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“Obviously not,” Leo admitted.
“We won’t take Madison to prom, if that makes you feel better,” I assured him.
“You’re an asshole.”
Ethan took a tablet out of his bag and brought up the drawings he was working on for the farmhouse that our brother was remodeling himself. Leo had inherited it from our grandfather whose childhood home it had been before he moved to the city. Knowing Leo would appreciate the property more than we would, Ethan and I got cash bequests. We helped fix up the place when we could, but most weekends he was putting in the sweat equity by himself. Ethan was working on a redesign of the main floor to open the floor plan and reinforce the staircase. I enjoyed my cigar and let my thoughts drift as they talked.
All jokes aside, I couldn’t help considering the idea of Madison, a woman who Leo and I both admired and found attractive. We were grown men now, not horny teens, and the dynamic was different of course. We had never been competitive about women and the truth was, I wouldn’t mind at all if we both had a chance at a relationship with Madison. Regardless of what Ethan said, he wasn’t as strait-laced as he sounded sometimes. Now that he’d achieved so much in his career, he had no reason to worry about his reputation. Besides, propriety or not—we were loyal to one another as brothers, and he would support us in anything that made us happy. It was early in our acquaintance to even consider it, but somehow, I knew that Madison Stewart was destined for the Foster men.
4
ETHAN
Iwas chronically early, and it left me plenty of time to stop for a cup of coffee and have a look at the woman who had my younger brothers tied up in knots. Neither one of them had been what I’d call impulsive as adults. We’d all grown up a great deal since their prom incident of course. While I suspect they were both still romantics at heart, I was the practical one. It made sense to turn a cooler, more objective eye on the person whose electrical difficulties had somehow captured the imagination of two-thirds of the men in my family.
For not one but both of them to adjust their schedules to assist a stranger was unprecedented. I was expecting her to be knockout beautiful. Some blinding combination of perfect traits.
When I walked into the shop, I spotted a woman with dark hair and whiskey eyes. She spoke earnestly to a pregnant customer and handed her a bag, moving on to the next person in line. She seemed capable, warm, lovely.
When it was my turn, I ordered a black coffee to go. She met my eyes, considering. “Are you a Foster?” She inquired, observant.
I nodded.
“You must be the hotshot brother,” she said, her face breaking into an incandescent smile that threatened to take my breath. That was unexpected, I thought, trying to steady myself as if the force of attraction would knock me off my feet. I laughed at what she’d called me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her as she turned to serve other customers and then handed me my coffee.
I found myself dawdling. Me, the pathologically early one who constantly turned up at meetings a half hour before anyone else. I waited around to speak to her some more. She talked seriously to an equally somber small child whose father seated him on the counter to select a muffin. She retrieved the one he pointed to and placed it in his hands. He nodded to her as if she had done well, and her smile for him was just as quick and bright as the one she’d given me. She placed some drinks in a carrier for an older lady and spoke to her warmly. I savored every interaction, and I found myself liking the chance to observe her.
There were no tells, no indication she was fake or that this warmth and energy were anything but natural. No stifled sigh or eye rolling, no huff of breath to reveal exasperation. She seemed to be a genuinely nice person, rarer than I cared to admit most days. When she saw I was still there, she gave me an encouraging but uncertain smile as if to say she didn’t know why I lingered there.
She seemed to have it all well in hand. A tall guy in an expensive suit introduced himself as Blake and asked her out. She’d had that under control. She had shaken her head kindly and said, no thank you. Then without giving excuses, she moved on, unruffled, and said good morning to the next customer in line. When there was a lull in the crowd, she returned to me.
“I’m Madison,” she said.
“Ethan,” I offered my hand.
“I thought you’d be different,” I told her.
“Younger? Less competent? Like someone who tries to extort discount electricity repairs from unsuspecting men?” She smirked at me.
“I had a stupid idea that you’d be a femme fatale out of an old movie.”
She laughed until she snorted just a bit.
“I’ve definitely never been accused of that before,” she stated, clearly amused.
“I thought Leo said your oven was shot?” I asked, gesturing to the baked good in the display case.
“It is. I stayed up all night baking this stuff at home. I don’t even want to know what my gas bill is going to look like next month. But I’m not going to close my business down. I’ve worked too hard, and my customers depend on me.”
It wasn’t difficult to understand what my brothers had seen in her. She seemed to have a kind of confidence that allowed her to do anything she wanted, no matter what stood in her way. I liked her and wouldn’t object to seeing her again. It wasn’t even a stretch to imagine her turning up at holiday dinners with one of my brothers, all of us falling into easy conversation over a bottle of wine. Maybe I couldn’t quite see her kicking back in the leather and mahogany cigar lounge with the Foster men, but that was a decidedly male domain.
If anything, it was unnerving how well I thought she’d fit in with the three of us, not at all a gentling feminine influence but an opinionated, feisty force of nature.
“Do you want to borrow my insulated cup?”
“What for?” I asked, bewildered.
“Well, you’re lingering here when you don’t strike me as someone who wastes time. There must be a point to your presence here besides the pleasure of my company. My theory, and stop me if I’m wrong here—” she gave a mischievous lift of her eyebrow. “Is you’re going to indulge your protective instincts by lifting my fingerprints for a thorough background check That’s why I offered my cup. It has my fingerprints on it, and I’ve used the straw so there’s a chance you could get DNA off that, too.”
