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lay in bed, when it was quiet and dark and all she had were her thoughts. Then she couldn’t shove him aside like she could during the day when the phone was ringing and paperwork piled up on her desk and she had a million things to do to fill her brain, so it was easy to forget about Brody.
    At bedtime, though, he wouldn’t go away. Not virtually, anyway. Resulting in a lot of restless nights spent watching reruns of her favorite television shows while eating ice cream, which kept her up all night. Which meant one cranky Tori the next day. Frankly, she didn’t know how the guys put up with her.
    It should make for an interesting annual review, which brought her back on topic of Brody.
    Oh, why did it have to be his turn to give the review? She could sit through it if Ethan or Wyatt was giving it to her. But not Brody. Their day-to-day interactions were brief, and she could deal with that. A review was intense, going over her work performance for the entire year. It would last at least an hour and would be one on one, just the two of them. Eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder.
    Gah. She should just tell him she was sick and going home early.
    Except she wasn’t a coward and putting it off wouldn’t do any good. They’d have to do this eventually. Besides, she was kind of hoping for a raise, which she needed so she could get out of that hellhole apartment. She’d blown off Brody’s suggestion that she move immediately because the area wasn’t safe, but he wasn’t too far off in his assessment of her current neighborhood. Her neighbors to the right fought all the time, and not just loud arguing, but knock-down, drag-out, throw-the-furniturevkind of fighting. The two dudes who lived on her left had people coming and going all the time. Despite Deer Lake being a small town, drugs still crept in, and she could swear those two guys were dealers. Either that or they were very popular.
    She’d settle for a nice, quiet place. Maybe she could finagle her way into a senior citizen’s center. Or maybe Brody’s parents would let her bunk at their house. She loved Roger and Stacy Kent. When she’d first gone to work for Kent Construction, she’d been closed up, emotionally as well as physically. But Ethan, Wyatt and Brody—and especially Stacy Kent, the guys’ mother—had changed all that, had given her the bond of a family she’d so desperately craved her whole life and never had. Her own family had certainly been lacking. Cold and remote, her father had never been a presence in her life, and had taken off permanently after her parents had divorced. Not only had he not wanted her mother, he’d clearly had no use for his daughter, either. Her mother, on the other hand, had leaned heavily on Tori after the divorce, her emotional upheavals a burden that had been difficult for a young Tori to bear.
    Tori hadn’t regretted leaving that suffocating atmosphere as soon as she’d been old enough. Her mother had latched on to a new guy and she and Tori rarely spoke anymore, which suited Tori just fine.
    Stacy’d been more the parent than her mother had been. So getting close to the Kents, especially Stacy, had been like grabbing on to a desperately needed lifeline.
    She loved the Kents. They were the normal family she craved. She really did think of Wyatt and Ethan as her brothers.
    Changing the status quo in any way could put her out in the cold again, leaving her all alone.
    She’d had plenty of alone and it sucked. She’d rather not do that again, especially not for someone like Brody, who changed women as often as he changed his underwear. It was too bad she was crazy about him and thought about him constantly. Why couldn’t she be immune?
    Then again, was any woman in Deer Lake immune? Judging from his past interactions with the women in this town, it didn’t appear so. And she had no interest in becoming another statistic. Likely the only reason Brody appeared interested in her was because she kept shutting him down.