Every Sweet Regret (Orchid Valley 2)

“It’s nothing against Stella. The thing with Brinley was just a temporary situation and . . .” And I don’t want to bend Brinley over the bed and fuck her until she screams my name.

Right. Maybe it’s not the way Stella would behave in front of my daughter that I need to worry about.

I drag a hand through my hair and blow out a breath. “I want to help, but Stella deserves to come and go as she pleases without worrying about our schedules. I don’t think it’d be a good fit.”

Dean’s gaze drifts to a spot over my shoulder, and I turn to see his attention on the pool house. “What if I helped you remodel the pool house? Once we knock it into shape, Stella could live in there and pay you rent. You wouldn’t hear her coming and going.”

Before we opened our construction company, Dean and I used to flip houses. We started in college and had no capital to speak of—just a couple of credit cards and the crappy little outdated three-bedroom by campus that Grandpa left me when he passed. Dean and I saw the potential and decided to fix it up and see if we could make some money. We did all the work ourselves for the first few years, so I know we could handle the pool house in a couple of weeks of evenings and weekends—if that. It’s small, and most of the work it needs is superficial.

But do I want Stella to be my tenant?

“I know Stell is a little over-the-top and can rub you the wrong way, but—”

“What? No, that’s not it.” Fuck. The housing situation in Orchid Valley is a nightmare—the tourists and weekenders from Atlanta have driven the prices of everything so high that half the people who work in the OV live halfway to Atlanta. If Stella’s going to nursing school and keeping a job at The Orchid, she doesn’t need to be losing hours of her week to her commute. “She didn’t tell me she was going back to school.”

Dean nods. “Yeah. Turns out her English degree isn’t producing the best job opportunities. Who would’ve seen that coming?” He rolls his eyes, just in case I didn’t catch the sarcasm dripping from his voice. Dean’s the opposite of his sister in so many ways. Stella’s carefree and impulsive, and Dean’s all sense and practicality. Stella’s choice of major was the subject of many Dean lectures and rants, which only made Stella double down on her decision and refuse to explain what jobs she’d be pursuing.

“Would she really want to live there?” I ask. “It’s five hundred square feet, and one whole wall is windows. Hope and I spend so much time in the backyard that she’d never have guaranteed privacy, and the bedroom . . . it isn’t even a bedroom. It’s just a loft big enough for a bed and a dresser.”

“Stell doesn’t need much. Hell, technically it’s more privacy than she has at Mom’s.” He presses his palms together. “Please, Kace? This would take a whole load of stress off my shoulders.”

“We don’t know for sure that Stella’s on board. Maybe we should float the possibility by her before we—”

“Stella!” Dean shouts, waving a hand in the air. “Come over here a minute.”

I flinch. I didn’t mean right this second. But when I turn, Stella’s walking toward us, a fresh can of White Claw in her hand. She’s put a cover-up over her bikini, for which I’m both grateful and disappointed. I lean into the grateful. Dean doesn’t need to see me staring at his sister’s tits . . . or see any marks my beard might’ve left on her cleavage.

“What’s up?” she asks, standing between us. “You two look like you’re trying to make a plan to eliminate the national debt.”

I duck my head to hide my smile. I was nervous as fuck when I thought Dean might know what we’d been doing, but Stella’s all casual. Her refusal to take anything too seriously is what I find most maddening and endearing about her. I’m self-aware enough to know I’m more like Dean and could use a pinch of carefree in my life.

“Kace was just saying there’s no reason you can’t live in his pool house.”

My head snaps up, because that’s not what I was saying. There are lots of reasons. I’m just not sure any of them are good enough for Dean to pass up a chance to get his mom out of that old house.

Stella coughs on her White Claw. “That’s . . .” She pats her chest. “That’s definitely unexpected.”

“It’s not the perfect situation,” I say, cutting a look to Stella. “But what Dean’s not saying is that he has a chance to get your mom into one of the Lakeview Acres condos, and he wants to make sure you’ll have a place to stay.”