Kerry sniffled loudly and Jesse swallowed down hard on the determined lump, willing it away while ignoring the wayward tear that slipped from the corner of his eye as he held her and gained strength from her pain. He mentally paused and took the moment in. Yes, he was a bastard, in the kitchen in his drawers holding this woman and once again letting someone else do the hard work for him. He couldn’t even grieve right for Mama Joy, so instead he just stood there and let Kerry do the hard work for him while he held on for all he was worth. But Kerry did feel hella good. Maybe he’d just hold her a little longer . . .
“What the hell, Jes? This is a goddamned business, not your bedroom. Mama Joy is in the ground one day and you’re seducing a woman in your underwear in her back kitchen!”
Fuck. Damian’s voice pierced Jesse’s ears like a hard two-by-four to the skull. Leave it to his annoying older brother to make his entrance at exactly the wrong time.
3
Oh, it’s just you, Kerry.”
Kerry stepped away from Jesse’s dangerously comforting embrace and turned. Damian’s voice was as bland and cold as his gaze.
Yeah, it’s just me. Gee thanks, Damian. Dismissive much? But she didn’t let her thoughts out of her head and off her tongue. What did it matter anyway? How many times over the years had she heard those words, or some version of them, from one of the Strong brothers?
An off-the-cuff “Oh, it’s just you.” Or, worse yet—no comment at all. As if she was just another fixture in the shop. Like the coffeepot or the old farmhouse table in the main room that was used for classes and weekly knitting circles. Kerry squelched back a sigh as she stepped back and out of Jesse’s arms and looked over at Damian, who had come into the kitchen through the back door. She quickly swiped at her wet face, noticing that Jesse’s chest was probably even wetter. Shit. It was bad enough that Jesse saw her weak and crumbling. She didn’t need to go falling apart in front of Damian too.
“Yeah,” she started, trying her best to keep her voice even and calm. “It’s just me. I was having a moment and, uh, Jesse was kind enough to offer some comfort.”
She watched as Damian’s sharp brows knit tight and his angled jaw tensed. He gave a glance Jesse’s way, no doubt taking in his state of mostly undress. “Comfort, huh? I bet he was.”
Kerry’s eyes went skyward as her tears were, for the moment, forgotten and the brothers gave each other one of their usual stare downs. For brothers, Jesse and Damian could not be more opposite. Their differences had little to do with their lack of shared DNA and more to do with, well, just about everything else. Jesse was all light in his looks and demeanor, with his lightly tanned skin, his mossy green eyes and his shoulder-length sandy-brown locs, which fit his Bohemian vibe. And then there was Damian, who pretty much was the definition of darkness. With his cinnamon-hued skin, close-cropped dark hair and onyx eyes that could singe a person’s soul, he walked around most of the time with a smoldering aura that perfectly fit his whole quick-tempered, brooding persona.
And no one put Damian into a temper quicker than his youngest brother, Jesse. Maybe it was that Jesse fluttered between his vocations like he fluttered between women. A fact that bugged straitlaced Damian to no end. The vocation part—not the women, probably, since Damian was a low-key player himself. Still, Jesse couldn’t pin down whether he wanted to be a DJ, a bartender, or “use his liberal-as-fuck communications degree for something besides charming the shit out of women,” as Damian put it. While she was alive, Kerry knew, Mama Joy had to break up plenty of arguments between the two of them.
Damian, a corporate financial analyst, was the picture of a wannabe Wall Street raider the way he strutted around in his perfectly tailored suits. Kerry was sure seeing Jesse in the kitchen nearly naked was just the thing to piss him off. And she knew that Jesse was sure of it too.
“You can keep your judgment to yourself, Damian,” Jesse said. “Whatever is going on between me and Kerry is between me and her.”
Kerry balked. “There isn’t anything going on.”
Jesse shot her a look. “Of course there isn’t, but what business is it of his?”
Yeah, of course.
Damian let out a snort. “I can see you’re just as mature as ever, little brother.” He stepped farther into the kitchen and reached around Kerry to pick up a coffee mug out of the dish rack. Helping himself to a mug of the steamy brew, he took a sip of it, black, then looked back at Jesse. “So, are you going to go and get dressed, or have you decided to add ‘nudist’ to your list of useless extracurriculars?”
“Seriously, are you starting with me today?” Jesse said, crossing his arms as if instead of being mostly naked, as his brother had pointed out, he was dressed in the height of fashion. “Could we at least have one day that isn’t shrouded in your self-righteous bullshit?”
Kerry watched as Damian put down his mug and puffed out his chest, taking an ominous step toward Jesse while Jesse unfurled his arms and postured. His already wide chest became even wider and he jutted out his chin, looking his older brother directly in the eye.
“As if you know anything about self-righteousness or self-determination or anything to do with any type of work-related adjective,” Damian said.
“Listen, I’m not in the mood to take your sh—”
Kerry shook her head and took a step forward. She threw both hands up. Her palms stopped in midair, inches from each of the men’s faces, silencing them immediately. Having gotten the response she was looking for, she slowly put her hands back down and turned her head, shifting her gaze back and forth between the two, looking them both in the eye.
“One day—” she said, her voice so low that it was almost a whisper, and for a moment she wondered if they could hear her clearly. Kerry cleared her throat and spoke up, a bit louder this time. “One day is all it’s been that Mama Joy has been in the ground, and already the two of you are at it as if you’re elementary kids on the playground fighting over a toy. What would she think?” Kerry waited a beat as that question was answered with silence.
Jesse’s gaze shifted guiltily, while Damian clenched his jaw tighter.
She decided to twist the screw a little more. “I’ll tell you what she’d think. She’d be damned disappointed in the two of you. And she’d tell you both to straighten up and get your acts together and behave like the men”—she paused there—“no, the brothers that she raised you to be.”
It was then that Damian opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, and Kerry raised her hand once again, shocking herself with her forcefulness and silencing him. Her eyes shifted to Jesse, stopping whatever flippant response he was conjuring up. She gave him a quick up and down. “Now, I suggest you head upstairs and get yourself dressed, because I’m sure Noah and Lucas will be here soon, and you all have plenty to work out. Not to mention you don’t want any of the neighborhood ladies coming by with casseroles and getting an eyeful, do you?”