Huge Deal - Lauren Layne Page 0,37

part of the reason she’d always been so prickly around the guy—a desperate need to keep him at a distance, to keep from blurting out her real feelings.

What did surprise her was the look on Kennedy’s face. She thought she knew all of his faces, but this one was new. Stormy, brooding, and yes . . .

Maybe a little bit jealous.

13

Monday, April 15

Kennedy tried his best not to glare at the curvy blonde sitting in Kate’s chair as he passed by her desk, but by the time he got to Ian’s office on the other side of the floor, his glare was fully developed.

“Where’s Kate?”

Ian glanced up in surprise from his computer. “Good morning. You’re looking sunny as always.”

“What the hell do we pay her for if she can’t make it into the office by ten a.m. on a Monday morning?”

Ian slowly pulled his hands away from his keyboard, his light-blue eyes studying Kennedy carefully. “Kate has a doctor’s appointment this morning. She put it on the calendar a month ago and sent a reminder email last week.”

Oh.

“Well, I didn’t hear from her all weekend,” Kennedy grumbled.

Ian looked genuinely confused. “Did you expect to?”

It was a fair question. Though Kate was a regular part of their social circle, none of them generally saw or heard from her after hours unless there was some sort of group gathering. She didn’t give them updates on what she did with her free time, and they didn’t with her.

But that had been before. Before she’d started dating his brother. Before he’d started thinking about her kissing his brother. Before he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her, period.

“What’s up with you?” Ian asked as Kennedy prowled around his office.

“Nothing.”

“All right,” Ian said with an easy shrug, turning back to his computer.

“She’s driving me crazy,” Kennedy blurted out.

Ian’s hands slowly moved away from his keyboard once more. “I assume we’re not talking about Claudia.”

“Shit,” Kennedy muttered under his breath, running a hand through his hair.

Hearing her name spoken by his friend forced Kennedy to deal with an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time—the second such emotion in a week. Because if hearing Kate’s name brought up an all-consuming surge of jealousy, especially as it pertained to his brother, hearing Claudia’s name brought up a corollary emotion: guilt.

“Trouble in tepid paradise?”

“No. Not really,” Kennedy replied.

Things with Claudia were . . . fine. And that was the problem. Everything he’d thought he always wanted—a stable, unobtrusive relationship—felt boring as hell. He wasn’t into it. Wasn’t into her, and she deserved better. It was past time to end things there, and though he felt like an ass for thinking it, even that felt like an inconvenience.

“Do you think we should force Jack to be part of our pact?” Kennedy asked, glancing over his shoulder at Ian.

“What pact?”

“The one where we agreed not to get romantically involved with Kate.”

Ian stared at him. “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

Kennedy resumed his pacing. “It would make sense. If he breaks Kate’s heart, it’ll be just as much our problem as if one of us did it.”

“For the love of God, would you sit down?” Ian said. “You’re making me dizzy.”

Kennedy sat, but his foot bounced impatiently. This sort of restless energy wasn’t like him, and it was irritating as hell.

Ian dragged his hands over his face. “I don’t even know where to start with this.”

“With what?”

Ian’s hands dropped back to his desk, his fingers pounding out a quick rhythm on the surface as he seemed to be considering whether or not to speak.

“Okay, here we go.” Ian sat forward slightly. “The pact. No, we can’t force your brother, who’s been out of the country for the past handful of years and doesn’t work here, to agree not to fall for Kate.”

Kennedy’s stomach lurched at that. Surely Jack wasn’t falling for her. Or her for him. Surely it was just . . . casual. Temporary.

“Second,” Ian continued, “you keep calling it our pact. I guess technically it is, but Dawson, man . . . really, it’s your pact.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ian shrugged. “The pact was your idea. Matt and I went along with it, because we’d had too much of the whiskey the Sams gave us for Christmas and didn’t have any reason not to go along with it. But the truth is, Matt and I have never needed a pact not to hit on Kate. Not that she’s not great,” he rushed to explain. “It