The Finn Factor Read online

  Finn

  Two days later, things were still tense with Scarlett. I’d tried a couple of my no-fail strategies to make peace, including cooking on her night, and making a surprise jug of mojitos. She was politely grateful each time, but neither had made a dent in her stonewall armor. The words she’d spoken to me had been pretty much limited to “yes,” “no,” and “can you pass the mustard.”

  And to make it worse, while she was avoiding my eyes and saying practically nothing to me, all I could think about was kissing her. Of walking her backward to my room, kicking the door closed, and kissing every last inch of her.

  The fact that I was having these thoughts when she was talking to her parents, or when my little sister was in the room, only made me hate myself more.

  It had started after the damn kissing lesson and been growing stronger ever since. Even if Marnie hadn’t stormed out of the bar the other night, things weren’t going to last. Not that I’d let anything happen with Scarlett, but it wouldn’t have been fair to Marnie to date her when I was thinking about kissing someone else. No more dating until I had this weird phase of fantasizing about Scarlett under control.

  As we ate dinner, Scarlett and I sat on the sofa with Amelia, watching TV, pretending everything was okay. Though it was clear Amelia knew something was up; she was darting glances at us when she thought we weren’t watching. Smart kid, that one.

  A dog barked somewhere outside and Amelia sat up straight. “What was that?”

  “A dog,” I said and took another spoonful of pumpkin soup.

  “Thanks, Einstein,” she said, shooting me a withering glance. “That part I got myself.”

  Scarlett took another piece of herb bread from the plate on the coffee table. “Perhaps Mr. Snuggles?”

  Amelia shook her head. “He lives two doors down and this dog was closer. Plus, it was bigger.”

  I shrugged and changed the TV channel. “Probably someone walking their dog.”

  “But it wasn’t from the front,” Amelia persisted.

  “It was just—” I stopped when there was a second bark. Now that I was paying more attention, it was obvious she was right. In fact, it sounded like the barking was coming from our backyard. Which was crazy because we had fences so a dog couldn’t wander in, and Scarlett’s parents were out there anyway…

  Scarlett’s head whipped around and she met my gaze, obviously coming to the same suspicion I was. My stomach sank. Yeah, her parents were in the backyard.

  Despite the annoyance that was already rising, I put my bowl of soup on the coffee table carefully, summoning all my patience as I did. Then I stood and headed for the back door. By the time I reached the threshold, Scarlett and Amelia were both behind me. We marched down the pathway and I felt strangely like a sheriff from the old West with his two deputies. Although if there really was a dog in that tent, my deputies were going to be no help.

  The tent flap was open, with only the mozzie net zipped up to keep the insects at bay, and with the light on inside, there was no privacy for the occupants. For the three occupants.

  “Mum? Dad?” Scarlett called out.

  “Oh, hey, sweetie,” her dad said, and came over to unzip the net screen. “I hope Harvey didn’t bother you?”

  “Harvey?” I repeated, not quite believing how casually they’d mentioned the dog.

  A fluffy black and white Border Collie raced over and slipped out the screen as soon as it was open and sat at my feet, tail thumping on the ground.

  “Good boy,” Jane cooed. She came over and rubbed his ears. “We only decided on his name this morning but he’s very intelligent. Did you see how fast he came to you when he thought you were calling him?”

  Amelia and Scarlett fell to their knees, obviously overjoyed to have a dog to pat. Harvey grinned at me. Until that moment I had no idea that dogs could grin, but there was nothing else to call it—his lips were pulled back tight, showing a little teeth, and his ears lay flat behind his head and his eyes were half closed.

  “Where did you get him?” I asked, not impressed enough by the grinning to forget the main issue.

  Harvey rolled on his back, and John knelt to rub the dog’s chest, glancing up to answer me. “He was a stray. We came across him on our walk this morning and brought him home. Gave him a feed, a bath, and a name, so now we’re set.”

  “You need to take him to a shelter,” I said, though I didn’t think anyone was listening. It wasn’t that I had anything against dogs, but I didn’t want Amelia getting used to having one around then pestering me to have one permanently. “He can’t stay,” I said a little louder.

  “Why not?” Amelia said, her eyes confused.

  “Well, to start with, we don’t have a permit.”

  Scarlett made a pshht sound. “We could get one.”

  She held my gaze and my heart missed a beat. It was the most significant sentence she’d given me in forty-eight hours, and part of me wanted to clear everybody else out so we could keep talking, just on our own. I missed chatting to her, the easy way things had been between us. Had we ever fought this long before? I couldn’t remember a time when we hadn’t been able to resolve an argument in one conversation. And I hated like all hell the tension between us now.

  Which just served to highlight why I couldn’t kiss her again. If two days of not talking was killing me, then how would I cope if I ruined everything and she stopped talking to me all together? Better safe than sorry.

  Harvey sat up again and lifted up his left front paw, whining softly at me, drawing my attention away from Scarlett. I frowned down at him.

  Jane rubbed his ears again. “He can’t go anywhere yet. He has a sore paw.”

  “You know where they can fix that?” I said. “A shelter. They have vets there.”

  Amelia looked horrified. “What have you got against Harvey?”

  “Other than my backyard turning into a dog toilet? He’s not our dog. Someone is probably looking for him. A shelter will check that out.”

  John laid a hand on my shoulder. “We rang the pound and shelters this morning when we got back. They haven’t had any calls about him. I left my number in case.”

  I had a feeling I was fighting a losing battle. Then I turned back to Scarlett and she looked up at me and giggled while Harvey licked her cheek, dislodging her glasses. My breath caught in my chest, and I realized I would probably do a whole lot more than let her parents keep a dog in their tent if it meant Scarlett wasn’t mad at me anymore. Surely John and Jane wouldn’t be staying much longer anyway…?

  “Okay,” I said, “here are the rules. He doesn’t come inside the house. All dog poop is cleaned up. He goes to the vet for shots so he doesn’t give any of us rabies or whatever dogs carry.” I looked pointedly at Amelia, so she was clear on this last point. “And he belongs to John and Jane, not to us. He’ll be moving on when they do.”

  “But—” Amelia began.

  “Those are my conditions, take them or leave them.” I looked around the group, and they all nodded, even Scarlett, who was back to not meeting my gaze.

  It seemed I’d won this little battle, but I had a feeling the dog war had only just begun.

  Chapter Nine

  Scarlett

  Later that night, long after Amelia was asleep and the lights were off in the backyard, I was up in my painting attic, splashing color around on a canvas without much thought. I’d been sure Finn had gone to bed as well, until I felt him standing in the doorway. He’d been part of my life—part of me—for so long, I always knew when he was around.

  “Tell me how to fix this,” he said, his voice deep and determined. “I want us to be friends again.”

  Since we’d talked—argued—at the bar, I’d been thinking about our relationship pretty much constantly, and I hadn’t come up with any answers that satisfied me.

  I turned and pointed at him with a brush coated in tangerine paint. “I’ve been wondering something. Were we ever really friends?”

  “What the h
ell does that mean? Of course we’re friends. You’re my best friend.”

  I shook my head. When I’d been thinking about us, this was the point that kept coming up—the thing that was frustrating me. “You see me as another one of your sisters. Someone you have to look out for. But I’m a grown up, Finn, and I have a set of parents if I need them.” I dropped the brush in a jar of water and crossed my arms under my breasts. “I don’t want that from you.”

  “What do you want from me, then?” His intense blue gaze was hard to read, which was unusual. Most times I knew what he was thinking. Now, not a clue. Or not anything that made sense, anyway.

  So I squared my shoulders and put the truth out there. “I want you to see me as an equal, not a third little sister.”

  “God, Scarlett. I don’t see you as a sister.” He groaned and speared his hands through his hair. “That’s half my problem.”

  I stilled but my pulse picked up speed. “What do you mean?”

  He took a step closer. “I mean,” he said, his voice almost fierce, “I’ve been having the most un-brotherly thoughts ever since we kissed.”

  At the mention of the word “kiss” my brain went into meltdown. I’d had no idea he still thought about that night. My eyes were drawn to his slightly parted lips, then back to his eyes, and the air around me seemed to grow thicker, heavier. I had about two seconds of warning for what was coming, but I didn’t move away. Couldn’t. Finn was about to kiss me again, and I was going to let him.

  His lips brushed lightly over mine, and my whole body trembled. Then his mouth settled more firmly, pressing, then biting down on the flesh of my bottom lip. Electric sparks shot out through my body and I grabbed the front of his pale blue T-shirt. As soon as I did, I froze—last time we’d kissed, there had been a no touching below the neck rule. Not that this was another kissing lesson. I had no idea what this was, but no way did I want to do anything to prematurely end it. But Finn didn’t seem to care about me breaking the rule, since he didn’t stop, so I used the handhold to drag him closer.

  He took the hint, wrapping his arms around my waist and stepping into me, close enough that I could feel his arousal pressing against my abdomen. A fire burned bright inside me—nothing in the history of everything had ever been as hot as Finn being turned on for me. Me. I moved my hips from side to side, feeling him, and he breathed my name against my mouth before taking the kiss deeper.

  And in that moment, with Finn’s tongue stroking along mine and his erection pressed firmly against me, I knew I’d found heaven. I wanted to climb all over him, to take and be taken, to give in to my body’s demands. His hands smoothed up my back until they reached my neck, then he laced his fingers at the base of my skull, holding me in place.

  After a minute—or an eternity, I’d lost the ability to track time—Finn eased away, kissing me once, twice, gently on the lips, then resting his forehead on mine as we tried to catch our breath. His hands still rested at the back of my neck, and my fingers were still gripping the front of his shirt.

  Maybe I was out of practice with kissing but there were some things you didn’t forget. One of them was a kiss that felt like it gave your life meaning, and if I’d ever felt anything remotely like that before when a guy kissed me, I absolutely would have remembered it.

  I disentangled my fingers from his shirt, then gave it a little pat, as if I could smooth out the wrinkles I’d left. “We did it again.”

  He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

  “We said we wouldn’t.” It was a stupid thing to say, but my brain hadn’t yet really started to work again.

  “Yeah,” he said, still breathing heavily.

  He dropped his hands to his sides, and the connection between us ended.

  I took a little step back and rubbed my arms. “We decided it would put our friendship at risk.”

  “I’m sorry.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Totally my fault. There’s just been so much tension around here lately, then you not talking to me…”

  I frowned. “You thought kissing me would make me talk to you?”

  The corners of his mouth twitched once. “Well, it did, didn’t it?”

  I drew in a deep breath, but before I could speak, he barreled on. “Look, it wasn’t deliberate. I just meant that with everything going on, I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “So you accidentally kissed me?”

  “I guess so,” he said on a sigh.

  “And I accidentally kissed you back.” I paced to the other side of the room, trying to get some space in my head, or some air that wasn’t full of him. There was too much of him—he was everywhere I looked, everywhere I went…just everywhere.

  “Finn, this is crazy.” I clenched my hands and dug my nails into my palms. “We’re best friends who live in the same house, are involved in each other’s families, interfere in each other’s love lives, and now we accidentally kiss. Doesn’t that seem a bit much to you? Maybe a bit unhealthy? Enmeshed or codependent or something.”

  He winced. “Yeah. We need to back off a bit.” There was silence for a minute before he said, “Look, I need to apologize.”

  “You did, though I should probably apologize for kissing you back.”

  “Not about the kiss, about…” He swallowed and looked at the ceiling. “Having a word with your dates.”

  “Okay, then.” That apology, I was totally up for. I lifted my chin. “Do it.”

  He nodded and looked back at me. “I’m sorry. While my intentions may have been good, I should never have said anything to your dates without your knowledge. I was horrible and I’ll never do it again.”

  As apologies went, it was a pretty good one, and after that kiss, I was in a forgiving mood. I nodded. “Thank you. Just remember, you’re not the authority on who’s good for me.”

  “I’ll remember. Are you still mad at me?” He flashed me an uncertain smile.

  “A bit. But I also realize I probably overstepped the line a few times with you, so I’m willing to be lenient. This time. But”—I summoned a serious expression—“we now have a zero tolerance approach to your involvement in my love life.”

  “Got it. No kissing you and no stopping other guys from kissing you. A healthy friendship is the name of the game.” He let out a breath that sounded a bit pained and headed out the door. “See you in the morning, Scarlett.”

  “Night,” I called after him, then went back to my painting. Only this time I wasn’t painting away my annoyance at him. No, this time my brushstrokes were all about the fire in my body that had lit when he kissed me. The fire that—despite how much I wished it wouldn’t—was still burning now.

  Finn

  Waiting in the veterinarian’s consulting room, Harvey sitting at my feet, I still wasn’t sure how I’d ended up here. John and Jane had made the appointment for him as we’d agreed, but had needed to rush off to a friend’s emergency involving the breaking down of a car full of rescued chickens. Scarlett couldn’t get time off work, and I didn’t have any classes today, so they’d asked me to bring him in. I could hardly say no when I’d been the one to demand the appointment, but still.

  Harvey had been thrilled about the trip, especially the car ride. He loved the vet nurse who took his details, and showed her his sore right paw. She made sooky noises at him and told him he was a brave boy, and he looked up at me with his ears back and his eyes half closed, doing a slow pant—his grin looked suspiciously triumphant today.

  The vet, an older woman with curly gray hair and kind eyes came in with a clipboard in hand. “This must be Harvey.”

  “Yes,” I said, and shook her hand. “And I’m Finn.”

  “We haven’t seen Harvey here at the clinic before?”

  “He’s not actually my dog. He was a stray and we’ve taken him in for now.”

  “You’ve rung the shelters?”

  I nodded. “And left our number at them all. But in the meantime, I just wanted to see if he needed any shots or anything.”

  “T
hat’s very responsible of you, Finn.”

  I didn’t tell her it was mainly concern for the welfare of my household in case Harvey had anything contagious…

  She whipped out a handheld device. “I can also see if he’s micro-chipped.” She held the device near his ear then shook her head. “Unfortunately not, but it was worth a try.”

  At the end of the checks and injections, she said, “Is there anything else you’re worried about with him?”

  I looked down at the dog. “He sometimes limps and acts like he has a sore paw, but I think it comes and goes.”

  “Which one?”

  “Front left,” I said without thinking, because that was the paw he’d shown Scarlett and Amelia. But a little while ago, he’d shown the vet nurse his front right paw. Hadn’t he? “Actually, I’m not sure.”

  She picked up Harvey’s front left paw and did a thorough inspection, followed by the same for the front right. “I can’t find anything, and he doesn’t seem to be reacting as if he has pain in either paw, but perhaps it isn’t acting up for him just now.”

  Harvey glanced over at me, giving me his satisfied slow pant.

  “Could he be faking it?” I asked.

  She put her hands on her hips and looked at him. “Possibly. Border Collies are very intelligent, and since he’s been a stray he might have learned that pretending to be injured gets better results when he begs for food.”

  Aha. I knew it.

  The vet grabbed some dog treats. “Would you like a treat, Harvey? Have you been a good boy?”

  Harvey stilled, then held up his front left paw and whined. The vet held back a smile as she said gently, “Do you have a sore paw? You poor boy.”

  Harvey stood and did a limping circuit of my legs before sitting in front of the vet, once again holding his paw in the air. The vet laughed and gave him the treats. “Yep, I’d say you have an exceedingly intelligent dog on your hands, and he’s learned how to manipulate people into giving him sympathy food.” She rubbed the top of his head. “Good for you, Harvey.”