Hiring Mr. Darcy - Valerie Bowman Page 0,6

it. I always knew that dude was gay! Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but—”

“Lacey Lewis.” I clarified with a sigh.

The glee disappeared from Luke’s face as quickly as it had arrived, and he winced. “Oh, well, that’s awkward. Forget I said the gay thing.” And then, “Holy shit, wow. I was just kidding when I asked if you had a falling out. I never really thought...”

I kicked aside the trash bag, slumped to the velvety gray sofa, and pulled my aqua Target throw pillow to my chest. Lacey probably bought throw pillows from Pottery Barn. No—from some fabulous chic boutique in Hollywood where throw pillows cost five hundred dollars each.

“That sucks.” Luke was still offering brotherly platitudes as he went into the kitchen. When he returned, he had a beer bottle in each hand. He gave me one. I hadn’t had a beer in three years. Harrison and I preferred wine. I took the beer gratefully while Luke kicked the trash bag farther out of the way and lowered himself to sit next to me on the sofa. He put his free arm over my shoulder and pulled me to his side. It made me want to cry again.

“Tell me all about it,” he said, taking a long swig from his bottle.

This might be the most apropos moment to mention that my brother is actually not a ne’er-do-well. Nor is he a deadbeat. Well, not really. He’s not a scoundrel, a rake, or a rogue, or any of the old English names I like to call him when I’m mad at him. Which happens a lot when a neat freak and a mess live together for however short a period of time.

Luke is actually a structural engineer with a master’s degree from Stanford. He worked at a huge corporation in the Silicon Valley for six years until two things happened. They wanted to make him a manager, and his thirtieth birthday arrived. Just shy of that event, he quit to join a country rock band, and now he’s the lead singer and a guitar player and gets steady gigs around our hometown of Milwaukee—and I’ve never seen him happier. But the fact that he doesn’t have a “real” job and leaves pizza boxes around stresses me out in a way it can only stress out someone who is obsessed with her retirement savings plan and throws away all trash with a promptness that would frighten most mortals.

The truth is I think my brother is terrific. In addition to being creative and brilliant, he’s also handsome and friendly and charming and can sing, while I’m the sort who people sometimes call “terse,” sometimes “short” (and they’re not talking about my height), or my personal favorite, “curt.” Meanwhile, don’t even get me near a microphone if you don’t want your ears to melt.

I adore Luke and he’d do anything for me, which is why, despite the vast differences in our living habits, I allow him to stay with me when he’s in-between highly inappropriate—though usually gorgeous—girlfriends. He inevitably ends up on my couch until I kick him out for his messiness, or for being too loud too late at night, or for breaking one of my candle holders, or any of the myriad other reasons we fight while living under the same roof.

Typically, after I kick him out, one of his girlfriends usually takes him back after he does something insanely romantic, like serenading her beneath her window with a song he wrote specifically for the occasion. They stay together until something else breaks them up. Usually the topic revolves around the subject of marriage, which is a dirty word as far as my brother is concerned. He’ll text me and ask to come back, and I always say yes, and this is our dynamic at the ripe old ages of thirty-one and thirty-three.

But none of that was the point, of course. All that mattered was that he’s my brother and I was sad, and I needed to tell someone. My best friend, Ellie, was in Chicago at a conference until Thursday. Even I, with my dislike of mess, had to admit that I was glad to have Luke to comfort me, pizza boxes and all.

I took a swig of beer. I’d forgotten how much I liked it. “We didn’t actually break up,” I admitted, halfheartedly picking at the edge of the bottle’s label. “Harrison says Dr. Holmes asked him to take Lacey to the festival instead of me. For