“Strong.” He grins at me, his signature brother grin, with only one side of his mouth. “If Jeremy wants to move, he’ll move. If he needs help, he’ll ask.”

I burrow deeper into the surprisingly comfortable futon. “You sound like Sophie.”

I don’t look at him but he’s rolling his eyes.

“I burned the popcorn,” Jeremy calls.

“We know,” we say in unison.

“What’d you do to Sophie?” Wes asks. The movie’s opening credits start and he presses pause again, waiting for Jer.

“Nothing,” I say, my voice high. “I didn’t do anything to her.” Except for things that could get our restaurant shut down for at least two weeks.

He stares at me from the corner of his eyes. “Weirdo.”

“She...” I clear my throat. That sick feeling is back, butterflies. She’s not even here and I’m officially a mess. “She said I tend to get a little pushy about my ideas for the restaurant.”

Wes is quiet for so long I have to look over at him. “What?”

“What else did you do?”

Last year, Wes told me about how he was falling for his now girlfriend, then boss. My stomach still churns over the way I handled it. It’s not that I thought she wasn’t good enough for him, or that she was even taking advantage of him.

No one is good enough for my brother. To me, he’ll always be the kid who waited for me outside the bathroom because I couldn’t stand to let anyone see me cry about Dad missing another dance recital. Until we were teenagers, Mom would find us curled up in each other’s beds after thunderstorms and loud fights between our parents.

It’s never occurred to me that he might feel the same way about any of the women I’ve dated, but what if he does? What if I tell him about her and he doesn’t love her immediately? Until I remember: whatever Sophie and I are, it’s not serious. We’re not dating.

What my brother thinks doesn’t matter.

“I didn’t do anything. We...” I shrug and look anywhere but at my brother’s face. “We...”

Wes whips off his glasses, digging the heels of his hands into eyes. “Yup. Yup. Nope. I got it. I get it. Let’s not...”

I laugh, high and shrill, and he stops his fidgeting to stare at me. He smiles, slow and wide and far too self-assured. If he was a cat, he’d be picking canary feathers out from between his teeth. “You like her.”

Alarm bells. “No.” My reaction is knee jerk.

“Yes,” he says with the assuredness that comes from knowing a person like the back of your own hand.

“It’s complicated.”

“Sleeping with your boss always is.” He puts his socked feet up on Jeremy’s worn coffee table.

Defensiveness surges in me at the idea that Sophie’s role in our restaurant might be misrepresented. “Excuse you? She’s not my boss. At most we’re both bosses. She’s the boss of the kitchen. I’m the boss of...everything.”