Eight Brothers Fiancee (Love by Numbers 7)

The woman stuck out her hand, smiling and somehow appearing less welcoming than when she wasn’t. “Nice to meet you, Alexa. I’m Malia La Dionne.” She stuck her nose in the air. “Soon to be Malia Foxx.” She looked over at Harley. “I hope my future husband didn’t take up too much of your time.”

Future… husband? The main thing I felt was shock, but there was a tinge of disappointment I was attempting to mentally murder with a butter knife.

“Nice to meet you,” I responded, taking her hand and shaking it.

As soon as we were done shaking hands, Malia released me and immediately laced her arm into Harley’s. “Well, if it’s quite alright with you, I’ll steal him back now.”

I chuckled awkwardly. “He’s yours to steal, so…” A quick look at Harley revealed he was less than thrilled with the situation, but it was none of my business. “Thank you again, Mr. Foxx. I will see you tomorrow.”

Harley nodded. “Yes, you will.”

8

Rogan

I took a deep breath as I felt the morning sun wash over my skin. There weren’t many things in the world that I loved doing more than taking a run first thing in the morning, especially when my brain was as scattered as it was. My brothers were all men that appreciated when things were at their most dramatic or chaotic, but I was a far more mellow spirit. I expected my brothers to freak out when they discovered their head anchor was stealing their money and using it to do whatever the hell she felt like, but instead some convoluted plan popped into their heads. Harley needed to be working on figuring out how to not marry a woman he didn’t want tobe with, Huxley needed to be working on figuring out how to help his news program recover from the mountains of negative publicity it had received, and the rest of us needed to be working on keeping our own companies out of the crossfire; instead we were completely upheaving our combined business models to chase after one of Harley and Huxley’s college crushes. Fantastic.

That said, I couldn’t deny that my brothers had good taste and were fortunate enough that the object of their affections happened to be very successful in the field they needed her to be successful in. She was intelligent, a spitfire, and definitely beautiful. My brothers had been talking about her like she was the finest thing since sliced bread, and at first I didn’t see it. I’d see some of her stories and had googled pictures of her, but she wasn’t all that impressive to me. Seeing her in real life was an entirely different ball game. She had a certain allure in person that no pictures or show seemed to be able to capture. It was particularly enticing the way she didn’t seem impressed by the Foxx presence. I imagined that’s what attracted the twin in the first place, and I knew that the more time she spent entrenched in our business, the more she would start to grab all of our attention.

I decided to take a different route than usual on my run. I typically left my condo, took a left, and ran down towards Foxx Towers. I could make a lap around the large quarter of downtown blocks that Foxx Towers sat in the middel of, and get in about a mile and half. The media had been hanging around the Towers ever since the news broke about the head anchor, so it made more sense to stay away from that area for the time being. Each day was a little adventure, finding new routes to satisfy my distance.

I got to where I would normally turn and head into downtown, and took a left towards the park instead. I generally avoided the park, due to the copious amounts of children, bikes, and animals on walks, but it was an okay alternative to the media zoo. I made my way down the tree topped boulevard with beautiful, deep green canopies of leaves blocking out the sun. A late summer morning in Texas was hot enough to steam rain off a sidewalk, so the shady rue was welcome. I settled into a comfortable pace, and was just about to check out and just let my legs and subconscious do the work, when a new runner turned onto my path. In most circumstances, I would steer away from any other runner, but as the sun streaks caught her face, I noticed who it was, and smiled.

I picked up my pace as the runner in front of me developed her own speed until I was running right next to her. She looked over at me and offered me a warm smile. “Mr. Foxx”

“Hello Miss Storm,” I greeted. “I wasn’t aware you lived so close to our enterprise.”