Bewitched by Bella's Brother (3 page)

milk. He was going to need another towel—nearly two quarts of it had hit the tiled floor before Asa had righted the gallon.

Sebastian hurried off and grabbed another kitchen towel

from the back, then came back and got on his hands and

knees to help. He was relieved as hell to find that his hard-on had gone to half-mast, because otherwise this situation would have gotten
really
awkward.

“Thanks,” Asa grunted as he finished mopping up his

milk.

“Sorry I freaked you out,” Sebastian muttered. “I didn’t realize you’d gotten home yet.”

Asa shrugged. “Wasn’t ready to sleep yet. Here—gimme.”

He held his hands out for towels.

Okay—Sebastian took it back. Asa was like Bella

squared. Forget minimalist poetry—this guy was like a three-word handbook on how to be taciturn.

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And he was still half-naked.

Asa came back and sprayed some cleaner on the floor,

and Sebastian moved to the table and sighed. Apparently, he was some sort of domestic god to boot. Asa looked up at his sigh and raised his eyebrows. “Problem?”

“Feeling useless?”

“You’re a guest. Eat. Feel full.”

Sebastian sat bemusedly and did. “You wan thom

pizza?” he garbled through a full mouth, and Asa stood,

putting Sebastian eye-level at his equipment. Sebastian

swallowed—hard. Twice. Tried not to cough and failed like an asshole. Asa went to the sink and got him a glass of water, setting it down on the table and waiting solicitously until he drank some and sounded like he was going to live.

“You okay?” Asa asked, and Sebastian frowned up at

him with watering eyes.

“I wasn’t expecting to be eye-level,” he sputtered, and

then he felt like an idiot. Asa looked down to where

Sebastian had been looking, and the heat of his blush filled the room.

“Shit,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to distract you.”

“Dis….” Sebastian sputtered, indignant. “Dis
tract me
?

You’d be distracted, too, if something that big threatened to stare at you with its one big eye…
distracted
!”

“One big eye?” Asa squeaked, and then he let out a

sound between a choke and a snort, and then he took a deep breath. It was loud enough to sound unforgivably intimate in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” Sebastian mumbled, mortified. “Sometimes

my mouth just does that.”

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“You may want to find other uses for it,” Asa muttered,

and an appalling silence descended between them.

“You didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” Sebastian

interposed, and Asa shook his head.

“Not even a little bit,” he muttered. “I’ll go to bed now, before I just blow it a….”

Sebastian burst into giggles.

“…gain,” Asa finished with a resigned sigh. Sebastian

couldn’t even look at him anymore. He did hear the

embarrassed sigh, and felt Asa stand up next to him. Then there was a gentle, wide-palmed, blunt-fingered hand in his hair.

“You’re adorable,” Asa said. “As long as I don’t open my mouth more than necessary, you and Bella should have a

good summer here.”

Sebastian choked on his own giggles, and then Asa was

gone. Sebastian pulled himself together and was left in the quiet, darkened kitchen, chowing pizza out of sheer

embarrassment.

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SEBASTIAN woke up the next morning with the vague

disappointment of knowing he had to go to work. He and

Bella had transferred to the store in Auburn for the

summer—and would be able to work at the one in Spokane

in the fall—so it would be a new venue, but, well, it was still work.

He kind of liked work.

The people who came into bookstores were usually his

kind of people. The parents who wanted books for their

children were sober and gentle. The women looking for

romance books were often happy and jovial. The men looking for mysteries or music were friendly. Very rarely did someone come into a bookstore in a tear-assing hurry, and very often, they were grateful for assistance.

Besides that, Sebastian liked books—all kinds. He loved

fiction, non-fiction, big picture art books, the smell, the feel, and the potential to sit down with a book, become lost within it and only surface hours later when you needed to pee.

Books were the bestest of best friends—and they never

bitched if you forgot their birthdays or decided not to call them for a month.

This morning he trotted downstairs wearing his usual—

jeans, tennis shoes, and a smart-ass T-shirt (today’s sported a rainbow and said “I’m gayer than your gay friend”—a

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present from Bella) and wondered if it would be too forward of a guest to make coffee.

Coffee was made, as it turned out, and there was some

sort of homemade bread sitting on the counter and a seven-year-old boy at the table where Sebastian had eaten the

night before, playing with a bunch of paper bugs.

“Hello,” Sebastian said, a little startled. The boy had

dark hair and hazel eyes—but his cheekbones, nose and

chin pronounced him his father’s child from first to last.

“Hello,” said the boy, unfazed in the least. He took a

paper grasshopper and pushed it gently down, smiling when the paper legs pushed back up like springs.

“You must be Jordan.”

Jordan looked up. “You’re Sebastian. My cousins told

me about you. You are smart, like art, love to play racecars and put together puzzles, and are the best babysitter Jeff and Jenna ever had.”

Sebastian flushed. An incredible amount of praise in a

few simple sentences—from people he’d learned to care

about since he’d met Bella, too.

“I take it you’ve been to your Gramma ’n’ Grampa’s

recently?” Must have been Sunday dinner—he and Bella

usually tried to make it, but he’d had to meet the manager in Auburn this past one and talk about the move.

Jordan looked back at his paper bugs. “Uhm-hm. I

didn’t have any cousins in New Jersey. I like it here.”

Sebastian grinned. “Fair enough. I don’t have any

cousins anywhere—I like it here too.” He watched as Jordan took a red paper ladybug, folded its wings open, and then pretended it was flying about the kitchen table.

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“Do you have any aphids?” he asked curiously.

“Ladybugs milk aphids.”

Jordan looked at him avidly. “No… but I have a book!”

With that the kid produced a book on how to fold paper

into bugs—and a ream of sturdy paper in myriad colors with a fine wax sheen. They spent the next fifteen minutes

working to produce an aphid, and when they were done,

Jordan looked at it proudly.

“It’s almost as good as the one my dad helped me

make!” He pointed again to the green grasshopper, and

Sebastian had to concede—it was a marvel of engineering.

“Your dad’s very clever,” Sebastian agreed, but he didn’t add that Jordan’s dad seemed to be a hell of a nice guy too.

“My dad’s the best,” Jordan told him with a sober nod.

“But he still makes me go to summer school.”

Sebastian grimaced. Poor guy—summers were for pool

splashing and doing absolutely nothing. “That starts today?”

The boy shrugged, resigned. “I missed a bunch of days

last year. I’m behind.”

“Mmm. Tough break, there, kiddo. Rough to spend time

in school when the sun is shining.”

Jordan nodded glumly, then smiled. “But it gets out at

twelve. My dad’s gonna pick me up and take me to work. I’ll stay with him until he’s done.”

“When’s that going to be?”

The kid sighed. “Late. He’s working on a big house—it’s

always late.”

Sebastian felt bad for the kid—summer school must

suck. “Why’d you miss so many days last year?”

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The kid shrugged. “My mom was sick. She just sort of

forgot to take me. My dad got real mad when he found out.”

Forgot to take him? Sebastian began to develop some

suspicions about Jordan’s mother and Asa’s ex-wife.

“Well, that sucks,” was what he said. “Tell you what—

Bella and I get back around four. Maybe if I know where you are, I can pick you up from your dad’s work site and take you back here to do some more swimming. How’s that

sound?”

The joy on Jordan’s face was totally worth it. “Really?

Please? We just got here a week ago, and I love to swim.”

The boy already had a tan, and Sebastian had a feeling

he might have just been played, but he didn’t mind. Any kid who could spend a morning playing with origami bugs was

all right with him.

“Yeah, kid—let me talk to your dad and Bella. We’ll

come up with a plan.”

At that moment, Asa Bryne came down the stairs,

dressed in khaki pants and a polo shirt—good boss clothes for an on-site construction foreman, Sebastian thought. They really shouldn’t make the man look like sex on a platter. His long tawny hair was combed and braided, of all things, and yes—it really did hang halfway to his waist when it was dry and in a braid.

“Has he conned you out of your life savings yet?” Asa

asked wryly, ruffling Jordan’s hair. Jordan grinned up at him, showing two front teeth that were still growing in—with a gap between them, if Sebastian was on the mark.

“Nope,” Sebastian said, falling for that smile in a big

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picked him up from your work site? That way we can bring him home for a swim.”

The naked gratitude on Asa’s face made him blush.

“Thank you—seriously, thanks. That would be awesome.” He gave his son the kind of smile that made his eyes crinkle, even if his mouth didn’t move that much. “It sucks that he has to be in summer school; anything we can do to make it easier… thanks, Sebastian.”

Sebastian nodded and swallowed with difficulty, and

Asa opened up the refrigerator for some milk.

“Did you eat?” he asked Jordan, and Jordan shrugged.

Asa rolled his eyes and pulled out the milk and a box of cold cereal, and then turned to Sebastian. “Did you eat, or are you still full from last night?”

Sebastian blushed all the way down to his toes. He was

sort of hoping that the night before had fallen under the realm of “awkward first impressions to be ignored,” but

apparently Asa had no such reservations.

“I’ll get something on the way to work,” he said, carefully looking at the origami aphid. “But right now, I’d better wake up Bella.”

“Bella’s up,” Bella said, rounding the corner. She was

dressed in jeans and a girl’s T-shirt with a chubby bunny.

The bunny was wearing a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt with a plaid skirt with a line of piercings up its long ears. “Eat something, babyface; Asa’s not happy unless he’s feeding the masses.”

Asa looked up at his sister, and the expression on his

face was… painful. He was very happy to see her, Sebastian thought with a cramp in his stomach—very very happy. But he was uncertain of how she’d receive him.

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“A leftover from being the oldest,” Asa quipped,

sounding for all the world like this was just banter to him.

But Sebastian had seen that look on his face—Sebastian

knew it mattered.

Please, Bella, don’t fuck this up. Your brother is a very
nice man.

She surprised Sebastian, though. She stepped forward—

awkwardly, it was true—but still raised her face slightly to kiss her brother on the cheek.

“You were good at it,” she murmured. “Did I hear right—

do we get Jordan this afternoon?”

Jordan was staring at her in awe. “
You’re
my Aunt Bella? You’re prettier than Sebastian!”

Bella’s grin was one-hundred-percent evil. “Yes,

sweets—yes, indeed I am.”

“Stow it, heifer,” Sebastian muttered. “He’s never seen

you with a hangover.”

Asa chuckled and set down a bowl of cereal in front of

his son. Sebastian felt a little knot start in the pit of his stomach. It was a
very
good laugh. He watched as Asa turned back toward the bread and bagels on top of the

refrigerator, and spoke to fill in the silence.

“I said we’d pick him up when we got off work—do you

know where the site is?”

Bella shook her head no. “Asa?”

“Off of Fowler, down by Schindler, top of the hill, you

can’t miss it.”

Bella nodded, and a busy silence descended on the

kitchen again. Sebastian looked at the two of them in

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that Asa could be quiet and cryptic. Jordan had been shy and reserved as they’d put together the aphid, opening up a little but not inclined to talk overmuch, either. At the moment he was munching diligently on his cereal, looking into space and nodding his head in time to music that

Sebastian couldn’t hear. Oh God—was Sebastian the only

one in this household that spoke? Because that could put a crimp in his summer right there.

“My car or yours?” he asked Bella, for the sake of filling in the static, and Bella “hmm”d a little, as though she was surprised to hear the peace broken.

“Yours,” she replied promptly. “Your air conditioning