Baby For The Mountain Man

I laughed and pushed him away. “Stop it! Seriously, we have to go back out there and be decent.”

“Yeah, I guess…” He sighed. “Oh shit…”

“What?”

Anderson pulled up his sleeve to glance at his watch. “It’s almost time for your brother’s speech. He’ll definitely notice us missing if we aren’t back out there.”

I swore. “I almost forget he was giving one,” I said, feeling slightly panicked. It was preposterous that I’d nearly forgotten, for I had seen him writing and practicing it all throughout the previous week. I sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Yeah,” Anderson said, resigned.

I recalled that the bathrooms were just down the hall from the closet we’d snuck off to, which was perfect. I needed to make a stop in the ladies’ room to make sure I still looked presentable, and that there were no signs of what had just transpired.

I reached for the doorknob.

“Careful,” Anderson warned. “Make sure no one is in the hall.”

I cracked the door open just slightly, peeking out into the hall. “The coast is clear,” I said, seeing no one in the hall or exiting the restrooms.

Anderson stepped up behind me and slid his hand onto my waist as we exited the closet. “Let’s just try to get through a couple more hours, and then maybe we can sneak out of here altogether,” he said.

I was just about to respond when the words froze right in my throat.

The door to the men’s restroom swung open, and out walked none other than my brother.

He paused, staring at the two of us exiting the closet, and at Anderson’s hand on my waist.

Anderson instantly dropped his hand and took a step away.

It felt like time was suddenly standing still. Tobias stared back and forth between me and Anderson, and the two of us stared back at him, terrified and at a complete loss for words.

My mouth dropped open, but I had nothing to say. I merely watched the varying expressions dashing across Tobias’s face. Surprise, shock, confusion, disbelief, disgust, anger…

“What the hell?” he said, when he was finally capable of speech. The restroom door swung open again. He momentarily stepped aside, permitting another man to exit, and then turning his icy gaze right back at us. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

I wanted to sink into the floor and disappear at the way his eyes trailed me from head to toe. Or at the very least, I wanted to make a run for it and hide in the women’s bathroom, where I would be free from the scrutiny of his gaze. I knew how incriminating Anderson and I looked, just like I knew there was nothing either of us could do about it.

After all the sneaking around, we had finally been caught red-handed, in the worst possible way.

“Please tell me that this isn’t what I think it is,” Tobias said, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes for a second.

Anderson gave a nervous laugh behind me. “It isn’t what you think it is,” he said, unsuccessfully trying to make his voice sound light.

“Then what the hell is it?” Tobias said through gritted teeth, his eyes blazing angrily.

I averted my gaze to the floor, feeling like a child in his presence. He may as well have been my father, catching me sneaking a boy into my room.

“Tobias, man—chill,” Anderson said.

“Excuse me?” Tobias said, incredulously. “What even g

ives you the right to speak to me right now? I do you a favor and find you a date for tonight, offer to let you take my own sister, and you do this? Have you lost your goddamned mind? That’s my sister, Anderson!”

“Tobias,” I said, casting a nervous glance down the hall and hoping no one could hear him. “Please, not so loud.”

“My voice level is the last thing you have to worry about, Joanna,” he said, his voice deadly serious. He shook his head and sneered at me. “I can’t believe you, Jo. I thought you had class. And here you are, running off with him during the middle of a gala.”

“Hey,” Anderson said, his voice suddenly stern. He stepped forward, no longer cowering behind me. “Don’t you dare talk to her that way.”