Her Protector

Mae

I dumped an ungodly amount of sugar into the strong black coffee that tasted and smelled like jet fuel. The restaurant my dear brother had picked for us to eat breakfast served the worst coffee on the planet. I should have remembered that fact before I took that first sip that nearly sent me into convulsions.

“Do you want some coffee with your sugar?” Patrick asked with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

“This is not coffee. This shit is nasty.”

“You’re uppity with your coffee,” he replied, taking a sip of the muddy water. “It tastes fine.”

Once I had doctored my coffee with enough cream and sugar to turn it a milky brown, I got down to business. “We need to up the game,” I said.

He acted as if he didn’t hear me. I stared into his green eyes, which were just a shade darker than my own. He was my big brother and a lot of people commented on how much we looked alike. I supposed we did but he was painted with a darker hue. My fair blond hair compared to his darker shade. My fair skin and his olive tone. But we had the same high cheekbones, which I loved as a woman, but he wasn’t quite as thrilled.

“I don’t want to up anything,” he replied before taking a bite of crispy bacon. “We’re doing fine.”

“But we could be doing better. If we could get a bigger storefront in a better part of town, we could really be raking in the cash. We have some great pieces in our inventory, but no one knows because no one knows us.”

He shrugged. “Mae, we make enough money selling the pieces we do get. I don’t like the idea of an antiques store. That is so old fashioned. I don’t want to be the guy wearing an ugly sweater vest and roaming around piles of old dusty things.”

I rolled my eyes. “That is so dumb. And so stereotypical.”

“And so true. The majority of antique shops we visit have a guy exactly like that.”

“That’s the problem,” I said, glad he had brought it up. “We need to quit shopping around at other shops and find some actual dealers.”

“We’re doing fine,” he argued.

“Well, yes, but we could do better. Let me put my marketing degree to use. Let me market the business and make some real money.”

He didn’t look like he cared. That was because he didn’t. “We’re fine,” he insisted.

“Yes, we are fine, but I would like to be better than fine.”

“Look, we make enough to pay our bills. Neither of us is living hand to mouth. We don’t have to report to some corporate asshole. We get to do our thing and live without anyone breathing down our necks. If we get bigger, then we deal with bigger clients. We will have to have investors that bitch and moan about every little thing. I like our business just the way it is.”

“But it could be so much more,” I insisted.

He shrugged. “It’s more than what Dad left to me.”

I rolled my eyes. “First of all, he didn’t leave it. He abandoned it, and secondly, he left you a pile of shit that was in the red.”

“Exactly. Now it’s better.”

“But it could be more. We need to think about our future. We need to think about Hayden’s future. God knows our parents are not thinking about anyone but themselves.”

“We’ll take care of Hayden,” he said without committing to helping me make the company bigger and better.

“I’ve got to run,” I said and took one last sip of the nasty coffee. “I’ll meet you at the office later.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to brave the den of nastiness and try to find that book Dad had with all his contacts,” I told him.

He cringed. “You’re going to their house?”

“I have asked Dad for the thing a million times. He always says he’ll drop it by the office and then he never does. I want those contacts. If we can find a source that hasn’t been tapped into in a while, we could maybe find some real gems.”

“Good luck. If you don’t show up to the office by the end of the day, I’ll send out a search party.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the help.”

“I’m not going there. I won’t go there.”

I nodded. “I know,” I said, touching his shoulder before walking out of the restaurant.

Patrick couldn’t be in the same room with our parents. There had been too much said and done between them. He was the oldest and had shouldered the bulk of the stress growing up in that house. He’d always protected me. He’d always made sure I was safe and had something to eat on days my parents disappeared.

Our family used to be normal. I missed normal. I missed the days we would take vacations that were actually work trips for my father to collect antiques for the business. I didn’t mind that it had been a little work mixed with pleasure. Our mom had kept us busy and we had a good childhood.

Then one day, we didn’t. My dad picked up the bottle and my mother picked up a bottle of pills. There was no turning back once that started. There had been a happy break when my mom found out she was pregnant with our little sister, Hayden Marie. I had been fifteen and thrilled. Patrick had been less thrilled. He was already out of the house at that point but came back because he didn’t trust our parents to take care of a baby. They did. They pulled their shit together and things had been great for a few years.

Until they weren’t.