Eight Brothers' Fiancée: A Reverse Harem Romance (Love by Numbers Book 7) Page 5

  My skin covered with goosebumps. He was just like the Harley in my dream, the one whose hands took a cross-country trip across my body. “Well, just don’t look too hard. I’m not afraid to hunt a Foxx.”

  As Harley looked away, I could see the dimples that bookended his smile. “What do you do if you come upon a Foxx that likes to be hunted?”

  I didn’t answer the question, I knew what he was getting at. I couldn’t give in to any innuendos or attempts to make our relationship anything other than professional. I could get a good-looking guy from anywhere, I didn’t want the Foxxes to think I was a ‘casting couch’ anchor.

  The elevator made it to the main floor and the doors opened. My attempt to bolt from the elevator, and my growing arousal, was interrupted by someone standing waiting for the elevator. I’d seen women like her walking runways all over the country. She had hair that tickled her waist and honey-golden eyes I felt like I could jump into. As she took me in, her indifferent expression faded to something more sinister.

  “Hello,” she greeted. “And who might you be?” She stepped back, allowing Harley and I to deboard the elevator.

  “Um,” I held out a hand. “Hi. I’m Alexa Storm. The new… um.”

  “She’s our new company liaison and the head anchor at Foxx Media,” Harley replied for me.

  The woman stuck out her hand, smiling and somehow appearing less welcoming than when she wasn’t. “Nice to meet you, Alexa. I’m Malia La Dionne.” She stuck her nose in the air. “Soon to be Malia Foxx.” She looked over at Harley. “I hope my future husband didn’t take up too much of your time.”

  Future… husband? The main thing I felt was shock, but there was a tinge of disappointment I was attempting to mentally murder with a butter knife.

  “Nice to meet you,” I responded, taking her hand and shaking it.

  As soon as we were done shaking hands, Malia released me and immediately laced her arm into Harley’s. “Well, if it’s quite alright with you, I’ll steal him back now.”

  I chuckled awkwardly. “He’s yours to steal, so…” A quick look at Harley revealed he was less than thrilled with the situation, but it was none of my business. “Thank you again, Mr. Foxx. I will see you tomorrow.”

  Harley nodded. “Yes, you will.”

  8

  Rogan

  I took a deep breath as I felt the morning sun wash over my skin. There weren’t many things in the world that I loved doing more than taking a run first thing in the morning, especially when my brain was as scattered as it was. My brothers were all men that appreciated when things were at their most dramatic or chaotic, but I was a far more mellow spirit. I expected my brothers to freak out when they discovered their head anchor was stealing their money and using it to do whatever the hell she felt like, but instead some convoluted plan popped into their heads. Harley needed to be working on figuring out how to not marry a woman he didn’t want tobe with, Huxley needed to be working on figuring out how to help his news program recover from the mountains of negative publicity it had received, and the rest of us needed to be working on keeping our own companies out of the crossfire; instead we were completely upheaving our combined business models to chase after one of Harley and Huxley’s college crushes. Fantastic.

  That said, I couldn’t deny that my brothers had good taste and were fortunate enough that the object of their affections happened to be very successful in the field they needed her to be successful in. She was intelligent, a spitfire, and definitely beautiful. My brothers had been talking about her like she was the finest thing since sliced bread, and at first I didn’t see it. I’d see some of her stories and had googled pictures of her, but she wasn’t all that impressive to me. Seeing her in real life was an entirely different ball game. She had a certain allure in person that no pictures or show seemed to be able to capture. It was particularly enticing the way she didn’t seem impressed by the Foxx presence. I imagined that’s what attracted the twin in the first place, and I knew that the more time she spent entrenched in our business, the more she would start to grab all of our attention.

  I decided to take a different route than usual on my run. I typically left my condo, took a left, and ran down towards Foxx Towers. I could make a lap around the large quarter of downtown blocks that Foxx Towers sat in the middel of, and get in about a mile and half. The media had been hanging around the Towers ever since the news broke about the head anchor, so it made more sense to stay away from that area for the time being. Each day was a little adventure, finding new routes to satisfy my distance.

  I got to where I would normally turn and head into downtown, and took a left towards the park instead. I generally avoided the park, due to the copious amounts of children, bikes, and animals on walks, but it was an okay alternative to the media zoo. I made my way down the tree topped boulevard with beautiful, deep green canopies of leaves blocking out the sun. A late summer morning in Texas was hot enough to steam rain off a sidewalk, so the shady rue was welcome. I settled into a comfortable pace, and was just about to check out and just let my legs and subconscious do the work, when a new runner turned onto my path. In most circumstances, I would steer away from any other runner, but as the sun streaks caught her face, I noticed who it was, and smiled.

  I picked up my pace as the runner in front of me developed her own speed until I was running right next to her. She looked over at me and offered me a warm smile. “Mr. Foxx”

  “Hello Miss Storm,” I greeted. “I wasn’t aware you lived so close to our enterprise.”

  I tried to keep my eyes on Alexa’s face despite the fact that she was wearing a pair of running shorts, that just barely covered her ass, and a tank top that offered a fair amount of cleavage. She was doing the same thing to me that she had done to be back in my brother’s office during her interview. She was commanding in person, even just in the way that she watched you through her steely, gray eyes, daring you to make a move. She was a truly intriguing creature.

  “You can call me Alexa,” she said, grinning.

  “Rogan.” We pressed on down the boulevard, past the park, and down to a point where I knew it’d be a two mile hike back, but I didn’t care.

  “Well, Rogan, thanks to you and your brothers, I’m relocating to a place much closer than my current apartment.

  “Ah, so you decided to take us up on our offer to home you somewhere closer?”

  “Based on my new job descriptions, it’ll be good for me to be as close as possible. I went and viewed it this morning, and now I’m running down to cafe avenue and I’m gonna meet up with Sadie.”

  Sadie was one of our (Jett and mine's) newest catalog models, and also happened to be the wife of Dante, the man who owned half of Foxx enterprise due to the shady beginning dealings between his father and mine.

  “Don’t tell me you’re looking into that job offer she made you.” Sadie looked at me with wide eyes as I said it and I laughed. “Heh, it’ll be good for you to learn which brothers are closest. There’s not a thing Jett learns that doesn’t make its way to me. Harley and Huxley aren’t the only ones as tied as they are.”

  “Okay,” Alexa said, “so school me. Harley and Huxley, the twins, obviously. You and Jett?”

  “Quentin and Keaton, but it’s really because Quentin is the only one who tolerates Keaton.”

  “What’s wrong with Keaton?”

  I sighed, thinking of my aloof, stubborn ‘surfer bro’ brother. “You know that phrase ‘You can take a man out of the streets, but you can’t take the streets out of the man?’ That’s Keaton. Don’t get me wrong. He’s one of the most business-wise among us. He can look at a burning dumpster and go ‘Give me a month, and that dumpster will be worth $50,000.’ and damn it if he wouldn’t be right, but he’s stubborn, just does whatever he wants; he’s just plain difficult to deal with, but Quentin and Keaton just make a good pair. Keaton picks out a block of ice to sell to eskimos and Quentin convinces em to pay stock, plus tax and overhead. Thanks to Quentin, Keaton can r
un rampant with his hairbrained schemes, and thanks to Keaton’s hairbrained schemes, Quentin has made more money for just being his charismatic self than anyone in America. So they stick together like glue.”

  “Hey, if it works,” Alexa responded. “So, does that leave Maverick and Delvin?”

  I nodded. “I suppose you could say that. Mav and Del…” I chuckled. “They’re good guys, but they’re both jaded to shit. They started the record label, and it grew because neither of them is afraid to get in and get their hands dirty. Part of me thinks the reason they’re so close is because the other one is the only one of us either of them sees on equal ground. If you see them start to scrap though, grab a bucket of popcorn and get as far away as possible.”

  Alexa laughed. “Wow. I imagine having seven brothers get pretty complicated. Thanks for the tips. I imagine that--”

  Before Alexa could finish her sentence, her foot caught a piece of raised pavement and she started to tumble from her feet. I reached out and grabbed her arm in just enough time to keep her from slamming that beautiful face on the concrete, but as I tried to correct her stance and get her back on her feet, she whimpered and started to stumble.

  “Okay, okay, hang on.” I clung on to her and scanned the nearby park for a place to sit. A woman sitting with her child on a bench noticed us struggling and waved us down. I carried Alexa over and helped her sit. “Thanks,” I said as the woman and her child walked away. I knelt in front of Alexa and took the foot she tripped off of up onto my knee. “You mind if I take a look?”

  Alexa tilted her head. “What are you, some sort of doctor too?”

  I smirked. Alexa wasn’t afraid to bust balls, and I liked it. “I dabble in all sorts of things. I think you’ll find that my brothers and I are all multi-talented people. A lot of what we do with our spare time is take up studies other than our main fields. That’s a trait we all got from our old man. He always says ‘The day you stop learning, you start dying.’” I noticed that there was no response from Alexa, so I looked up at her. “What?”

  She shook her head. “I guess I’m just shocked. Learning isn’t typically what your family is highlighted for in the media.”

  “Yeah, well the media is right and the media is wrong. Believe me, Miss Storm, there isn’t a thing that has hit the media that isn’t controlled by us. No such thing as bad publicity and all that? We show them what they want them to see, what’s best for us to keep us trending on Twitter, bring in the audiences. Our real lives,” I looked her straight in her eyes, “no one has seen that but us.”

  Alexa went quiet. I could tell that she was thinking seriously about what I’d said. It wasn’t a surprise to me that someone so tied up in the media industry knew my family’s reputation in the media, or even that she was willing to take it at face value knowing that everything in the media was twisted. It was a surprise that, even after everything we’d offered her, she was still willing to believe it all was true.

  Neither of us said anything else. I pulled off Alexa’s purple, Nike running shoes and her white ankle sock. A jolt of arousal immediately shot south as I held her bare foot in my hand. It was slender and smooth, with sparkling, blue paint on the toes. For a moment, my mind travelled to an image of her foot held up on my shoulder, with far more than her socks removed from her body, but I closed my eyes and pushed it away. It wasn’t the time for those kinds of thoughts.

  I pushed and prodded at Alexa’s ankle. It was already swelling, but the bones didn’t seem out of place. “It’s not sprained, but we’ll want to get some ice on it.” I looked up at her. “Can you reschedule with Sadie? My place isn’t far.”

  Alexa chuckled. “Oh no. I know the game. I’ll call a cab from here. Thank you though.”

  Had the thought of having Alexa in my house excited me a little bit? Sure. Did I have an ulterior motive in wanting her to go back to my place and ice her ankle? No. I just didn’t want it to get any worse. “There’s no game. It’s not sprained, but if you try to walk on it, it will get worse. I just want to help. Honestly.” Alexa continued to look at me through a raised eyebrow and I shrugged my shoulders. “Suit yourself.” I placed her sock and shoe on the bench next to her and then stood up. “I’ll leave you be. I just hope that, one day, you will learn we aren’t the sex crazed maniacs you think we are.”

  Without another word to Miss Storm, I turned and walked away.

  9

  Alexa

  I limped my way into the small coffee shop where I’d agreed to meet up with Sadie. It felt awkward walking up to the most stunning person in the entire building as if I was worthy of being in her presence.

  “Hey!” Sadie jumped up from the table she was sitting at. “What happened?” She linked her arm in mine and helped me to sit down at the table and then returned to her seat.

  “Running accident. I was distracted and didn’t notice a piece of uneven pavement. Thanks for rescheduling.”

  Sadie giggled. “What were you distracted by? Gorgeous guy?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Rogan Foxx.”

  Sadie nodded knowingly. “Ah. The Foxx brothers,” Sadie giggled, “they are something else aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, um. Actually, I was wondering if you could tell me more about them? How long have you been working with them?” I asked.

  Sadie took a sip of her coffee, making even it look good. “Well, I’m new to Jett and Rogan’s modeling agency, but my husband has been working with them since before we got together.” It was at that moment that I noticed the large, expensive-looking ring on Sadie’s ring finger. Whatever kind of man had landed her had to be otherworldly himself. I wondered if I’d get to meet him while working with the Foxxes. “I’ve spent my time with all of the Foxx brothers and even the head Mr. Foxx. I attended his wedding earlier this year to some woman he met in Italy.”

  “Wow. Um.”

  “Alexa?” I looked over and the barista behind the counter was holding up a cup. “S’more mocha with an extra shot?”

  “Oh.” I started to stand up and Sadie jumped up from her seat.

  “I’ve got it!” she fluttered over to the counter, grabbed the cup, and returned. “Here you go.” On top of being so beautiful, she was also really kind.

  “Thanks.” I took a sip of my coffee while Sadie settled back into her seat. “Uh, I was about to ask, what are they like? The Foxxes? You know, I see all this stuff in the media. All anyone says is that they’re selfish and rude and playboys, and I actually went to school with the twins and that’s exactly what they were like.”

  “You were friends with the twins in college?” Sadie asked with a tilt to her head.

  “Well, no, I mostly avoided them, but people talked.”

  Sadie raised an eyebrow. “So, you’ve never actually known them? I mean the media, the people at your school that talked, are those people who knew them personally?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in place. “Um, no. I don’t think so.”

  “Have you talked to anyone who has known them personally and gotten their opinion?” Sadie’s questions weren’t judgemental, just honest, true questions.

  I thought back to Garrett, Huxley’s assistant who’d gone on and on about how great the Foxxes were. “Not including you, just one.”

  “And?”

  I snickered. “He sang their praises. Couldn’t get enough of saying what great guys they were.”

  Sadie smiled. “Mr. Foxx’s wedding was at his estate in Italy. It was so extravagant, that I don’t remember the specifics, but I do remember Harley greeting me with a warm smile, Huxley bolting across the courtyard to give my husband and I an umbrella, risking his own suit. Jett and Rogan each spent a fair amount of time telling me how good I was at my job and telling me that if I was interested, they had work for me, but no pressure. Quentin and Keaton were running around bat shit making sure the wedding was going off without a hitch, and Delvin and Maverick were working the crowd like professionals. Maverick even spent some time singing to my daughter when s
he was getting antsy.”

  I nearly spit my coffee out. “You have a kid?”

  Sadie laughed. “Yeah.”

  “You don't look...like a mother,” I responded.

  “Trying to change the subject?” Sadie asked.

  I recoiled a bit. “N-no…” I sighed. “Yes, maybe a little.” Suddenly I felt two inches tall. I liked to think that I was really forward thinking; had I inappropriately gauged the Foxxes based purely on what I heard. “Good men?”

  “In my experience,” Sadie said, “they’re great. I mean, sure they’re damaged, but who isn’t? Each of my men had their own issues that we had to work through, and I had mine. Now, we’re solid.”

  I leaned forward a little bit. “Your men?”

  “Oh, sorry, I’m so used to everyone around me knowing. I actually have five husbands.”

  I blinked my eyes a couple of times. “What?”

  “Yeah. Dante, Asher, Apollo, Kane, and Brix.” She held up her ring, showing me the five different gems that encircled the band around the diamond. “One for each of them.”

  “W-wow.” I didn’t quite know how to respond. “That’s, um, great?”

  Sadie let out a loud laugh. “It’s okay. You don’t have to pretend. I know it shocks some people when they first hear it, but I’m very much in love with all of them. We’re in a relationship and it works well for us.”

  “No offense, but that sounds really overwhelming. To each their own, I’m not one to judge, but I could never have a relationship like that.”

  “It’s not for everyone, but it’s not as uncommon as you might think. I’m not trying to convert you. You said you’re not into it, and that’s totally cool, as long as it doesn’t make you think of me differently.”

  I held up my hands defensively. “Of course not! If anything I respect you even more! Those men are very lucky, anyone can see that.”