One Week with her (Ex) Stepbrother (Eden Manor #2) by Noelle Adams Page A

cry if I didn’t help out and keep everything straight
around here.”
    “We
could hire someone.” Zach had started working at the garden shop in high
school, and he’d never stopped. His mother was a sweet but rather silly woman,
who’d fallen in love with a rich real estate developer she’d met when she’d
been visiting her sister. She’d divorced Missy’s father and moved to Atlanta,
but Zach had been eighteen by then and hadn’t wanted to leave the one place
he’d felt at home. So he’d gotten a place of his own and stuck around. Now, he
handled all of the landscaping jobs—using contract labor to help with the
larger jobs—and her dad focused on the shop.
    “No
one else would last a week, working for Dad. He’d yell at them once and scare
them out of their skin.” She frowned up at Zach. “Why? Are you trying to get
rid of me?”
    Zach
rolled his eyes and picked up Missy’s mug without asking, taking a huge swallow
of her coffee. “I know you’d rather be a full-time realtor, and I don’t want
you to be pissy at work all the time.”
    Missy
had her real estate license, and she was trying to build her business. But
there wasn’t a lot of buying and selling in this area, and there was a lot of
competition. She had to supplement her income by working for her father, but
she would have helped out anyway. She certainly didn’t want to leave her dad in
a bad situation, without anyone to handle the day-to-day administration of the
business.
    She
grabbed her coffee back from Zach, who was now sitting on her desk. “I’m not
pissy all the time.” She was a good-natured and agreeable person. Almost
everyone liked her. Zach was the only person she wanted to strangle most of the
time.
    “Well,
you are this morning. What’s going on?” His hazel eyes were mostly gray, but
today they looked almost green. He was studying her face closely, like he
wanted to see beyond her frown.
    She
could see he was genuinely concerned about her. Her heart clenched in an odd
little emotional response—affection, appreciation, familiarity, knowledge.
    He
reached out and gave her cheek a gentle little tweak, and she couldn’t look
away from him. It was clear that he knew her—saw her for who she really was—and
wanted to know even more. “What’s going on, kiddo?” he murmured.
    She
jerked away from his touch, suddenly feeling like an idiot for how she’d been
responding to him. “Would you stop calling me that? You’re only four years
older than me, you know.”
    “I
know.” His expression went back to its normal laughing insolence. “But it
wasn’t that long ago when we went to the movies and were asked if you were
under twelve and needed the kid’s discount, so you can hardly blame me.”
    Missy
sucked in an indignant breath, her cheeks blazing as she remembered that
evening four years ago. She was short with a heart-shaped face that made her
look like a doll. When coupled with her fine blond hair and blue eyes, people
always assumed she was younger than she was. She still got carded every time
she bought a drink. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like not to look so
annoyingly young.
    If
she snapped back at Zach, it would reveal how much his comment had bothered
her, so she just narrowed her eyes and looked away without speaking.
    He
leaned over to turn her head back toward him. “Hey. I was joking.”
    “I
know,” she said, raising her eyebrows and trying to look unaffected.
    “That
guy at the movies was a blind idiot. Anyone who gets a look at your body would
know in an instant that you’re not a kid. Don’t get all huffy.”
    “I’m
not all huffy.” Despite her cool words, she felt a shiver of pleasure at his
comment. She was curvy—which was her one saving grace—but she’d never known
that Zach was even aware she had a body.
    “Seriously,
what’s with you today? You’re not normally this sensitive.”
    Again,
it seemed like he really wanted to know. But she could hardly tell him