zander’s away games during the few times that my brother visited me in New York.

“Well, Kieran is her best friend, and I met him in New York and in Hawaii for Sedona’s wedding.”

“Of course Stone would fucking have her as a best friend. Small fucking world,” he muttered under his breath.

I continued, “He seems like a nice guy...”

His eyes darkened and his voice was positively lethal. “He is not a fucking nice guy, Brynn! You better stay away from him. He better stay away from you.” Milo’s anger had never been directed at me, and I had only heard this tone of voice once. It was when the social worker had tried to take us away from our Aunt Margie.

I might have trembled a little inside. When Milo was angry, he was like a lion that was ready to attack and leave the remains littered across the ground. “I’m not saying anything about me knowing him. I just said that he seems like a nice guy.” I could have told him about what happened to Jeff, which by the way, Jeff had apologized for numerous times and even sent me flowers after I arrived in Arizona. I didn’t disclose the Jeff incident to Milo for the simple reason that Jeff would get his teeth knocked in if Milo found out about what happened. That Jeff became drunk and left me to my own devices was bad enough, but Kieran being the one who helped me extricate Jeff from the reception was beyond acceptable.

Milo was still on an angry tirade. “He’s not a nice guy, Brynn! And I don’t want to hear his fucking name from you again.” His eyes were now shooting daggers, flames, and missiles at me.

My brother’s temper was one of a kind. It didn’t show up often but when it did, the ugly head reared to be let out and the damage could not be undone. I knew how to calm him down. I’ve only known him all his life.

“Milo, breathe... one … “ His fists were clenching at his sides and I heard a crack in his jaw, but he was listening to me and started following my command. “Two, three, four...” He was now breathing evenly. “Everything’s okay. I won’t mention him again. I’d have no reason to. Now, let’s go outside and walk to the park. I need to burn off all the pancakes that I ate. The three pancakes I managed to steal from your plate.”

His face turned lighter, his brows started to unfurrow, and a small grin formed. “Ok Bee, race you to the door.”

I scrambled towards the door, blocking his way. It was a childhood game we had, and the last one at the door would be the loser. The winner would be able to give commands to the loser for a whole week.

We reached the door at the same time but since he was taller than I was, his foot was in the doorway a few seconds before mine.

“Oh, come on. This sucks,” I groaned in frustration. “I wish I was as tall as you. Maybe I’ll find a guy who’s way shorter than me so I can be taller and beat him at this game.” He waited for me to lock the apartment door before we walked towards the elevator. My apartment was on the third floor of an 8-floor building.