The following day was Saturday, so I had no work, but I was a little worried about how we were going to pay for all the stuff we needed to make this place habitable; I had no savings other than what I’d set aside to pay the bills, and I said as much to Rick, who just grinned happily.
“Come with me, Bobby, let’s have a little chat with the girls…”
Mystified, I followed him to the girls’ room, knocked, and waited for them to make themselves presentable. Shari answered the door, wearing a short bathrobe that showed off her long, long creamy legs, and twin peaks in front where I swear her nipples were almost poking through. I blushed, but she seemed quite unconcerned about seeing me while dressed in just a flimsy, short bathrobe. Yaz was dressed almost exactly the same, and I noticed Rick studiously avoiding looking at either her or Shari.
“Shari,” I began, “We have to talk about how we’re going to live here; I only have a little money saved, and I don’t earn enough to support four people, I don’t know how to stretch what I earn four ways. How are we going to make this work?”
As I spoke, she began to smile, then shook her head.
“Bobby, it’s okay; we have money; a lot of money, more than enough to keep us going for a long, long while yet. Sit down, please; I want to tell you something.”
She led me into the room, and sat down on the bed, patting the mattress beside her. Yaz sat on the other side of the bed, with Rick next to her.
“Bobby, remember when I said that all mummy had left was her house by the time that… man was extradited? In the two years following that, she managed to build a successful property development company using the house and the trust it was held in as security to acquire a portfolio of quite valuable rental properties scattered around East London. Not too many, just enough for her to manage, with Yaz and I working for her. Ricky had been with us for a while, and worked for mummy too, he worked hard, renovating the properties, doing repairs, keeping them in a fit state for the tenants, and when she died, we learned that mummy had left the business to all three of us.”
She looked sadly at Rick, at Yaz, then looked back at me.
“We decided to sell everything and come away to find you; none of us wanted to stay in London anymore; too many of Robert Davies’ old cronies were around, and Ricky was worried about our safety, so we decided to make a clean start a long way away from London. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we have more than enough money, quite a lot, in fact, and we want to stay here, with you. All the family should be in one place, and even if we’re not really a family yet, I think we can learn to be one; Ricky learned how to be part of our family, now Yaz and I want to be part of yours, if you’ll let us.”
I was trying to take this all in, but those long, smooth legs and intriguing little points on the front of her robe were giving me serious distraction issues. Shari seemed to realise the direction of my attention, and I swear her back arched a little more to thrust them even further against the already tightly wrapped front of her robe, and the whisper of skin against skin as she crossed and re-crossed her long, smooth legs were almost deafening.
I caught myself at this point. What the hell was I thinking? This was my sister, for Chrissake! I had no business being so interested in her legs, or her chest, or her clear, satin skin, or her deep-coral, bee-stung lips… just stop it right there!
Shari smiled at me, a warm, understanding smile.
“Thank you for thinking of us, Bobby, but you can stop worrying. We even have all the furniture from the house; when we sold up it was all put in storage, and there’s plenty of it to fill up this place; that is, if you don’t object?”
She waited apprehensively, biting her lip in a way I found totally distracting and absurdly attractive.
“How can I object when you put it so nicely!” I smiled back, liking the feeling, and Shari hugged me, those intriguing points on her robe pressing into my chest like two little fingertips, and once again I felt the stirrings of interest; sister or no, it felt good, and I had to catch myself; nice as it was, this couldn’t be a good thing…
“I was hoping you’d say yes, Bobby! And no more silliness like this evening, yes? You’ve got us, now, we’ve got you, and no-one will ever be left out again, deal?”
“Deal!” I murmured in her ear, enjoying the feel of this beautiful young woman in my arms, a first for me, and a wonderful feeling.
In the morning, Shari woke me with a cup of coffee. She was dressed in skinny jeans and a sweatshirt, furry Ugg boots and a warm jacket, all topped off with a Von Dutch baseball cap; she looked cute, sexy and playful, and once again I had to remind myself that she was my sister.
“Come on Bobby, we need to do some shopping; I spoke to the storage place early this morning and they’re arranging to have all our stuff shipped up here overnight for delivery tomorrow morning, so we need to get this place ready, and we need a whole bunch of stuff, so you and I get to go shopping! Come on, it’ll be fun!”
I grinned as I drank my coffee; having a beautiful girl invite me out to have fun shopping was such a new experience I had no pre-programmed response except to nod foolishly and grin like an idiot! Shari ruffled my hair and turned to leave.
“Ten minutes, Bobby, we have to leave in ten minutes, so chop-chop, Big Sister’s given you an order!”
I grinned as she threw the “Big Sister” at me yet again, leaving me thinking she may be my big sister, but she sure didn’t feel like it! I watched as she walked out of the room, captivated once again by the sight of her tight little bottom bobbing inside her tight jeans, with yet another moment of guilt for finding her bottom so cute, then jumped out of bed and ran into the shower. I took a cold shower out of habit, even though something told me hot showers were no longer going to be a luxury, and got dressed in double quick time.
Shari was waiting for me downstairs as I tried to get ready to go out with her without showing any unseemly haste; however, I’m not very good at either communicating with girls, never having actually spoken to one before, or understanding their expectations in even the most superficial way, so I think I came off looking more than a little pathetically eager to please her, judging by the small smile on her face. However, she was kind enough to not comment, and even helped me put my old jacket on properly, her eyes clouding when she saw how short the sleeves were; I’d had it since I was 17, and there’d been a couple of growth spurts since then, but it was all I had.
“We’ll do something about that soon, Bobby!” she whispered, then straightened my collar and patted my chest in approval.
“Right, Bobby, now you look 100% adorable, let’s show you to the world at large!”
Adorable? That word bemused me so much I just followed her out to the car, trying to work out where she was coming from; Shari and Yaz had happened to me so quickly I was still trying to carve out a ‘sister’ niche in my head to fit them into.
Rick seemed to have managed it quite well, his ease and easy manner with them proved that; he was obviously completely comfortable with suddenly having two sisters out of the blue; maybe he was just more adaptable than me.
I knew I had a lot to unlearn, and there was still a lot I was just unwilling to let go of just yet; it was still too soon, despite what the girls had said. Shari’s touchy-feely attitude to me was still more than a little disconcerting; it was like she was trying to be my best friend, although her hugging me last night had been more than a little ambiguous, and certainly not what I thought was the way best friends behaved; no, I was troubled by all these sudden changes and revelations, and still a little wary when it came to other people.
Shari scrabbled around on her phone for a while, one of those Galaxy things, then tapped in a postcode on the Sat-Nav and started the engine. I asked her where we were going.
“Bobby, we agreed last night we needed more bed linen, plates, cups, cutlery, everything, so we’re going to the Dunelm store on Castle Street to get some basic housewares; Ricky and Yaz are going to start getting the place ready; by this time tomorrow we’ll all have some proper beds, chairs, blankets and duvets, home comforts. It’s all the stuff out of our old house.”
She stopped the engine and looked shrewdly at me.
“Bobby, I know you’re still not feeling the love when it comes to Yasmin and me, but we really are your sisters, and we’re not going to hurt you, I promise. Ricky wanted to come home, and we love Ricky, so we came with him; he offered us somewhere we could be safe, and be a family, his family, and yours too. I don’t want you to feel like we’re pushing our way into your home and your life, but the simple fact is, we feel safer with both our brothers than without them. I want to have my brothers around, I want to get to know them, and I want them to want me around, but if you can’t do that, we’ll go, and I mean that, truly; just say the word and we’ll find somewhere else. I don’t want to push you out of your home…”
Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke, filled and then spilled down her cheeks. I was mortified; my mean suspicious nature had made this lovely girl cry, who’d done nothing to me except treat me kindly and try to make me part of a family again, to include me in her family. Without thinking I reached up to rub her tears away, wondering at the way she flinched as I touched her. Shari smiled tremulously at me as more tears spilled down her cheeks, and I suddenly realised she was terrified of me; she was probably waiting to see if I was my father’s son, if I was going to get violent, and then I suddenly understood why she’d brought me out with her; it was to decoy me away from Yasmin in case I did become violent.