Page 45 of Don’t Go Stealing My Heart

Jack narrowed his eyes. “If who replies?”

Chloe giggled, ignoring him. “I’ll text you if you buy the flower combat boots.”

Jack’s eyes felt twitchy. “Who’s messaging you?”

Neither girl glanced his way. “They’ll look better on you,” Clementine told Chloe. “With that funky skirt of yours.”

“Which skirt?” Chloe asked.

“The purple one.”

Chloe rolled the corner of her comforter through her fingers. “I don’t know.”

“I do. Toss on black leggings, and it’ll look hot.”

Jack choked on nothing and coughed. He banged his chest to ease the burn. “She’s not supposed to look hot.”

Clementine smiled sweetly at him. “Sorry, did you say something?”

Had he entered the Twilight Zone? “She’s twelve. There are no boys and there is no looking hot.”

Clementine squeezed Chloe’s thigh. “Message me.”

His sister sighed a dreamy sigh, Jack fumed, and Clementine stood, grabbing his hand as she passed him. “Come on, Elvis. Show me your old room.”

Chloe cackled.

He never should have left those two alone together.

As soon as they were down the hall, he yanked Clementine close. “Please tell me she isn’t dating.”

She patted his arm. “She isn’t dating. She’s crushing.”

“Crushing is worse. She’s too young to have her heart broken.” He knew how that felt. He’d lived it in a high school bathroom, complete with his pants undone, heart shattered, his embarrassment spread throughout Whichway.

“Crushing is what kids do, and you’re being overprotective.”

Exactly what he should be doing. He’d have to barricade Chloe inside the estate. Homeschool her. Arrange her marriage. “She’s too young.”

“She’s not a baby, Jack. May as well embrace it or she’ll shut you out. Now show me your impossibly large, over-the-top, cool childhood bedroom.”

Her description was correct on one account: his old room was large. The rest? She’d learn what a pitiful kid he’d been soon enough. No point fighting that, just like there was no point fighting how quickly his sister was becoming a woman.

Brooding over that unwelcome revelation, he led Clementine into his teenage bedroom. She wandered through the space, stopping to touch his Mathletes trophy, the model airplanes he’d built. There were no photos of friends on bulletin boards or football jersey in the closet. Nothing about the space was “cool.”

“There’s a sound room in the lower level,” he said. “It’s got a full stage and instruments. I could show you.” It was definitely cool. Amazing at thirty-one, the need to impress a woman hadn’t vanished.

She shook her head. “I like this. I like seeing who you were.”

“There’s nothing interesting here.”

“Everything about you interests me.”

The tips of his ears heated. “What else were you and Chloe whispering about for two hours?”

She picked up his Lizard Lover mug and put it down, then fiddled with his pink yo-yo. “Nothing.”

“Nothing doesn’t fill two hours.”