His twin had his temper back under its usual tight control, and merely arched a dark blond brow. “Wanting the lady in question to spend the night rather than showing her the door once we’ve stopped sweating isn’t a character flaw, Rake, though it’s telling that you think it is.”
The twins glowered at each other but, to switch it up, remained seated. Usually by now they would be chest-to-chest, with Blake enumerating Rake’s many character flaws and Rake cordially inviting his brother to suck himself sideways.
After a long moment, Blake sighed. “This isn’t helping our mother.”
“No.” That’s why they hadn’t come to blows yet. They loved irritating the piss out of each other, but loved their mother more. Rake, suddenly desperate to occupy his hands, started stacking Splenda packets. “It’s not. So. What, then?”
“I propose we join forces. Hear me out!” he added when Rake shuddered. “You know she has a harder time dealing with us when we’re united.”
He snorted. “Truth. It’s like the Roadrunner teaming up with Wile E. Coyote. You never see it coming, and when it does come, it’s creepy and weird and everyone’s taken off guard.”
“Yes.” Whoa! A smile! Rake sometimes couldn’t remember if his brother even had teeth. “Creepy and weird is an outstanding way to describe the situation. Let’s initiate a conference call and let her know we’re going to work together to help her through this mess, no matter how complex.”
That’s … not an entirely stupid idea. “Yep, yep. That would definitely disarm her into allowing us to interfere. Help!” At his slip, he rapidly adjusted. “I meant help.”
Blake almost laughed, and seeing the light of merry mischief in his big brother’s eyes reminded Rake why he loved the son of a bitch. When Blake loosened up, he was almost human. “So: We will reach out at a time early enough that she will likely be in her room getting ready, but not so late that she has left to deal with the judgmental farmers’ brigade. Eight A.M. ought to do it. Can you be at my place in time?”
Ugh. Well, he’d just stay up extra late that night, avoid going to bed altogether until after the call. Also, Blake didn’t seem to get that they didn’t have to be in the same room to make a conference call. Or even the same state, continent, or hemisphere. “Sure.”
Blake’s eyes went all narrow and squinty, like when he was constipated or thought Rake wasn’t paying attention. “So when would that be, exactly?”
Rake shrugged. “Fifteen minutes early to work out the script. Say quarter to ten?”
Another put-upon sigh. “She is trapped in the central time zone, Rake.”
“Right.” Time for some fun. “Center means more toward the middle. Noon is the middle. So she’s two hours closer to the middle: Ten A.M.”
“I don’t understand.” As Rake opened his mouth to continue torturing his genetic double, said double kept up with the whining. “You have a high school diploma. You have a college degree. You’re a polymath.”
He smirked. This was too good. His twin was brilliant, and like all brilliant jerks, had peculiar blind spots. For instance, he didn’t see how very like their father he was, he was incapable of having a sense of humor 95.999999 percent of the time, potato chips made him constipated but he couldn’t stay away from them, and he got polymath and polyglot mixed up. Rake never corrected him because, again: It was too good. “Not anymore. The doctor gave me some antibiotics and it cleared right up.”
“Very funny.” Yes! Blake was doing that thing where he was forcing words past tightly clenched teeth. You could actually see his temples throbbing. O, victorious day! “You are not a complete imbecile.”
“Awwww. So sweet!”
“Hww oo ot nnstnnd tmm zzzs wrk?” Years of translating Blake’s diatribes through clenched teeth allowed Rake to interpret that as “How do you not understand how time zones work?”
He shook his head, suddenly tired of it all. “Christ, Blake, will you back off my dumbassery for once?”
Blake had broken off to massage his jaw. “But it’s so fascinating. Like studying a new mold spore no one knew existed.”
“Aw, jeez.” He rubbed his eye—the sore one, he remembered too late. “Just tell me what time to be at your place.”
“Five-forty-five.” At Rake’s shudder, Blake added with no small amount of relish, “In the morning. Tomorrow morning. Morning is the opposite of evening. Not today. Tomorrow.”
“What?” Rake’s beloved beat-up leather jacket was just a bit too big, and he sometimes got lost in it. When he straightened, he popped out, Blake had once told him, like a turtle from its shell. “But I’ll have just gone to bed!”
Blake had gone back to glaring. “So assist me with our mother, and then go to bed,” he snapped. “It’s not rocket science!”
Oh again with the rocket science! “You’re just saying that because you studied rocket science!” So, so embarrassing. Blake didn’t even have the decency to wait until college, had started reading up on that stuff during freshman year. Rake could still see that first book in his mind’s eye: Fundamentals of Astrophysics. Something a person who lost a bet would read but oh no, not Blake. He claimed it was interesting. Said it was fun. Did it on purpose. “You’re forever running around telling people this isn’t rocket science, that’s not rocket science. Nobody elected you the namer of things rocket science!” Rake stopped himself; Blake was starting to look like a stroke was imminent. “What’s wrong? Why is your face doing that?”
“I have no idea. I can’t see my face.” He rubbed his temples. “Either I’m getting a headache or my brain is trying to eject from my skull in pure self-defense.”
“Bummer!” Hmm, too bitchy. “Need some Advil?”
“Advil is not what I need.” He glanced at his brother’s face, his gaze lingering on the black eye, then away. “You all right?”
Ah. That. Rake shrugged. “It’s just sore.”
Blake made a sound that was a cross between hmph and a snort. Snnmph. “I assume whatever damsel you rescued was appropriately grateful?”
“I dunno.” He didn’t. “Never got the chance to ask.” It was true. One of those ninety-second things that seemed, in retrospect, to have lasted longer. “I saw a couple of assholes harassing the kiddo, and when I rolled up, one had her purse and the other was about to have her. So … you know.”
Blake nodded and almost—but not quite!—smiled. Both boys had inherited their mother’s moral compass, and her hatred of unfair fights. There had been times in high school when Blake had been the one sporting the black eye. Once, when fending off some football jagoffs after gym, they ended up with matching black eyes. Their mother had marveled at the phenomenon (“Unbelievable, unfortunate, but the symmetry is almost … soothing?”) before grounding them for a hundred years.
“She took off before I could make sure she was okay,” he finished. “The way she was moving, she was probably okay.” She also might have been a track star. He’d seen her shoot an unbelieving look over one slender shoulder, then return to her full-on sprint to the parking lot. Rake didn’t blame her for wanting to vacate, and he was glad to see she got to her car and peeled out safely, but a thank-you would have been nice.