Read Online Almost in Love by Kylie Gilmore - Free Book Online Page A

on his door. He jumped up. Amber! She was the only one who popped by unannounced. He swung open the door, a smile on his face.
    “Hey, bro, can I crash here for a while?” his younger brother Ian asked.
    He lost his smile. “Sure, come in.”
    Ian dropped a duffel bag next to the sofa. His youngest brother, at twenty-four, was halfway to a doctorate in computer science at M.I.T. But Ian was notably different from Barry in one very important way. Somehow his computer nerd brother was a ladies’ man. And not just with computer science geeks, he’d even made inroads in the engineering and physics departments.
    “So what’s up? Why the visit?” Barry asked, flopping down on the sofa next to his brother.
    “Semester ended and campus cleared out.” Ian lifted his brows. “Translation: lack of babes.”
    “Ah. So do you have a job this summer?” Barry asked.
    “Nah. I thought I’d just hang.”
    Barry nodded, wondering how long Ian would “just hang” at his apartment. He’d never ask. He could never kick his little brother out. And he knew Ian found it hard to stay at their mom’s house with the memories of their dad there. Their dad had died a year ago, but it was still too painful for Ian.
    “What’s new with you?” Ian asked, tossing his messy, wavy brown hair out of his eyes. His brother always looked a little messy. His hair was much more unruly than Barry’s, not to mention the fact that Ian couldn’t be bothered to shave every day and had a thick layer of stubble.
    “Not much,” Barry said. “Working on a new app. Still working at The Dancing Cow.”
    “Cool. What’s the app about?”
    Barry explained his birding app that he hoped would help with conservation efforts and showed him the error he kept running into.
    “Let me see.” Ian took the laptop and dove into the coding. Ten minutes later, he handed it back. “Fixed.”
    “Really?” Barry took another look.
    “Your recursive loop was calling back to a variable that wasn’t even named. Are you feeling all right?”
    It was a stupid mistake. He just didn’t have the single-minded focus for app development like he did when he wasn’t spending all his time wondering how to get Amber back in his arms.
    “Actually, no.” Barry exhaled sharply. “I haven’t had a girlfriend in an unspeakable amount of time, and the one woman I really like, who lives across the hall, by the way, wants nothing to do with me.”
    Ian nodded. “You need to get laid. Got it. We’ll get you a woman.”
    “I want Amber.”
    “Sure, sure. You want my advice?”
    Barry just knew he was going to regret this, but his own ideas for making Amber his girlfriend had flopped. “Yes.”
    Ian rubbed his hands together. “C cubed is the solution. Can you guess what the three Cs are?”
    Barry thought hard. “Candy, carats, climax? Hers, I mean.”
    Ian threw back his head and laughed. “It’s not about her, it’s about you. And what are you giving her carrots for? Women hate when you act like they need to lose weight. Man, you really do need my help.”
    “Not carrots, carats, like diamonds—”
    “Women want an alpha.”
    Barry stared at his brother, who was also a long, lean string bean with zero muscles. At least Barry had some muscles now thanks to his Six-Pack Abs and Two-Pack Butt in 30 Days workoutDVD, but still…no woman.
    “Alphas are the confident leaders,” Ian went on. “C cubed is contacts”—he pointed to his eyes—“confidence, and condoms.”
    “I don’t wear glasses.”
    “Yeah, those are my three Cs. Yours might be different.” He pushed the hair out of his eyes. “But definitely the confidence one you need to get. Buy some condoms too. It’s one of those act-like-you’re-gonna-get-some-and-then-you-do kind of things.”
    Hmm…he did have some condoms, but he could always buy more. He’d like to have lots and lots of sex with Amber. Morning sex, shower sex, nooners, afternoon delights, romantic night sex. All-the-time sex,