Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

“I did not.”

Holding up a keyring with the photo of a little girl with a gap between her front teeth, she shook them. “Unless you’ve got a kid like this, or someone’s declared you the world’s best grandma.” She pointed at a floral keyring with the words on it. “You picked up the wrong set, dickhead.”

“Oh.” I slumped against the door, my body suddenly too tired to hold my head. In fact, it was too tired to hold the twenty tons of clothing I was wearing. Why had I put on so many clothes today, and why were they so heavy? “My suit feels like concrete and those wire dish cleaning pads.”

I began removing my jacket and tie, then moved on to the buttons on my shirt.

“Whoa, you can’t strip in public. If your brother had to arrest you for public indecency on top of what happened with the pot brownies today, it might send him over the edge,” Jacinda hissed, grabbing my hands, and stopping them mid-shirt removal. Tugging me back from whence we’d come…whence we’d came…fuck it, back from whence, she muttered, “Come on.”

Like a loyal puppy, I followed behind her, my eyes dropping to watch her ass moving in the black slacks she had on. They weren’t loose fitting ones, so the material molded to the pert cheeks as the seam ran between them.

I wonder what they felt like?

The slap of her hand on mine hardly registered, but the silky softness of the material and what it was covering as my hand slid over it absolutely did register. Heaven.

CHAPTER THREE

Jacinda

You know those days where you just know it was going to be a shitty day? Well, this was going to be one of those days. I just knew it.

I was exhausted. Last night, after we’d gotten back to my place and I’d set Canon up on the couch, I’d tried to go to sleep, but then I began wondering if he was hungry. I mean, pot gave you the munchies, didn’t it? So, I’d picked up every pack of chips I had, grabbed some candy and other bits of junk food, and had dropped it on the coffee table in front of him.

This led to him getting up and raiding my fridge, and he’d ended up with a Three Musketeers chicken sandwich. Yeah, it’s exactly how it sounds—two chicken fingers with a Three Musketeers bar between them.

I’d almost thrown up in my mouth watching him eat it, and then he’d progressed onto barbecue flavored chips dipped in peanut butter. I don’t want to talk about it. Even thinking about it made me feel like I was going to puke.

Unsurprisingly, twenty minutes later, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard his feet slapping on the wooden floorboards as he ran to the bathroom. That was followed by the loudest retching I’d ever heard in my life and me hunting out the bottle of Pepto Bismol I kept for whenever my dad was here.

Canon had finally stopped gagging and puking almost an hour later, curling up in an exhausted ball with his arms wrapped around his stomach on the bathroom floor. Now, my floors were clean, I made sure of that, but him being on it didn’t fill me with joy. So, I’d helped him up and had led him slowly through to my bedroom and onto my bed. If he threw up again during the night, at least he wouldn’t choke on it if I was beside him. However, if he puked on my bed, my pillows, or my floor, I’d strangle him myself.

Fortunately, no vomit mishaps were made, and when he’d woken up this morning, Canon had been a changed man. I hadn’t ever heard of a hangover like what he had, but suffice it to say, a life of space brownies and the ganjah was unlikely to be in his future.

I’d dropped him off at Kleins to get his keys before coming into work, each step feeling like I was walking through a pool of molasses. Wasn’t thirty too young to feel like this? Shouldn’t I be grabbing an energy drink and zipping around like I was just dandy?

“So,” Heidi said as I blow dried a chunk of her hair, “Bond was eating cake with mashed potatoes and parmesan sprinkled on it when I went to bed, and—”

“Ma’am,” Tony snapped from behind me, spinning the chair Heidi was sitting in so quickly that my barrel brush went flying. “We need to talk. How could you not tell me that hunk of deliciousness proposed to you”—he lowered his voice and checked to make sure no one else was near us before hissing—“tied to the bed?”

“Um,” Heidi replied slowly, “I didn’t know I had to?”

His head jerked like she’d punched him. “You didn’t know you had to? Woman, that man’s my wickedest dream come to life, and you didn’t tell me he was actually filthy in real life?”