The Hierarchy of Needs (The Portland Rebels #2) Read Free Page B

send the customers away happy. Making sure we get new ones.” He frowned. “Avoiding fights with my dad.”
    He took another sip of his beer. It left behind a slick trail on the curve of his lower lip.
    She wasn’t staring at it. She wasn’t.
    “You two not getting along?”
    Dean had worked in his father’s garage since they finished high school. He never went to college, although Jamie didn’t think that was what he’d wanted. It was a subject they danced carefully around.
    “We’re fine. I’m just not working on cars that much anymore. I spend more time doing paperwork than anything else.” He lifted his arm, encouraging her to sit up. “Looks like you’re running low.”
    He reached for a fresh beer and handed it to her. The move effectively ended that line of conversation.
    Jamie knocked back what was left in her bottle before cracking open the next one, hazarding a glance at the twenty-four-pack’s cardboard casing as she swallowed. A dozen empty ones were already inside it. She wondered how many he’d had.
    “What about you?” he asked. “How are things going?”
    His words were polite. Restrained. As if they hadn’t spent the summer hanging out together. But they hadn’t been alone like this in a long time. Maybe he was trying to distract himself with conversation too.
    Or maybe it was her wretched, horny imagination.
    “Awesome,” she said dryly. “My brothers are here. Making me crazy.”
    “Wedding stuff?”
    “Not really,” she said, although it had put her on overload lately. Constant calls to the house from the country club’s catering manager. Her mother showing off the portfolio of the fabulous photographer she’d hired to come up from Boston.
    But it wasn’t so much that as it was Sean, Brendan and Owen, and the reminder of their accomplishments: Dartmouth. Yale School of Medicine. Graduations celebrated with Latin honors and champagne.
    They were thriving, flourishing, while she was…stuck.
    “Something happens when we’re all home,” she said, not wanting to uncover that particular wound. “We revert back to children.”
    “You playing tricks on them again?”
    Jamie grinned. “A bit, yeah.”
    “Siblings. I’d say I understand, but—” He shrugged. Threw her a lazy grin. Dean was an only child. And his parents had split long ago.
    “Be glad. I wouldn’t wish three brilliant older brothers on anyone.”
    “Yeah,” he said with a hard glance at the fire. “Family is totally overrated.”
    The edge of sarcasm in his voice was as stiff as the set of his jaw. Lately, Dean looked tired. There was a weight on him now, a heaviness she hadn’t seen in the cocky teenager she’d met in the back row of detention.
    He was handsome even then, sexy in a way most sixteen-year-old boys weren’t. He was a rebel too—tattoo hidden under his sleeve, no interest in school and a smirk that made even the teachers blush. Seeing him walk into her Fundamentals of Art class the next semester had been a hell of a shock, almost as surprising as the handful of photographs he’d pushed across the battered table and asked if she thought they were any good.
    They were better than good. They were amazing.
    She’d showed him her drawings in return, her hands shaking with the kind of nerves usually reserved for a swim meet. Relief was too weak an emotion to describe how she felt when he paged through them, handed them back and said they were awesome.
    Aside from their teacher, Dean was the only person Jamie ever shared them with.
    Her artwork wasn’t something she wanted to risk with too many people. She told her teammates and parents she was taking the class for the easy A, and she’d never breathed a word of it to her brothers. Good thing too. Her rejection letters would’ve tipped the scales even farther in their direction.
    “They’ll be out of your hair in a few days,” he said. “And then life will go back to normal.”
    “Normal. Swim lessons.” She stuck out her tongue.