by Nancy Gideon
“No,” June pouted. “Because of her.” She scowled up at the eldest. “I told you she’d ruin everything if she came along.”
“What are you girls doing here?” he asked to move the topic someplace safer.
“We won lessons.” June was all smiles again, animosity forgotten. “The three of us. We just found out this morning.”
So that’s how Rico had done it. He’d tricked them into coming. It didn’t matter, now that they were here.
His clouding gaze took them in, finding in their expressions faint traces of the children he’d left behind. “So grown up,” he mused. “I remember you as little kids.”
“And I remember you as the one who got our father and brothers killed.”
“Katy!” Lucy cried, horrified by the brutal statement, her arms twining about Colin’s as if to protect him from the vicious words. “You apologize!”
“I won’t!”
Colin stroked his palm down his sister’s fiery tresses to calm her. “She doesn’t have to apologize for telling the truth,” he insisted quietly.
“Yes, she does!” June cried. “Because it’s not true. It’s not. Don’t you chase him away again with her lies!”
“What are you crying about?” Kate sneered. “You don’t even remember him!”
“I do! I used to suck on his thumb when I was scared of thunderstorms! He called me June Bug.” She blushed hotly when she realized what she’d admitted.
“You were two years old,” Kate scoffed.
“Almost three! I remember my brother!”
This time Lucy changed the subject. “Are you really living in New Orleans? Is it exciting? Oh, I’d love to see it!”
“Maybe you could visit me.” Was that possible, with her almost an adult now? But her expression closed down at his suggestion. They both knew that would never happen. He changed the topic again to something hopefully more pleasant. “Did you get my cards? My gifts?”
Lucy’s gaze dropped evasively. June looked puzzled. But Kate spoke the harsh truth. “Momma threw them away.”
The same way she’d thrown him away. He took a cleansing breath. “I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“We have to go,” Kate insisted, the fierce dark eyes she shared with her father boring into him resentfully. “There’s our instructor.” She gripped June’s hand, giving a sharp tug.
“You’d better hurry then.” Colin took a distancing step back to make parting easier, but both Lucy and June were again hugging to him. Kate held back. The little girl he’d taught to tie her shoes and ride a tricycle looked for a moment like she wanted to cave in, but held firm.
“’Bye, Colin.” June pushed away and darted off, waving back to him over her shoulder as Kate hooked her elbow with her own. The sight brought his heart into this throat, but Lucy’s farewell ripped it from him.
“I love you, Colin. I wish good things for you every night before I go to sleep. And I wish you’d come home. I miss you.”
“I love you, too. All of you. I never stopped.”
He managed to hold to his smile until she rushed after her sisters. A moment later, they were gone. He took a powerful breath and returned to the inscrutable Rico who’d been watching from a distance.
“Some surprise, huh?”
“About as much fun as visitors before an execution. Thanks a helluva lot, Red.” He shoved by and strode for the door.
“So, you seriously didn’t see any repercussions from setting up this surprise meeting with his sisters?”
“No. Why would I?” Rico brushed off Mia’s hand as quickly as her too insightful remark and paced the room he’d paid for, movements filled with aggravation. He’d stopped by in his expensive evening duds, having only enough time for a brief visit before heading to Turow’s party. Knowing her appreciative gaze followed him didn’t soothe the sting of her words. “Those girls were crazy about Colin. Nothing meant more to him than his family. Not being able to see them again . . . He pretends it doesn’t tear him apart, them never taking his calls, never reaching out to him, but it kills him being shut out.” He sighed and admitted, “I’d have given anything for those years he had with a family like that.”
“You were jealous.”
“No.”
“Of him and the fact that he was happy.”
“No!” A pause. “Maybe. Groomed by Bram’s right-hand man. Protected and loved by his older brothers. Adored by the girls. Never a disappointment. Always surrounded by his comfortable life while I scraped and begged for everything.”
“As a Terriot prince?” she scoffed gently. “I highly doubt that.”
Rico scowled, but amended, “No one had my back. Not ever. I was the only one looking out for me. Colin had—”
“A charmed life?”
“Yeah.”
“And part of you was glad to see it pulled from under him.”
Rico didn’t answer.
“It’s understandable if you did,” Mia came up behind him, loosely winding her arms about his waist. “You would have loved to wear his shoes. There’s no shame in wishing that.”
“But I didn’t want him to lose everything.” He looked past that toward another grievance. “When we got called home, I asked if he was going to see the girls. Man, if I had family, I’d have jumped through fire to see them, but he just brushed it off like they weren’t important.”
“But you knew they were, didn’t you? So you arranged it.”
“And it blew up in my face,” he concluded miserably. “I did it to be nice. To make him happy. Hell, to make me happy seeing him happy. I did it because he’s my brother.”
Her words played quiet devil’s advocate. “The brother who ignored you. Who looked down on you. Who was loved by the family you wanted. Totally crushed, completely destroyed. Isn’t that what you wanted to see happen when you arranged it?”
Rico twisted to stare at her as if she’d suggested he killed babies and drank their blood. “He’s my brother.”
“The brother standing in your way.”
“I’ve gotta go,” he announced, too distressed by the truth in her suggestions to kiss her or make plans for his return.
The seeds had been planted. Mia lay back on the still unused bed, hating herself for provoking a pain she understood so well.
She knew all about being shadowed by the perfect brother. Daniel. Handsome, personable, their father’s pride and joy and heir apparent. But also a wastrel and a naive fool who used charm instead of brains, thought money equaled power, and believed no ill of anyone. Especially those taking advantage of him.
She’d loved him for who he was. And she’d loathed him because he stood between her and all the things she wanted in life. She should have taken over from her father. She was the oldest. Tough, smart, and business savvy, everything Daniel wasn’t. But she lacked the one quality her father needed—she wasn’t a son.
She refused to imagine Colin’s pain the way she denied her own. Sentiment weakened resolve. Attachments led to mistakes, the kind that had gotten her foolish brother killed. Enjoying the company of the two Terriots was one thing. Allowing them to distract her from her goal was another. She could not forget they were her enemies. Very attractive, satisfying and amusing enemies who wore the dazzling flash of their heritage in their ears as shining beacons to their vanity.
They’d killed her father and her uncle, just as Savoie and the MacCreedys had murdered her brother.
And they would pay in kind.
Divide and conquer.
Colin Terriot was drunk.
Not happy, sloppy drunk, but ugly, stupid drunk. He’d started in the dark and empty game room, working his way through a bottle of Jägermeister with no goal other than not to think or feel. A task he excelled in. Instead of numbing his misery, the more he drank, the more he ached. The longer he replayed the images of his sisters, the deeper that hole of anguish got, until he finally realized he couldn’t climb out alone.
So he went to join his brothers for t
heir traditional welcome party for a new Terriot princess, a time of anticipated debauchery and bad behavior, pretending he had no cares, no worries, no heart breaking into small, sharp fragments that would never be whole again. He acted the role of playboy prince in his exquisite clothes, overindulging in food and more drink, dancing to the envy of any Chippendale, inciting lust in the females who vied for his attention, but not the love he longed for. Even rescuing an equally wretched Sylvia from a mean-spirited pack of former friends that could never embrace her as traitor turned princess didn’t make him feel the hero she and their grateful queen claimed he was.
He didn’t like keeping secrets. He hated seeing females, especially a former lover he now, ironically, called a friend, abused. And he hated the thought of another night alone or with someone he wouldn’t remember in the morning.
He wanted one thing only, one woman only, and when he was intoxicated enough to think it was a good idea to tell her so, he picked the worst time in the world to do something about it.
Mia Guedry opened the hotel room door so suddenly he almost dropped inside. One look at her and his heart fell across the threshold. Huge dark eyes and ripe red lips mesmerized, holding his attention for long, awkward seconds while his brain struggled to kick into gear, skipping cogs along the way as he tried to identify the emotions subtly flickering through her expression.
“Colin? What are you doing here?”
For a moment, he’d forgotten his name let alone his mission, to woo the lovely Mia with the new and improved version of the sensitive self Sylvia had coaxed out of him with their talk that afternoon. But before he could speak, another voice intruded.
“Hey, babe, is that room service?”
Rico.
While he stood there staring blankly, she called back over her shoulder, “No. Someone at the wrong room.”
She got that right, a truth that burned bitter and deep. And made him mad as hell. In a loud voice, he announced, “You might want to tell my brother that our king knows he smuggled a Guedry across our borders to fuck in our backyard, and he’d be wise to get his dumb ass packed and outta here while he still has one.”
A gratifying curse erupted from the room behind her.
Mia eyed him ferociously as he offered blandly, “Sorry to interrupt.”
Let the bastard try to get it up with the threat of finding their outraged king at his door. Petty revenge was still revenge, and it felt sweet on his way back to his lonely room, making him smile to himself imagining his brother’s frantic scramble. The fact that Cale had no idea any of it was going on was the cherry on top.
By the time he was ready to fall into bed, his clothes hung up to be cleaned, skipping the shower because who the hell cared, his mood swung wildly from vindictive to morose to restless. A knock on the door meant only one thing. Rico was there to punch his lights out. Good. At least he wouldn’t wake up until morning.
Sylvia was the last person he expected to see at going on 3:00 a.m.
“Can I come in?” She pushed past him, oblivious to the fact that he stood there completely naked.
“Sylvie, this isn’t a good idea. What are you doing here?”
“I need you, Colin.”
Feeling sorry for himself, he was still drunk enough and angry enough to read all the wrong things into that. When she turned toward him, noticing his nudity with widening eyes, he’d already committed himself to the unforgivable.
His hands clamped about the backs of her thighs, hoisting her up to straddle his hips. As she grabbed for him to keep her balance, he considered that a sign of compliance. His mouth took hers for a wide open reunion. She tasted of tears and regrets. He already had plenty to be sorry for, so he didn’t let it bother him until some part registered her seemingly eager squirming wasn’t an effort to hop on board, but rather to escape.
“Colin, please!”
“I will if you’ll let me.”
“I need you to—”
“I need you, too.”
She twisted away from his determined lips. “I need a friend, not a lover. Please!”
“Well . . . hell!” He exhaled shakily, a little bit of blood managing to seep up to fuel his mind. “I guess a friend would keep his dick and his hands to himself, though both those things are pretty damned hard at the moment.”
“It might help if you put me down and put something on.”
He dropped her abruptly and snatched up a pair of gym shorts that did little to disguise the direction of his thoughts. Only then did he notice her emotion-pinched expression. Feeling like the worst kind of idiot―again―he directed her to the edge of the bed where he sat them down, side by side.
“What’s wrong, Sylvie?”
“I need to get away. Tonight. Could you take me? Someplace far away where—”
“Row can’t find you?” he finished for her. “That’s not going to happen. He’d hunt us both to the edge of the world, and then he’d kill me for my trouble. And I’d deserve it for what I was thinking with just a second ago.”
“I can’t stay with him. I can’t.” She wouldn’t look at him. “I can’t tell him why. There are things you don’t know. Involving someone else that I can’t let get hurt.”
Well . . . hell! She was sleeping with someone else! She was right. It would devastate Turow, and the other party would end up dead.
“Is this other someone worth tossing away the best thing you’ll ever have?” he growled.
“Yes. Please, Colin. Help me!” Her gaze lifted, her eyes glittering jewels.
Dammit.
“I’ll help you walk your sassy ass right back to your mate. He’s crazy about you. He’d forgive you anything.”
“Not this.” Her deadened tone spoke with such certainty. Then she gave everything away by adding, “I'm not staying here anymore. I'm at Cale's old place.”
Cale? She was banging Cale? Colin reeled at the thought. The only betrayal Turow wouldn’t get over was his king’s. Son of a bitch. The son of a bitch!
The hypocrisy of being ready to bone her himself never occurred to him.
“Go back to Turow, Sylvia. Maybe a new day and a helluva hangover will give you a better perspective. Just don’t, promise me you won’t, do something stupid tonight. There’s already enough stupid going on to last a lifetime. Think of what’s at stake here. Of the lives of those involved.”
“I am. I have been,” she told him wretchedly.
“If you want to feel sorry for someone, think of me with this killer hard on and no one to do anything about it with!”
The fact that she didn’t glance down deflated his irritation and his ego. She leaned into him as his arm went about her shoulders.
“I should never have come back here,” she mourned around little sniffles.
She was probably right, but he only said, “Did you have any choice?” He pressed a kiss to her temple and held her away. “Go back to Turow. Just leave things alone until morning. Okay? Then we’ll talk some more when I’m sober and a lot less horny. Okay? Sylvie? Okay? Promise me.”
A pathetic little nod.
“Good girl. We’ll figure this out. I’ll help with damage control. Okay? It’s not as bad as it seems right now.”
It was so much worse. Kendra . . . hell! What would this knowledge do to their queen? Their pregnant queen! Sure, Cale and Sylvie had had a thing before Kendra accepted his claim but . . . Colin shook his head in disbelief. How had this happened? And he was in the middle of it. Like he didn’t have enough drama in his own life!
“You’re a good man, Colin. I shouldn’t have involved you.”
No, she shouldn’t have, but now he was in it whether he liked it or not. He stood, lifting her by the elbows. “That’s what friends are for.” Thanks a helluva lot.
She took a shivery breath, and her shoulders squared. Damn if she’d wasn’t the strongest, most admirable female he’d ever known. And about to destroy the other one he held in highest regard, their queen. No way this was going end well.
>
“Please don’t think badly of me.”
He quirked a smile. “I’m not one to judge, not being much of a saint, myself.”
“I need my jewelry. You still have it, don’t you?”
He’d collected it under threat of dire consequences from that nasty gaggle of her former friends who’d thought it would be malicious payback to wear her stolen belongings to her “Welcome to the House” party. And folks thought he and his brothers were the vicious animals of their clan!
“Oh, damn. I was going to wear that icy little diamond number to breakfast in the morning.” He grinned because he’d managed to make her smile and went to pull a bulging sock out of his drawer. “Don’t worry. It’s clean.”
“Thank you.” She took it in one hand and let him walk her to the door where she embraced him again, holding tight this time. He brushed his lips over her hair, whispering, “Get some sleep, and don’t do nothing dumb.”
She smiled up at him. “Too late.”
After Sylvia slipped out, Colin was left with head and groin pounding, an unpleasant combination and no relief in sight.
What the hell was Cale thinking? When had this disaster happened? Before James had tried to kill him, and she’d run for her life with Jamie and her mother? When she returned wearing Turow’s mark? Is that how she convinced their king to allow her to stay and put them up in style? The sonuvabitch! Hadn’t he considered the two others who’d be crushed in the fallout? Kendra and Turow, the only two truly decent people he knew.
He couldn’t sleep. He was out of booze. His dick had finally lost interest, leaving him to pace in restless misery embroiled in problems above his pay grade. He glanced out his window, catching sight of a fleeting shadow skimming down the walk.
Dammit! Sylvia hadn’t waited. By the time he could dress and get downstairs, she’d be gone, leaving him to make explanations and ruin lives.
Unless he wasn’t around to do it.
Time to go back to the place he’d started thinking of as home, putting all the heartbreak behind him. Let them sort out their own crap without him. He barely had his own together.
