Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

“My bad,” Bond rumbled, sounding like he was doing his best not to laugh. “I was going to toss y’all bottles of water, too, but I think I’ll hold off on that.”

Blinking away the dark cloudy spots impairing my vision, I managed to gain some semblance of control over my brain. “How kind of you.”

Cason just groaned. “Water.”

After we’d downed a bottle each and three Tylenol, we managed to fill my brother in on our weekend at the cocktail convention we’d attended. I had no clue those things existed, but sure as shit, booth after booth of people who’d created huge cocktail menus had almost been the cause of my demise. You were only given half a shot glass of the drink, but they’d all looked so good, and the ingredients were wild, so I’d tried as many as possible.

Cason had obviously wanted to find new ingredients and cocktail ideas, so he’d joined me on shooting them back. We had a new Kleins opening in New Orleans, and the cocktails were going to be wild for it. He now had a shit ton of notes on his phone about stuff, but they got ‘murky’ toward the end, due to the amount of alcohol we’d consumed.

He'd just finished telling my brother this when he passed me his phone to show me some of them.

“What does ‘add grin shot and punk ple, but swep whisk 4 punk gun’ mean?”

Taking the phone out of my hand, Cason squinted as he read it. “Honestly? I have no fucking clue, but I think I meant a green shot and pink apple, and swap whisky for something else.”

That made sense, I guess.

The door opened, and in came Reid. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t the lushes. How was your weekend?” Then, sniffing the air, he waved his hand in front of his face. “Wow, it smells like a frat party in here.” His eyes moved to Bond, and he snickered, “And wild sex.”

Glaring at Bond, I rumbled, “Did you have sex in here again? You better not have done it on my desk!”

Bond shrugged, totally unrepentant. “Have you seen my wife?”

“Is that even legal?” Cason asked, looking at Reid, who was in his police uniform. “Doesn’t it break hygiene laws?”

Reid blinked, then gestured to his uniform. “Like I know the answer. That shit’s up to the people who assess and rate the hygiene of restaurants and shit, not me.”

I was irritated at the thought of where they’d done it and fully planned on sterilizing my desk and chair, but I couldn’t not answer Cason’s question when I knew the answer.

“It’s not illegal. We don’t touch the food or the surfaces in the restaurant without cleaning our hands, and the offices aren’t used for anything that customers would touch or consume.”

Tilting his head to the side, Cason nodded but suddenly jumped up from his seat. “Please, for the love of God, tell me you didn’t do the dirty in that chair.”

“Y’all are taking this too far,” Bond sighed, rubbing his forehead. “But to answer your question, Reid, these two are likely flammable right now, so we’re keeping them away from flames.”

Pulling up the chair that our niece usually used when she was here—one of the tiny ones for kids—Reid folded his tall frame almost in half to sit on it, and ended up with his knees under his chin. “Did y’all meet any women?”

Cason snorted. “As if. This one’s so in love with Jacinda, he didn’t even notice there were women there.”

He had a point. Up until this moment, I hadn’t even thought about it.

Still, I had a modicum of pride left, so I took the guy route. “I noticed there were women around.”

Raising an eyebrow, Reid smirked at me. “Okay, describe eight of them.”

Fuck!

“One had dark hair and a black top, and one was blonde and wearing a t-shirt with her brand on it. Then there was the brunette who was handing out shots—”

“Yeah,” Cason snickered, “you didn’t notice any of the women there.”

Glaring at him, I argued back, “I did. I’ve just described three of them.”

“Canon,” Reid said as he tried to get comfortable but ended up in the same position because that’s all you could do on that tiny chair. “You just gave vague descriptions that’d fit any blond, dark-haired, and brunette in a convention like that.”

“At least I got their descriptions right,” I shot back. “So I didn’t notice anything defining about them—”

“At all,” Cason added as he interrupted me. “You forgot the blonde with colorful, pretty tattoos all the way up her arm that you spoke to for a couple of minutes about cocktail glasses. What about the other blonde who had piercings all over her face and was absolutely stunning, who kept flirting with you whenever we saw her?”

I had to think hard about the women in question. Really hard.