“Wait, could you repeat that first part?”
She laughed, rolling her eyes. “You were right,” she repeated.
He laughed. “Words to live by, my dear.”
She chuckled and they moved to the side again as another runner passed by them. “I’m sure you’re right about a lot of things.”
“That’s smart of you to acknowledge,” he replied, causing her to chuckle again. “So when will you move in?”
“I’ll do it as soon as I can. The hotel you put me in is too expensive.”
“Don’t worry about the hotel expense. I’ll just tell Brant that it’s for strippers and he’ll approve the cost.”
Selena stumbled slighted, but recovered gracefully. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
He winked at her. “Brant, my brother. He’s really into strippers.”
They continued jogging for several more minutes while she absorbed that information. “Are you talking about the serious, stern man in the sharp business suit with the office on the other side of the floor from you?”
“The one and the same. He’s the boring one. I’m the charming one.”
She laughed, shaking her head. She didn’t have the breath to jog while laughing this hard. “Your brother is too serious for strippers.”
“He has you fooled. Which is normal.”
“Normal?”
“Yeah. He makes everyone believe that he has a stick up his ass, but don’t let him even pass by a strip club. He’d be…”
She gave up trying to run completely, she was laughing too hard. Bending over to catch her breath, she waved a hand to stop whatever he might say next. “Stop,” she gasped. “No more. Your brother is too serious to be interested in strippers. Besides, you’d never even bring up the subject of strippers in your brother’s presence.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised at what I’d do to annoy my brother,” he told her as they started back up and continued their run, heading back to the hotel now. “We were obnoxious kids growing up. And don’t forget, we had a baby sister who needed to be subjected to brotherly hell on a regular basis.”
“I can’t imagine what the two of you might have done to your sister. I shudder with horror at the possibilities.” They turned a corner, heading back the way they had come.
“I have two brothers, so there were three of us giving her grief,” he corrected. “I’m the brains, the talent, the intelligence, and good looks in the family. Brant, the COO, is the middle brother and Mack is the youngest, but still older than my sister, Giselle. Mack is the one who lives up in the mountains and thinks he can control the world.”
She turned to look up at him. “And you don’t?”
He winked at her again as they slowed a block away from the hotel. “Oh, I don’t think I can control the world,” he told her, his voice husky and soft as the cool morning air.
She peered up at him, hearing the unspoken end of his sentence. He didn’t think he could control the world. He knew it. And she didn’t doubt him, she thought. The fact that she’d agreed to move into his guest house instead of renting an apartment was proof of his influence.
“So when are you moving in?” he asked again, bringing them back around to the original topic.
Selena stretched her calves, leaning against the building as she pressed her heel into the sidewalk. “The moving company arrives with my stuff in a couple of days. If it is convenient, I’ll move out of the hotel tonight after work and…”
“I’ll pick you up and help you get settled,” he finished for her. “I’ll even make dinner.”
She opened her mouth to argue but he stopped her with his next statement.
“By the way, I sort of have a cat.”
Selena blinked, not sure she understood. “How does one ‘sort of’ have a cat?”
He shifted on his feet and looked up towards the building. “Well, he…or she…just showed up one day and just…stayed.”
Selena watched, trying to figure out what he wasn’t telling her. “I love animals. Especially cats. I’m not allergic, thankfully, but I appreciate the warning.”