Choosing the Right Man - Nice Girl to Love, Vol 3 (Can't Resist #3)(7)

Smug bastard. Pivoting, Brian got control of one of Connor’s legs and rolled. But Connor was ready for him. He twisted out and shoved forward, slamming Brian back into a guard position, crushing down until Brian felt his lungs trying to breathe around his own knees.

The fricker was pulling jiu jitsu on him. Brian almost laughed out loud. Damn if he wasn’t starting to have fun. “You learned MMA,” he managed to gasp out as he freed his legs and hooked one back for a sweep, tangling Connor up into a quick chokehold. “That’s a little extreme. Couldn’t you just have gotten Abby more of those obnoxious flower arrangements throughout the past six months instead?”

In the next instant, he saw stars. Connor’s foot clipped him on the side of the head with surprising viciousness. His own fault, really, for insulting the man about his flowers and all.

This time Brian did laugh. And he just kept laughing as they kept right on grappling and basically making a huge mess out of the lawn.

Served their mother right for instigating this.

Brian would have to remember to thank her on the way out.

Because her devious plan was working. After who knows how long later—between jabs, kicks, joint-locks and the occasional uncalled-for punch for shits and giggles—they’d managed to talk their way through to a semi-tolerable compromise. Or an understanding, at least. And all it took was a few bruised organs, and maybe a majorly sprained ligament or two.

“I knew it! Stop it, both of you!”

Brian peeked out from under the dirt-covered forearm smothering his face and saw Abby racing toward them, shouting panicked, irate curses along the way. When they simply ignored her and clocked each other with another set of bell-ringing blows, she then did the unbelievable.

She dropped an atomic f-bomb on their asses.

Both of the brothers froze.

“Get up! Now!” Uh oh, she was busting out the teacher voice and the mom voice in one. So not good.

Brian quickly yanked his knee off of the side of Connor’s neck and Connor instantly stopped trying to make Brian’s elbow triple-jointed.

“What the heck are you two doing?!” she barked in all her lioness glory. “You’re grown men behaving like children!”

Connor gave him a look that said, ‘You take this.’

To which, Brian silently shot back a, ‘Hell no.’

With a drawn-out sigh, his stupidly brave brother offered a quick and very vague, “We were just ironing out the details of our plan regarding this...errr, situation we have on our hands.”

Brian took an ever so subtle step back.

Abby swung the entirety of her frustration over to Connor with the weight of a falling axe. “So let me get this straight, you were ironing out a plan—with your fists—that affects all three of us, and you failed to include me in the discussion?”

Her eyes narrowed when both brothers chose to treat that as a rhetorical question. Of course their silent solidarity seemed to rile her up even more. “Okay, enlighten me—what’s this brilliant plan the two of you came up with?”

Crap, don’t answer that!

“Well—”

Huh, Connor the great, slayer of the impossible court trials actually sounded nervous about presenting his case. If Brian weren’t smack dab at the center of the shit storm that was about to hit the fan, he’d be wholly entertained by the exchange.

“Since we know that you didn’t exactly have a normal ‘courtship’ with either one of us…”

Yeah, maybe another step back just to be safe.

“Brian and I decided that we could have a joint custody dating agreement with you.” Connor looked over to his side and did a double take when he saw he was standing there alone.

Abby exploded. “Joint custody dating agreement?! Of all the ridiculous, insulting plans you two could have cooked up,” she fisted her two tiny hands on her hips and looked ready to throw some blows of her own. “Of all the asinine solutions to our problems, this is what you guys came up with? A surefire way to get us guest spots on a talk show?!”

Finally, Brian re-engaged. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. ‘Joint custody’ was probably a poor choice of words.” He glared over at his brother. “We haven’t established any ground rules beyond a few basic tenets but basically, all it means is that we’ll just do some regular non-exclusive dating. The kind most normal couples do before getting into anything serious.”

“Non-exclusive meaning you guys are going to date whoever you want?”

“No,” they replied in unison.

She lifted an eyebrow. “So…non-exclusive meaning I’ll date whoever I want?”

“No!” This time it was a dolby-rich shout in stereo.

“Just us,” growled Connor.

“Which is where the joint custody part comes in,” added Brian when she simply stared at them like they were out of their minds. “We’ll switch off weeks. And promise not to interfere or contact you when it’s not our week. Until you’ve made your decision.”

“Oh, well that makes more sense. So you weren’t thinking a feature in a talk show, you two were thinking more along the lines of the world’s weirdest, most awkward reality dating show—The Bachelorette, the totally twisted and wrong edition. Lovely.” She skewered them with a look.

“It’s no different than regular dating,” argued Connor.