Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 135539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135539 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Sinking into the couch, I press the heels of my hands over my eyes.
The door bursts open with enough force to make me flinch. I give a silent groan when March saunters in grinning like a little shit.
“Nice teeth?” He snorts out a laugh. “Seriously?”
“Apparently so.” I rub my hands over my face. “Fuck.”
March closes the door behind him, then wanders over to Dad’s collection of the Luck family footballs lining one of the wall-to-wall bookcases. “That was—”
“Horrific. Yes, I know.”
Plucking one of the footballs from the display, he drawls, “I was going to say—”
“Hilarious?” I glare. “You’re wrong. It was definitely not hilarious.”
March tosses the football between his hands, his grin growing by leaps and bounds. “Oh, I don’t know. Seemed pretty fucking funny to me.”
“Who the hell comments on a person’s teeth?”
“Our orthodontist loves to. Maybe you went into the wrong career.”
I grimace. “She’s probably wondering if I took one too many blows to the head.”
“In fact, she did ask—” He puts a hand up when I give him a death look. “Merely reporting the facts.”
“Go away.”
March takes a seat on the big wing chair by the fireplace, crossing one leg over the other like he’s a professor. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. You need me here.” He tosses the football again. “For moral support.”
I stare him down.
His grin breaks out again. “One doesn’t bounce back from ‘you have nice teeth’ without some sort of game plan.”
“Here’s my game plan—I kick you out on your ass.”
“Like you could.” He blows a raspberry through his lips. “Tight end takes quarterback any day.”
Cheeky bastard spins the ball on the tip of his finger.
“Dad sees you playing with that, it won’t matter. You’ll be dead anyway.”
“Hey, this is my high school championship ball.”
“If it’s on The Shelf, it’s Dad’s.”
Those are the rules. We don’t make them, we merely obey them. He’s the best dad I know, but he’s also obsessively covetous about his kids’ memorabilia. And his own. A Hall of Fame wide receiver, Dad was the start of a football dynasty with his sons following in his wake. He’s hella proud.
With a sigh, March returns the ball to its stand. “Stop deflecting. What was that?”
“Man, I don’t know. Rough week, I guess.”
“Bullshit.”
I wince and look away.
“I’ve seen you limp off the field like a lump of pounded meat and give better game than that.”
Apparently not anymore.
“Penny’s grown up very nice, hasn’t she?” He’s way too smug.
I deliberately do not think of the luminous quality of her skin, as though she held some inner light that the rest of us didn’t. She looked soft as a petal. I’d wanted to touch her, to see if the sweetheart shape of her face fit within the rough palm of my hand.
Said hand curls into a fist. There will be no touching of Penelope. While Penelope Morrow has always gotten along well with the rest of my family, I am the outlier. Anytime I’d walk into a room her buoyant mood would deflate like a lead balloon. For whatever reason, Pen does not like me. I’d say I rate at tolerable, but only because she has to.
“Hey, dickhead.” March’s voice penetrates the fog.
I manage a glare. “What?”
“I said Penny looks pretty good, doesn’t she?”
“She looks all right.”
“All right? That why you were gaping at her like someone dangled a Super Bowl ring in front of your face?”
“Those rings are ugly. Penelope is—”
“Ha!”
Bastard.
“We both saw her,” I say blandly. “I don’t need to state the obvious.”
March stares at me for a long moment. I stare back as if I’ve got all the time in the world.
Then he smiles. I know that fucking smile . . .
“That’s not the only way she’s grown up. Her ti—”
“Do not disrespect Penelope.”
“So you did notice!”
How could I not? Pen is stacked. Those curves, the way they dipped and swelled like a lazy river . . . Honestly, I’d tried not to stare—Mom had taught us better—but it had been touch and go. She’d gone from barely noticeable to more than a handful for me; and I can palm a football with ease. Matched with a tiny waist and those breasts? I’d nearly swallowed my tongue.
“It’s Penelope.” I force a shrug. “We don’t discuss things like that about her.”
“I don’t know . . .” He taps a beat on the armrest. “She had a huge crush on me in high school. Maybe it’s time to reassess.”
There’s a paperback resting on the coffee table in front of me. I mentally calculate how fast I can ping it at March’s forehead; accuracy won’t be a problem. It’s doing it before he ducks that’s the issue.
March glances at the book and then raises a brow at me. “I dare you.”
“Think I won’t?”
“I think you’ll miss.”
“I think my sixty-four-million-dollar arm says differently.”