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sugar-o’s on her lap and wielding the remote control, the
brothers filed into the home office. Ben carried the cordless phone.
    “You want to dial and I’ll pick up?” Jerry asked, hand
already on the desk phone’s handset.
    Ben studied the sleek, black phone in his grip and turned
it over and over in his hand. “In a moment.” He met his brother’s blue gaze,
and chose his words carefully. “Can I ask for your counsel on something?”
    Jerry furrowed his brow and sank slowly into the leather
desk chair. “Must be serious. Your voice just dropped half an octave.”
    Ben chuckled and set the phone on the desk. He jammed his
hands into the pockets of his shorts and strode across the room to the picture
window. As it was twilight, he couldn’t see much beyond the illuminated garage,
above which he temporarily resided, and the small lights that marked off the
boundaries of the in-ground pool.
    Jerry was a lucky man, and a smart one. He purchased the
land cheap at auction and had the house built to spec thanks to his
considerable savings from the career he had before he was N-by-N’s tech guy.
    Jerry had dropped out of college to surf professionally
and modeled on the side to pay his rent and subsidize his travel. The modeling
was the far more lucrative gig. He did that for several years before being
frustrated by the vagrancies of the industry. He basically dropped out of
modeling without warning, leaving a number of his old contractors confused. He
didn’t pose again until last year when Nikki strong-armed him into some N-by-N
promo stills. That’s how Ben had
found his mother’s long lost son.
    “How do you know if a woman is worth pursuing?” Ben turned
around from the window just in time to see Jerry’s eyes widen.
    “You’re asking me ?”
    Ben shrugged. “You’ve done pretty well.”
    Jerry barked with laughter. “You think I planned that? I
didn’t pursue Trinity and she didn’t pursue me. Not really, anyway. We hooked
up because we got sick of antagonizing each other. Got tedious.”
    “But you love her.”
    A dreamy smile spread across his brother’s face.
“Absolutely. Pretty sure she returns the sentiment.”
    “Hmm.” Ben turned his back to the room and looked out the
window once more. “But before her, certainly there were other women.”
    “Yeah.”
    When Jerry didn’t elaborate Ben turned his face toward him
and cocked up a brow. “Nothing serious?”
    Jerry shrugged. “I was a professional beach bum. Traveled
a lot. When I moved back home, no one really held my interest. Hell, took me
two years to pay attention to Trinity.”
    “What did she do that finally got your attention?”
    A wolfish grin.
    “Tell me.”
    “She tried to tame me. Failed, obviously, but the gall
woke me up, that’s for sure. Why? Got some ladies on the hook back in Belgium?”
    Ben shook his head. “Like you, I’m on the go too much for
anything serious. I’m just wondering now because I’d like to have a home.
Settle down somewhere.”
    “Anywhere in particular?”
    Ben leaned his back against the window and crossed his
arms over his chest. “Maybe here.”
    “Of all the places in the US you could relocate to, you’d
pick a tiny patch of unincorporated dirt in northeastern North Carolina. Why?”
    Ben opened his mouth to respond, but realized he had no
answer. Why? Well, why did his heart beat? Why did he swallow in his sleep? Why
did he close his eyes when he sneezed? Because that’s the way he was
made—what he was programmed to do. “Wouldn’t you like me being nearby?”
He already knew the answer, but felt the question had to be asked anyway.
    “Hell yeah, I’d love you being around as Trinity and I
start a family, but what about Clara?”
    Ben blew out a long, shuddering breath. Moeder . She’d already lost one son to
the US, but to lose the one she raised single-handedly, too? The woman would
probably fade away from the unfairness of it all. “I’ll have to make her
understand