My Best Friend's Brother: A Love Story

MY BEST FRIEND’S BROTHER

Kennedy Claire

Third Edition, February 2017

Copyright© 2017

by

Kennedy Claire

First Edition, April 2015

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced nor used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for use of brief quotations in a book review, interview or article.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

I must have loved you for years, only I was such a stupid fool, I didn't know it.

–Scarlett O’Hara,

Gone with the Wind

Table of Contents:

Prologue – The Dream

Chapter 1 – We Don’t Talk Anymore

Dev’s Journal: First Reluctant Entry

Chapter 2 – Senior Year Changes Everything

Dev’s Journal: Entry #54

Chapter 3 – Part of the Family

Chapter 4 – The Enemy Returns Home

Dev’s Journal: Entry #67

Chapter 5 – White Trash & Voltaire

Dev’s Journal: Entry #68

Chapter 6 – Scarlett, Meet Rhett

Dev’s Journal: Entry #84

Chapter 7 – Dangerous Liaisons & Gray Sweaters

Chapter 8 – You’ve Got Mail

Dev’s Journal: Entry #103

Chapter 9 – Christmas Alone

Chapter 10 – A Man in the House

Chapter 11 – First Date, First Everything

Chapter 12 – Day of Reckoning

Chapter 13 – The Signs Were There

Dev’s Journal: Entry #118

Chapter 14 – Home, Sweet Home

Chapter 15 – Every New Beginning Comes from Some Other Beginning’s End

Dev’s Journal: Entry #126

Chapter 16 – The Box

Epilogue – Hindsight is 20/20

Bonus: Prologue to the sequel 24 ½ Kisses

Also by Kennedy Claire

About the Author

Book Extras!

P.S.

Prologue

The Dream

When you’re a teenage virgin drowning in a sea of raging hormones, there’s nothing more welcome as a tantalizing sex dream—free of pregnancy, STDs, awkward first dates, and painful heart break.

And here I was, smack dab in the middle of one.

Have fun, my subconscious self seemed to communicate to my conscious self. After all, she was running this show and I was just a happy bystander; I was eager to see what she had in store for me. Dreams like this were far and few in between.

But I knew this was a very different kind of sex dream from the onset. The air smells of incense and is heavy with humidity—exotic. I am reclined in a bed—not my own or one I recognize as I survey the dark room. It was a simple space, sparse in décor, the windows open; plain white curtains bellow softly over the warm sea-air that pours in accompanied by the soothing and rhythmic crash of waves from an ocean that must be right outside.

Okay, subconscious, nice job so far. But where’s the lucky guy? Please let it not be Mr. Harmon, my ninth grade English teacher again. That was such an awkward dream and I couldn’t look him in the eye without blushing for the rest of the semester.

As if on queue, I see a tall masculine figure come to me from some indistinct place, as if appearing out of thin air. He’s foreign to me, and yet in this dream, I seem to be okay with this half-naked man approaching me. Dressed only in long, loose white pants, his muscled chest draws my attention as he walks over with a steaming cup in his hand. I look hard at him because I feel I must know him—I feel so at ease in his presence. But there’s no light save for the fading moon outside, and his features are shadowed.

I squint hard and I can make out a few details. His black hair is longish with curls at the ends, hanging over his broad shoulders, his skin tan and smooth over the waves of rounded muscles.

He’s god-like, and I can’t believe that he’s mine—at least for this one dream.

I feel suddenly more supple and soft, more like a woman, a contrast to his hard edges and impressive brawn. The attraction I feel for him is overwhelming.

He is definitely not Mr. Harmon.

The man sits on the edge of the bed and leans in slowly to kiss me on the forehead. I don’t scream or yell rape or dig through my purse for my trusty hot pepper spray attached to the scratched metal Eiffel Tower key ring, but instead, I offer the stranger a sly, inviting smile.

I should note that this is not at all how I am in reality, where the furthest I’ve gone is second base for two seconds with Randy Eckers, the lifeguard at the beach last summer. Of course, he’d wanted more, but I’m not that type of girl. I guess when dreaming, I’m a certified tramp though.

Like now.

I take the cup he offers me. The tea is warm, but his lips are like fire on my skin. I stare into his dark eyes, pools of black, mysterious…almost haunting. Definitely hungry.

It sets off an alarm.

Is he a vampire? Will this dream turn dark suddenly? If so, I’m not sure I would put up much of a struggle. I decide it’s about time my junior high obsession with Twilight bled into my unconscious psyche.

Drink, he commands in a whisper, but his penetrating gaze suggests there are other things on his mind besides my hydration levels. I let the warm liquid, infused with cinnamon and cardamom, slide down my throat. He takes the cup from me and sets it on a bedside table next to a book covered in words I cannot read. Arabic? Hindi?

Why the hell do I care right now? I scold myself. Get to the sex part!

What’s odd is that I don’t feel quite myself in this dream. I’m there, but I’m not. Who is this…this…woman? She’s nothing like the 17-year-old me I am now with unruly long blonde hair, questionable fashion sense, and a sex life as uninhibited as an 80-year-old nun in hospice care. This woman is worldly and experienced, and she seems to know what she wants…and it isn’t a second cup of tea. I suddenly realize I’m in for a wild ride during this dream.

And I’m all in.

The man and I smile at each other like lost lovers reunited. That face, so familiar…

He grazes my cheek with his long fingers, as if I were a fascinating work of art by Michelangelo or Donatello. I shudder at his touch. I don’t want him to stop.

I feel I will die if he stops.

I’ve never had a dream like this.

He tenderly kisses my neck and I pull him closer, an invitation for more, an unspoken yes to what his body is asking from me.

I’ve waited so long for this, Scarlett, he whispers into my neck, in between sultry kisses.

That voice…I know it from somewhere.

But I can’t place it yet. If only I could see his face more clearly.

Happily, he doesn’t drain me of my blood, but instead leans into me, his weight a welcome intrusion. His mouth meets mine for the first time. He kisses me slowly at first, and then loses control and consumes my lips with his, feasting on me.

I want more—much more—than what he is giving me and I’m actually afraid he may stop or I might wake up before I find out what happens next.

Don’t stop. Don’t stop. Stay asleep, Scarlett!

My thin, silky robe is open, and my soft breasts unite with his firm chest. He slides his hand down the inside of my thigh and I instinctively open up for him. Our bodies merge in a sensual pleasure I don’t yet understand as a naïve teenager, but I’m more than willing to explore in this dream. Unknown pleasure radiates and overtakes me. I moan in my dream, his mouth to my neck…a climax of sensations ripple through my body.

Oh. My. God.

My lucid mind inhabiting my still-virgin body wonders: Is this what it’s really like?

It’s breathtaking. It’s the best dream of my whole life.

Please don’t let it end…I want to find out who he is.

The morning sunlight breaks through the window over the calm ocean outside. For the first time, I can see his face clearly over me. The mature woman in my dream seems to love this face, but the teenager I am now jolts awake in utter shock.

Him? Not him!

Has my subconscious turned on me? Could it really be this cruel?

The alarm clock screeches next to my bed. I hit the snooze out of habit even though I am more than awake. The dream still dominates my thoughts—and my body—which only makes me feel slightly sick to my stomach, because I know exactly who he is now.

And it makes no sense at all.

Dev Bashir? Rude and arrogant Dev?

The one person I completely and utterly loathe?

No—not just loathe. Hate. Detest. Despise with everything that I am.

Reality slaps me in the face and as I recall what I had just done in that steamy, x-rated dream. Or rather who I just did.

Holy crap.

I just had dream sex with my best friend’s brother.

~1~

We Don’t Talk Anymore

I glanced at the tattered book cover of my favorite novel and tossed it into my beach bag with a towel, a bottle of water and my SPF 35 for my sadly pale skin. It was a hundred degrees—about right for a typical Texas July—and lucky 14-year-old me had a friend with a swimming pool. It was going to be a great day.

Or so I thought. But more on that later.

The trailer court I lived in with my dad used to have a pool years ago, but now it was neglected with a shallow green pool of muck hosting a few beer cans floating on top. Last time I stood at the edge and peered down, I swear there was a dirty diaper in there, too. Gross.

I considered the book again and then pulled it out and returned it safely back to the little shelf in my closet where my few valuables were kept. I didn’t want it ruined from a wayward splash. This was a special book to me and I credited it with saving my life in a sense.

Let me explain.

The best gift my mother gave me was naming me Scarlett after the bold, beautiful and unstoppable heroine from Gone with the Wind. In fact, it might be the only thing she gave me—I can’t recall anything else other than a few of the usual emotional scars of abandonment. That feeble excuse for a parent left me and my dad when I wasn’t even two years old, so I had no collection of embroidered blankets, birthday cards, jewelry or other sentimental things a daughter could expect from her mother.

Things that my best friend, Annika, had in droves.

Sometimes I envied Annika and her shelves of fancy trinkets, visual evidence that she was loved and adored. But would I trade my cherished moniker for all of it? Would I choose to live life as a dull Jessica or a tedious Samantha or—god forbid—a weak, needy Melanie?

Not a chance.

As soon as I was old enough to read, I got my hands on a worn out paperback copy of Gone with the Wind from a library sale for fifty cents, and I read it cover to cover. And then I read it several times after throughout my youth in between obsessive marathons of Anne of Green Gables and Jane Austen novels.

When kids at school made fun of me for my shoddy thrift store clothes or because I lived in a trailer park, I held my head high and imagined this was how Scarlett must have felt when she worked in the cotton