002

I took my backpack off my shoulder and looked at the furnishings. I shrugged one shoulder. "It looks like a hotel room," I said, and then realized I wasn't being very polite. "But it's nice."

Jack frowned at me. He probably thought I was a rude, smart-mouthed kid. Phoenix just laughed.

"Um, where's the bathroom?"

"Oh yeah, just out here," he stepped back out to the hallway and pointed to the door at the very end. "That's our shared bathroom."

"Okay, thank you." I squeezed my way in between them and made a beeline for the washroom. I could still feel their eyes on me as I shut the door and locked it behind me. I leaned back against it and took a deep breath. Yikes, that was a lot of testosterone.

"Just breathe, Robyn. Everything was going to be fine," I tried to calm myself. I was sure those guys had their own housing somewhere in the city, and I would only have to deal with them at the occasional holiday or family dinner.

And besides that, we wouldn't be here that long. Six months, maybe eight at most, and we would be moving on, just Like always. So the two drop-dead gorgeous men out in the hallway were a non-issue.

I moved to the toilet and was just pulling down my leggings when there was a heavy knock on the door, making it shake on its hinges.

"Hey princess," Phoenix's deep voice boomed through the thin door. "Make sure you're ready to go by six-thirty. Dad hates to be late."

Phoenix POV

La Forge was a ritzy place, so I had to change from my t-shirt into a dress shirt, and trade out my comfortable gym shorts for a pair of charcoal grey slacks. Dad was really pulling out the big guns to try and impress his new girlfriend.

I didn't have much of an opinion on Denise. Frankly, I was happy that Pops was getting out into the dating world again. As long as this woman treated him right and made him happy, who was I to interfere?

Jack was a little less open to the whole live-in situation. He was fiercely overprotective of our father, and he was certain that Denise was just another scheming woman after our father's money.

I'll admit that it was moving suspiciously fast. Two months was a pretty short span of dating before deciding to move in together. But Dad insisted that at his age, time was short, and you had to make the most of it. Besides that, he'd known this woman a long time. Her late husband had also been a professor from the sciences department at the university. So it wasn't like she was a total stranger he had picked up on the street.

And, the new girlfriend came with a kid. Dad said she was a teenager, but he didn't specify how old she was. She came to the door behind her mother wearing an oversized hoodie with the hood pulled down over her face. The sweater fell to her thighs, and under that she wore a pair of black leggings. She had very small feet and wore a pair of black rubber flip flops. She was a tiny thing in her all-black ensemble, so I guessed that our new housemate was probably a fourteen-year-old goth-girl.

But it was cool. I actually thought it would be kind of fun to have a kid around the house. Jack, though...he thought it was just going to be trouble.

We all gathered at the bottom of the stairs, and the goth girl came down last. She hadn't bothered to change her clothes, a fact that made my father frown. He liked things to be very neat and proper. He probably would have preferred if the kid had come down in a nice dress and a pair of patent Mary Janes on her little feet. However, being that this was their first night, he was forced to be cordial and ignore the fashion faux pas.

"Shall we?" He held open the door, and ushered everyone outside.

"We're going to take Jack's car," I said as I brushed by him. "We'll meet you at the restaurant."

Jack drove a very respectable looking blue Impala. Nothing too flashy or attention-grabbing for my brother. Perfect for going out to dinner at a fancy-shmancy restaurant with the family. Unlike my big pick-up truck with the lift and extra large tires and a souped-up engine.

We wove through traffic at a mad speed, straight through downtown Rutberg, to the big brick building that housed La Forge. Jack pulled up to the valet parking attendant and climbed out of the vehicle, dropping the keys in the uniformed woman's hand. I smirked when I saw the way her eyes followed his backside.

Jack had that effect on women, without even trying.

We had to hang around outside of the door while we waited for Dad. A few minutes later, he pulled up in his BMW. Immediately my eyes were drawn to the small dark figure that exited from the back seat. When they were almost to the door, her mother elbowed her. "At least take your hood off, Robbi!"

With a sigh, Robyn reached up and pulled down her hood, exposing her hair and her face. She had thick, rich brown hair that was artlessly piled up on top of her head, leaving bits and pieces to fall around her angelic face. Her eyes were large and wide-set, giving her an exaggeratedly innocent look. Her nose was small and pert, and her lips were sweet and plump, even though they were pressed into an unhappy expression. There were freckles across her cheeks, and even without make-up, she was devastatingly beautiful.

Nope, not a fourteen-year-old.

In fact, if my father hadn't specifically called her a teenager, I would have guessed her to be in her twenties, somewhere near our age. Despite her innocent look, there was a certain maturity about her gaze. I glanced at my brother and saw that he was also staring at her, his expression a little dumbfounded.

I almost laughed out loud at the irony of it. She was exactly our type. And she was completely off-limits.

The hostess greeted my father. Dad was a regular at La Forge, and had been able to secure a reservation, even though there was a waiting list for the restaurant. The woman led us through the dining room to a round table near the center of the room.