Never Marry Your Brother's Best Friend (Never Say Never, #1)

Luna pushes her glasses up onto her head, looking at me closely. “Seriously? Renoir and Rembrandt both start with R, but that’s about where the similarities end. A trick I used with the outreach kids is to remember that Rembrandt has a D in his name, so his paintings were darker. Literally, the backgrounds are darker and there’s an ominous nature to them. Renoir sounds a little like air, and his paintings are light as air, showing the activity of a bustling Paris. Does that help?”


I flop back on the couch, a concerning creak sounding out from somewhere under the quilt. I consider that I might end up on my ass in more than one way . . . from Luna’s couch breaking beneath me and with Mrs. Cartwright if I can’t sort this out.

I rub my eyes with the heels of my palms, appreciating the sparkles behind my lids as much, if not more than, all the art flashcards. “This is never going to work. It’s going to be worse than my just admitting I know nothing about art. I wish you could just come with me. You could do the art talk, and I could do the money talk.”

Luna laughs, thinking I’m kidding.

But . . . I sit up suddenly, struck with my brilliance. “That’s it! It’s perfect!”

Still shaking her head at the idea, Luna says, “No way. Nopity, nope, nope. No freakin’ way, count me out. And did I mention . . . no.”

I stand up, the idea taking shape in my mind. “We could say that you’re my assistant and working with me for the portfolio management presentation.”

Luna stands up too, her beloved cards falling to the floor. She’s a good foot shorter than me, but that doesn’t stop her from putting her hands on her hips and squaring up. “Your assistant? Why? Because I’m young? Or because I’m a woman?” She shakes her head, the messy bun on her head flopping around wildly. “I shouldn’t be surprised from you.”

“What?” I have no idea what she’s upset about. I only meant that could be a cover story so she could go with me to Mrs. Cartwright’s for the meeting, but she’s acting angrier than a honey badger.

She’s mumbling under her breath, and I strain to make out what she’s saying. It sounds like, “Assistant? Unbelievable! Just because I have a vajayjay doesn’t mean all I’m good for is taking notes and looking pretty. Not that I’m pretty.”

“You’re very pretty, Luna,” I reply, surer that I heard that part correctly than the rest of it.

She stomps her foot like a pissed off gnome. I definitely do not notice that it makes her shapely thighs and voluptuous breasts wobble as she does it because Zack would cut my dick off for looking at his little sister that way. Still . . .

“You should go now,” she orders flatly.

“Wait. I’m sorry. We were doing well with the cards. Maybe we can flip through them a bit more?” I bend down to pick them up, but the suggestion falls on deaf ears as Luna strides toward the door, giving me her back as answer.

“Tomorrow, then?” I try as she opens the door. I consider that she might actually bodily shove me out and for a moment think that I’d like to see her try. Her fire is intriguing, especially when it pops up unexpectedly, taking her from quiet and bookish to badass and confident in an instant. But I squash that idea down quickly.

“I work tomorrow. Good luck scamming the old lady out of her money, Carter.”

And with that, she yanks the cards from my hand and shuts the door in my face. I stand there in shock, not sure how everything went wrong. Well, it started wrong, but we were doing well there for a while. Until it all went haywire again.

But Harringtons aren’t quitters, and if I let a small setback derail me every time one came up, I’d never be a successful businessman. I saw Luna’s passion for art and her need for money, and I’m not above using those things to persuade her to continue to help me.





CHAPTER

FOUR





LUNA





“Whew, I’m glad that tour is done!”

School field trip groups are typically my favorite visitors to the art museum where I work, because the younger kids are so unfiltered and the older kids are usually art lovers already.

But the group I had this afternoon was a doozy. One kid kept trying to touch the paintings, and another was making inappropriate comments about every centuries-old sculpture. He even pretended to spank a dyad’s ass.

And the poor teacher was trying to be in five places at once with octopus arms to keep each kid safely corralled while preventing damage to the museum’s pieces.

So I’m admittedly grateful to see that particular school bus pulling away.

“Well, I hope your tank still has some gas in it, girl. You’ve got a four o’clock tour now,” Maeve informs me.

Maeve is basically the boss of the museum. She usually stays buried in the administrative tasks, keeping us funded and running. But it’s not unusual to see her walking the floor, her colorful outfits almost works of art themselves. Today, her gray hair is pulled back to give her teal hat the spotlight, which matches her multi-colored wrap dress and contrasts with her bright red loafers and lipstick. She’s what every cool sixty-year-old woman dreams of being on their best day.

Shoot, she’s what I dream of being at twenty-three.

“A four o’clock? That wasn’t on the schedule this morning.” I look at my phone to confirm. Nope, schedule clear. And after the insanity of my last three-hour tour, I was looking forward to a cold cereal dinner with a fruit punch, truly like a real adult after a long day, not another couple of hours of WWE-meets-art lecture with kids who scatter like wolf spider babies.

Please let it be a couple of tourists who want a show-and-tell tour.

“It was booked today, actually. A private tour at that, with a special request for you as the guide,” she confides slyly. I know what she’s thinking . . . the cost of a private tour will be a boon for the monthly museum budget.

But I have a sinking suspicion that I know exactly who would book a private, last-minute tour with me.

An hour later, my suspicions are confirmed when I arrive at the main desk only to find Carter there, leaning against the counter and at least halfway to charming the panties off the receptionist with his toothpaste-commercial smile and naughty-glint eyes.

Before he notices me, I take a moment to look him up and down. He’s objectively attractive, of course, but I’ve always felt that there’s something dark beneath his squeaky-clean exterior.

For him, I think he’s dressed casually in slacks that are likely part of his daily suit and a button-up shirt that he’s undone at the throat after ditching the tie. Vaguely, I wonder if he ever gets down and dirty, and an image of him climbing into bed in one of those old-man, two-piece matching pajama sets makes me giggle internally.

Right at that moment, it’s like he senses me because he looks my way, catching me grinning like a loon right at him. Of course, he thinks I’m smiling because he’s here, the idea that I’m laughing at him never once occurring to him.

“Well, hello, Luna,” he drawls out, seeming pleased to see me. Or tickled that he’s busted me mooning over him like the receptionist and every other woman he encounters.