“No. It’s been playing on my mind for a while now and then I thought how she was alone in the house with a man like you. You couldn’t keep it in your pants if you tried. The thought alone had me racing to get back from Vegas.”
His brother looked at him before he laughed out loud. “You’re kidding, right? You just realized you shouldn’t have left her alone with me. Not that it matters…how did your trip go? Have you made a decision about what you plan to do?”
Kaz couldn’t put his finger on it but something wasn’t right. Cillian wasn’t acting like his normal, sarcastic self and that frightened him more than anything imaginable.
Before he could contemplate the issue any further, Syd walked into the kitchen wearing a sleeveless paisley maxi dress. Her hair was damp and she’d wrapped it into a bun. Her make-up free face and steel blue eyes glowed with happiness and…something else.
“Hey, sweetheart.” She walked over and embraced him before he wrapped his arms around her waist.
“Damn, babe, it’s good to see you. Can we talk in private?”
Syd continued to smile before she turned on the electric tea pot and set out her favorite mug and set a bag of Earl Grey inside. “Sure. Why don’t you go take a shower and I’ll be right up?”
He surprised her when he snuck up behind her and kissed her on the lips. She looked slightly taken aback. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you too,” she said in a soft voice before her blue eyes darted away to look at the electric tea pot.
Kaz walked up the stairs and entered their suite.
The first item to catch his eye was the bed. It was made up and obviously hadn’t been touched. He didn’t know much and thought perhaps the lack of sleep was making him paranoid but he knew she hadn’t slept in their bad the previous night.
He suddenly turned and stalked down to the guest room where Cillian was staying. He opened the double doors. The bed was a mess and the sheets were wrinkled with the indentation of a body. It wasn’t the state of the bed that bothered him as much as that smell he was more than familiar with because he’d enjoyed it much too often.
The scent of recent sexual activity assaulted him and along with a manly smell was the feminine odor of a woman he was more than familiar with…Sydney.
Kaz spun around and left the room, leaving the double doors open and barely made it to the his bathroom in time before he vomited into the toilet. He hadn’t eaten much but his stomach purged everything he’d consumed in the last twelve hours and he didn’t feel better until he’d flushed the toilet and started the shower.
His mind was an utter mess and at this point, he couldn’t even pretend to consider his options or think about what they were. This was such a deception of the highest magnitude and yet, he couldn’t blame her for what she’d done. He’d been such an asshole and perhaps this had to happen between the two of them but what would happen after the whole situation was out in the open?
Kaz couldn’t live a lie, it wasn’t the type of person he was and Syd would have to put on her big girl panties and admit to fucking his brother.
There wasn’t much he could do except throw Cillian out but it was tit for tat. He’d fucked Brianna, Cillian’s old lady and the mother of his children, bare-back no less but that was ages ago. Surely he wasn’t still carrying a grudge about a situation that happened seven years ago? Or was he?
The shower rejuvenated him but he was still worn out and tired. He gargled with Listerine and brushed his teeth rigorously before he walked into the bedroom nude. Sydney held a pair of black sweat pants and matching wife-beater on her lap. She sat on the bed looking like the beautiful, blonde poised woman she had transformed herself into over the months he’d known her.
Kaz grabbed the clothes and put on the sweat pants and slid the wife-beater over his head. “Thanks.”
“Well, it’s the least I can do since you drove all night to get back home.” She looked away from him and sipped her tea. “It was a nice gesture and I’m sure whatever you have to say to me is beautiful and heart felt but at this point in our relationship, you killed it when you left your engagement ring on the bureau.”
He sat down next to her and ran his hands through his hair nervously. “That was stupid but I felt like such an asshole and a bully for hitting you. It wasn’t the right thing to do and I should have never…touched you in that way. You’re the mother of my child and to hit a woman is just wrong. I was wrong…I should have asked you whether you wanted to move to Vegas.”
Sydney glared at him. “What difference does it make, Kaz? You’ve made up your mind anyway so what do you want from me? Validation? Do you want me to say that I’m going to accompany you?”
Kaz’s blue-green eyes turned ice-cold. “Well, if I can forgive you for fucking Cillian then the least you can do is accompany me to Vegas. It wouldn’t be all that different from living here to be honest—”
“Except I don’t want to live in Vegas, Kasper.” Syd stood and began to pace. “You don’t have to forgive me for sleeping with Cillian. In fact, I was hoping for you to be angry and call me a slut or a whore.”
“But you’re not a slut or a whore.” Kaz felt the fatigue wash over him and this wasn’t a conversation he felt like having when all he could think about was his comfortable bed and closing his eyes. “It was unrealistic of me to think that I would your one and only anyway. I don’t want to fight with you and to be honest, I don’t have the energy either. Can we discuss this at another time?”
She stopped pacing and looked at him intently. He could see the hurt and pain behind those gorgeous blue-gray irises and if he could, he would make it all go away. “Yes, of course. Get some rest and we’ll talk about our issues later.”
Kaz stood up but he almost fell down due to how tired he was. Syd helped him to his side of the bed, slid the covers back and he laid down. She slipped the covers over his body and ran her fingers through his dark hair before she pulled away. His eyes closed involuntarily as he slipped into the warm comfort of their bed.
The last words he heard were her murmur, “I didn’t do any of this to hurt you or because I was mad at you and wanted to get even. I did it so you could see me—the real me—and just know that I am not afraid to do this on my own. You have to stop treating me like a child and start thinking of me as your equal, or there isn’t a future between you and I.”
He wanted to respond but before he could form a single coherent thought, he’d fallen asleep.
KAZ WOKE UP and realized he was in his own bed.
Syd was nowhere to be found.
He glanced at the clock and grimaced over the fact that he’d slept the whole day away.
It was nearing six in the evening and the room was dimly lit.
He stretched, stood and walked straight to his bathroom where he used the toilet, brushed his teeth and cleaned his face.
Afterwards, he felt slightly more human and mentally prepared himself as he walked down the stairs and entered the sitting room. Syd wasn’t there but Cillian was and by the looks of the few amount of items he’d brought with him, he was preparing to leave.
“She’s not here, Kaz.” His brother continued to pack. “She left and went over to Talia’s house a couple hours ago.”
The anger Kaz hadn’t allowed himself to feel earlier bubbled up in his chest and he couldn’t hide how upset he was at the whole situation. It was never okay for his fiancée to bump uglies with his oldest brother. In fact, he found the whole situation disgusting and deplorable. He couldn’t express how he felt earlier because he knew he would have exploded and that would not have been a good situation for him or Sydney.
He’d already made the mistake and hit her once. The error of judgment on his part weighed heavily on him because he never wanted to become that type of man who could so casually lay his hands on a woman like that. It still frightened him though he knew no amount of apologies would smooth over that particular situation.
This one, on the other hand, was convoluted
and messy; any situation involving sex usually was, but he still had to know why his brother would intentionally hurt him as bad as he had.
Was it just for bragging rights? Did he honestly consider Syd an attractive woman and decided to go there? Had she somehow worked her way under his skin?
“Why her?” Kaz walked over to the bar and poured himself a healthy amount of Macallan 50 in a crystal tumbler and swigged from it.
“Let’s call it a family tradition.” Cillian’s blue eyes were chips of ice in an otherwise sarcastic face that displayed his rugged handsomeness that all the women swooned over. “Do I love her? Yes. Am I in love with her? No. We shared a lot while you were gone and I look forward to having her as my sister in law. She was some of the best sex I ever had outside of Gisela. Alas, she is the only woman for me and the only person I would risk everything for, including my standing in the club.”
“Does Gisela know this?”
“I suppose in her own way she does but our situation is complicated, Kaz. I’ve got two kids by a woman I don’t love and getting rid of Brianna isn’t the easiest thing to do. I want Declan and Caitlin though so she is going to have one fight on her hands that will easily be solved with a little payoff money and a one-way ticket back to Ireland.” Cillian finished gathering his gear and took a break by sitting on the sofa.
Kaz walked over and sat beside him but made sure there was plenty of room between the two of them. “You know Brianna will never go back to Ireland, Cillian. You can set her up in Las Vegas though and at least know she’s on the opposite end of the state…I’d help. Consider it trying to ease the pain for what I did to you regarding Caitlin—”
“You didn’t do anything. You merely fucked my wife while she was pregnant with my daughter but you aren’t the father so calm down.” Cillian pulled a wallet out of his back pocket and took out a picture of his two children.
He was thirty but he’d married young. Declan, a strapping lad with his mother’s gray eyes and his dad’s brown hair, was ten and already was growing out of the boyish look Kaz remembered. Caitlin was a beauty; she had her mother’s natural dark ginger hair with pale ginger-blonde streaks running throughout, ivory complexion and gorgeously bright hazel-green eyes. Her features were a mixture of Brianna’s…and Trey Lennon.
“Holy fuck!” Kaz exclaimed.
“Yeah, she grows to be more like that son of a bitch each day but he is also our half-brother so it’s not so bad. Plus, if Trista and Talia are anything to go by, that family has some great genes. Too bad that only makes her three quarters Irish but she’s my daughter, Kaz, and I won’t give her up for anyone in the world. I am the only person she has ever called Daddy and I intend to keep it that way.” Cillian stood and put the photo away.
“Every time we talk, there is a point to your speeches and I would like to think you’re trying to give me some brotherly advice here.”
“I am.” Cillian sighed and looked away before he sat down again and faced his brother. “I lost Gisela because I was a fucking asshole. I listened to what our tribalistic and racist Da said. She wasn’t good enough because she had a touch of the tar brush and was half-kraut. She would break my heart. She would ruin the bloodline. I also lost her because I made her do something I still regret to this day. I have to raise Caitlin because who the fuck is raising our kid in Ireland? When Raymond and Da conspired to do that together…I think both Gisela and Drake hated Dad. I think him getting Misty pregnant and leaving her was in direct response to what I did to his sister only she didn’t have a caring family to hide behind. Our son is somewhere in Northern Ireland, living a pampered fuckin’ life but he’s fourteen years old and if I passed him on the street, I wouldn’t know him.
“I didn’t ever get over losing Gisela and if you’re foolish enough to let Syd walk away, you won’t get over losing her either. It will be a pain that you will feel so deeply, no amount of booze, drugs and sex ever makes it go away. It’s an ice pick shoved into your heart and every time you breath, you feel the heartache. Don’t let her be the one that got away just because I had to extract a little petty revenge on you for what you did to me seven years ago. She’s special and you’ll know I never treated her like a whore or a slut because she isn’t one.”
Kaz didn’t know what to say. Instead he merely said, “You want me to walk you out? I’m going by Talia’s to see Syd so I don’t mind seeing you off.”
Cillian smiled. “That would be great, little brother.”
“Okay, let me go get changed and then we can say our goodbyes and you can be on your way. That club business you had to handle…were you able to get it done?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t anything dangerous and no one got shot if that’s what you’re asking. Dad wouldn’t have sent me down for a reason like that anyway. It was simple enough.”
“What was it? This club business?”
“I just had to check on Jaden and make sure his head was screwed on correctly. Bad news travels fast and Dizzy was pissed when he heard about Faith and what happened on tour. He wants him to make a decision and stop pussy-footing around. Actually, he wants him to take responsibility for Talia and finally make her his old lady. Cox babies aren’t supposed to be born out of wedlock and the way he is leading both women along is disconcerting for Dad. Who knew he had a heart in that cold, dead chest of his after all?”
Kaz shook his head. “Jaden does exactly what he wants to do and no amount of persuasion in the world is going to force him into a decision before he’s ready. I don’t know what kind of hold Faith has over him but he needs to get rid of her and stop playing this silly little high school games.
“It’s part of the reason why I took that Vegas gig for us. Both Grant and Will agreed so it’s majority rule. Either he can join us or we have to start looking for a new lead guitarist. Hopefully the distance between the two will put this whole situation into perspective for him. He knows Talia can’t leave but they can work things out a lot better if there are just two of them in the relationship as opposed to a third party looking to cause nothing but trouble.”
“Agreed, little brother.”
Kaz walked up the stairs and to his suite where he changed into a pair of black jeans that were slightly baggy and a vintage Nirvana t-shirt. He finished off his ultra-casual look with a pair of black Chuck Taylor’s and ran a comb through his hair just to rid himself of the bed-head look.
As soon as he walked down the stairs, he was surprised to see Sydney home. She talked with Cillian and laughed at something he said before she embraced him.
A surge of jealousy raced through him and made him stomach do miniature flip-flops. It was hard not to imagine the two of them in the throes of an intimate act he had no wish to store in his mental rolodex. In fact, he didn’t want to think about them fucking, period.
When she turned to look at him, her smile was diminutive and her blue-gray eyes were slightly frosty. “Hello, Kasper. How did you sleep?”
“Fine. Let’s just say it was much needed after that long drive from Vegas.” He grabbed the car fob to the SUV. “I have to drop the vehicle off at the Hertz location at LAX. Would you mind following me so I don’t have to take a taxi home?”
“Not at all.” She grabbed her Birkin and followed him outside while he slightly trailed his brother.
It took Cillian no time to load up his Harley CVO Road King before he turned toward his brother and embraced him.
“I’m shocked Dizzy doesn’t make you ride one of the classics you spent all that time restoring for all the old school MC members.”
“New generation, new bike, brother. It’s still a Harley and although I bought it off the show room floor, I have customized it. I never get any trouble, not even when I wear my cut and it’s inconspicuous. I just look like some rich, Silicon Valley yuppie with a motorcycle fetish.”
Kaz whistled as he checked out the bike in black onyx. The paint job was perfection and like everything else Cillian owned, it was a beauty to behold.
“
I think I want one of these. I miss that…more than anything. The freedom of long drives with nothing but the sound of the wind and the bike…I miss the brotherhood and although I love what I do, sometimes I wish I could go back to being anonymous.”
They embraced quickly and Cillian slapped him on the back with enough force to drive the air from his lungs. “No you don’t. It’s ‘the grass is always greener’ metaphor. You think I wouldn’t trade places with you in a heartbeat? I’d rather have your problems than my own. Both you and Jaden need to realize how lucky you are. You got out of the life and that is no small feat. It’s a love/hate relationship with me, man. I just hope I get passed up for the gavel...to be honest, I just don’t want it and I’m not sure I want this kind of life for Declan and Caitlin. They deserve better, know what I mean?”
“Only too well.”
Syd walked over and embraced Cillian again before she whispered in his ear. He only looked at her and smiled before he kissed her forehead. She backed away and stood next to Kaz; he slid an arm around her waist and felt her tense up before she relaxed again.
Rock My Heart Page 10
