Breaking Bro Code (The Line Up #4) - Misti Murphy Page 0,58

he’s always trying to set Lily up with his friends. Used to make me want to tell him to mind his own business. Now I will if I have to. But hopefully it won’t come to that because I know he cares about Lily a lot and I don’t want to put her at odds with her friends.

“A sound decision if you ask me.” She nods and answers the call as she sashays out of the kitchen, the silk of her robe swishing. “Hello, you gorgeous man. How’s my niece or nephew?”

“I didn’t know she and Lewis were related,” I say.

“Oh, they’re not. She’d say the same thing if it were us.”

I wince. “Lily.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not thinking ahead like that. I’m truly not.” She shakes her head, her purple tresses bouncing wildly around her face. Her next words come quicker. “I have a plan. Finish this hotel. Make partner. Build my own brand. Sell my own collection online.” She flicks her hair out of her scarlet face. “It’s just one of those stupid things that you say without thinking it through. Well, I say… you know me. Mouth almost always running ahead of my brain.”

“Lil, it’s okay.” I squeeze her waist. Try to impart some confidence I don’t particularly have.

Truth is I just don’t know if commitment and white picket fences or sham pillows are in my future. And kids, well, that’s a stone thrown too far.

Wanting to be with her is one thing. Scary as fuck, sure, but it’s what I want.

A family? Turning into my father? Propagating Hellman DNA? Screwing up kids? Putting them through hell? That’s the last thing I want to do.

Only Lily doesn’t look at me like I’m all kinds of fucked up. She makes me want to believe anything is possible. That I can be a good man. A decent boyfriend. A dad. Different from my own.

But unfortunately, I have a sense that if I told her about Jessa and my brother and what happened back then she wouldn’t look at me the way she does now.

I need a little time. Bigger balls.

I take a deep breath and so does she. She gets me and I get her. She knows that’s a conversation for another day, and I understand that she always says what’s on her mind. Right now I just want to concentrate on spending the day with her. “Let’s go and get ready. I’m taking you out for breakfast.”

Chapter Eighteen

Lily

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.” Vale gives me the widest Cheshire grin.

“No freaking way.” I cover my eyes and shake my head. It too ludicrous. Completely ridiculous. “You can’t possibly mean it.”

“Come on, you know you want to,” he cajoles me. “Give in to the peer pressure.”

“I’m not the one I’m worried about.” I peel my hands from my face to take in the big beefy man standing in front of me with two pair of wheeled boots slung over his shoulder. “You want to rollerblade?”

“No.” He drops down next to me on the concrete bench on the beachside promenade. Palm trees throw striped shadows over us both and the breeze ruffles his hair. “I most definitely do not want to go rollerblading. I’m doing this for you.”

It’s warm in the sun this early in the afternoon. A middle-aged woman in an orange floral mumu scatters birdseed for the greedy, cawing seagulls. Her bronze curls flutter in her face as the birds peck at the ground near her feet.

A group of twenty-something women with ice cream cones and teeny bikinis zoom past us, already partaking in the sport Vale is trying to convince me would be a good idea for us to do as a couple.

A guy with no shirt and the deepest tan I have ever seen kickflips his skateboard. His shades-wearing beagle rolls past on his own longboard.

I inhale the salt tanged smell of the ocean. The idea of Vale’s big beefy self on teensy tiny wheels is adorable, but it’s not practical. And this is a first date. Albeit a date that has been going swimmingly. First, coffee in bed with a side of sex in the shower, followed by egg and bacon sandwiches at the best deli in the city. Then a couple of hours in virtual reality before we taste tested every single donut in my favorite specialty donut shop where all the fried goodies are nut free because the owner’s son is deathly allergic. And then Vale bought me a dozen of the ones I liked best so