“Oh no, you don’t,” she informed Luigi, finger planted squarely in the middle of his chest and thoroughly enjoying the shocked raise of his eyebrows. “Not this time.”
“Carly,” Luigi started, “what the hell?”
“Weege, this is none of your business. For once in your life, butt out.”
Luigi sputtered for a moment before he managed to get actual words out. “You … you’re running around the house with some … some naked Irish guy, and I’m supposed to butt out?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Carly could see Gideon, who’d stepped back a little in order to give her better access to her brother, still unsmiling but looking suspiciously amused. For the moment, she ignored him. She had mouthier fish to fry. Calmly, she folded both arms across her chest and glared at Luigi.
“He’s a naked Scottish guy, Weege. And since it’s my house we’re running around naked in, yeah, I expect it to not be any of your business.”
Luigi looked at her, then at Gideon, then back at her. It wasn’t hard to see what he thought of the situation, and her attitude about it.
“Carly,” he began in a warning tone, beginning what she was pretty sure was some variation on the canned All-Boys-Are-Bad speech of her youth, “you don’t know about guys …”
“No, Luigi,” she said flatly, resenting the hell out of the way he was spoiling her morning, “I know plenty about guys. Especially the kind of guys who take great pleasure in trying to run off their sister’s dates for fear that she might someday start having ‘the sex’ and, holy shit, maybe even liking it! Which, I gotta tell you, was a dream that died like ten years ago in the backseat of Derek Overton’s Tercel. Deal with it.”
Gideon might have been the werewolf, but it was Luigi’s eyes that seemed to change color from brown to murderous red at that point. “Overton? You let that little … I think I need to have a few words with him, about respecting women who happen to be my sister …”
Carly rolled her eyes so far back that she thought they might just fall into her head. “For the love of … he was perfectly respectful about it. And I think his wife and baby daughter might have something to say about your sudden need to ‘converse’ with him. Don’t be a jackass, Luigi.”
“But you’re my sister!”
“Yes,” she replied, seeing his affront and not much caring. This was a talk that was long past due. “And you’re my brother. And although I’m assuming, at the ripe old age of thirty-one, that you have had sex once or twice, somehow I can’t remember ever having had a kitten about it. Have I?”
“Jesus, Carly.” Luigi reddened and stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“Have I?”
“I. Um. No.” And despite her irritation, Carly had to fight back a smile. Her big brother was beginning to look as sheepish as he did when their mother went after him. Obviously, she’d picked up a thing or two over the years. She was going to have to remember to thank her mom.
“Then I have a right to the same courtesy. I’m a grown woman, Weege,” she said, more softly now, letting her affection for him show through. “I love you dearly. I always will. But seriously. Back off.”
Luigi stared at her as though he were truly seeing her for the first time. Or maybe, Carly thought ruefully, as though she’d just grown an extra head. She turned slightly to peek over at Gideon, who had remained perfectly quiet and immobile throughout her little confrontation, and blushed a little when he dropped a lazy, approving wink at her. Had she really just all but shouted that thing about Derek’s Tercel? Well. Holy shit.
Still, it was high time to blow a hole in the old family dynamic. It might have been a handy excuse for preferring to curl up in her various hidey-holes over nerve-racking encounters with datable men for a long time now, but that was all bull. And now Luigi knew it. As did the mostly naked Scotsman wearing her throw blanket.
As did, finally, she.
Confrontational nude psychoanalysis. This was bound to be a riot to chew on later. Probably along with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.
“So,” Luigi finally said, drawing her attention back to the situation at hand as he puffed himself back up a little, trying to regain some of his former swagger. He jerked his head at Gideon, who merely raised one dark brow. “You, ah … you like this guy?”
Despite herself, Carly did let herself smile, just a little. Luigi was now doing an almost pitch-perfect Joe Pesci in every mob movie ever made, whether or not he realized it (and sometimes, she thought he might). She’d swear he had to restrain himself from saying youse instead of you. Well, two could play at that game. She moved her hands to her hips and jerked her chin up, her best mob moll affectation.
“Yeah. I like this guy.”
Luigi, however, seemed to have lost his sense of humor for the moment, simply sighing softly as he eyed Gideon speculatively. Finally, seeming to come to a decision, he stuck his hand out toward Gideon, calling an abrupt end to the hostilities. “Sorry man,” he shrugged. “You know how it is.”
Carly felt nothing but relief when Gideon readily shook it, releasing a breath she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding.
“Actually, no, thank God,” Gideon replied, a trace of humor in his voice. “I’ve only got a brother to deal with. Gideon MacInnes.”
“Luigi Silver. So,” he said, returning his gaze to his sister and instantly becoming nothing but her adorable, frustrating yet lovable, freeloading brother again, “was that leftover Chinese I saw out there?”
Carly blew an errant lock of hair out of her face and sighed. Some things never changed.
And some things did. She planted both hands against her brother’s broad back and steered him right back towards the door he’d come in.
“So Gid,” Luigi called over his shoulder as Carly herded him out, addressing a rapidly retreating Gideon who, Carly was pretty sure, was on his way to pull on some pants. “What line of work you in?”
“It’s Gideon,” came the reply. “And I help run my family’s estate. Bed and breakfast. That sort of thing. Not as interesting as my brother’s pub, but I enjoy it.”
At the mention of the word “pub,” Carly could swear she saw Luigi’s eyes actually light up. Smelling a stall tactic, she shoved harder. Still, she knew that, whether he wanted it or not, Gideon had just made a friend for life.
“Your brother owns a bar? Man, are you and me gonna get along. Beer is one of my favorite subjects.”
Family, thought Carly as she happily let the door hit her brother in the ass on his way out. Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em. And with one more ruefully affectionate glance at her retreating brother, she headed for her bedroom. This was her breakfast, dammit. And this morning, no pants were required.
Chapter Twelve
DESPITE HER RENEWED THREATS TO PUT HIM BACK TO work, Carly and Gideon had finally agreed that simply dropping her off and picking her up (early, he’d demanded, and, after a great deal of bluster, she’d conceded) constituted perfectly adequate protection for the daylight hours in Kinnik’s Harbor. Though in the end, he’d called her bluff and offered to continue his expert reorganization of her stockroom.
“Well … I think maybe one day of having your services available to the women of the Harbor was about all they should be expected to handle,” Carly had laughed after he’d broached the subject, a twinkle in her blue eyes. “You don’t want to be responsible for turning a sleepy little town into a hotbed of lust, do you?”
At which point, Gideon recalled now as he pulled on his coat (and he never thought he’d be so happy just to get into his own well-worn clothes again) for the second time that morning, he’d made some comment about how turning her little house into the local shaque d’amour would have to sustain him. And then, of course, kissed her thoroughly for looking so damned adorable in her work clothes. Well, and then removing them, making her a bit late to work after all.
Gideon frowned, sighed. So much for getting around to warning her off. Currently, he blamed her dimples.
And, he’d already decided, whenever that started to seem a bit ludicrous, he had at least two dozen other beautiful and mind-scrambling body parts to divide the blame between.
So he’d somehow managed to fold himself into the woman’s miniature automobile and dropped her off. He’d done a fair job of concentrating well enough to get out to the inn and back to pick up his things. Perhaps he could even manage to fully re-engage his brain for the short while the only company he was keeping was his own.
He’d sensed a bit of relief on Carly’s part, he thought, that she’d be having her workday to herself. He was still trying to tamp it down, but knowing how his presence distracted and flustered her gave him a rush of pure male satisfaction. That, and the knowledge that she didn’t want to share him. Gideon didn’t particularly want to share her, either. In fact, he was fairly sure that, if he saw another man touching her, he was going to have to remove the offending limb from whatever interloper was stupid enough to trespass on his territory.
His territory? Christ, had he really just thought those words? Gideon gritted his teeth and stomped out the front door, turning and locking it before heading down the front path he’d so industriously shoveled out this morning. He’d also shoveled out the driveway and Carly’s car before they’d left, no small feat for a scant hour’s work. Well, he amended, not for a normal man, it wouldn’t have been, anyway. For him, it had been more like a nice, physically exerting break from thinking for a bit, because he’d certainly been doing more than his share of that lately, at least about some subjects.
Hence today’s project, which involved less thinking, more doing. Oh, and a self-guided tour of some of the more remote camps and cottages along the water. After he checked in on his charge, of course. Just because he’d decided not to haunt her all day didn’t mean Gideon was ready to trust that all would be hunky-dory as long as the sun shone. There were always lulls in a day’s business, particularly in a snowy lake town in winter, and it would, Gideon knew, take very little to overpower a sleepy bookshop’s diminutive owner.
