Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers

by Lily Everett

  “Good morning,” she called out, sashaying down the aisle toward the back. It was all she could do not to skip.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Esther poked her head out of the back office. From the ink smudges on her fingers, she’d been doing her morning crossword before settling in to checking inventory.

  Brimming with affection for her hardworking mother, Greta rounded the counter and planted a loud, smacking kiss on Esther’s powdered cheek. “Isn’t it a glorious day? I don’t know when I’ve ever seen Sanctuary looking prettier.”

  After a long night of passion, she’d slept through most of the predawn helicopter flight back home, but Miles had kissed her awake in time to appreciate the aerial view of the sun bursting over the horizon to shine down on Sanctuary Island.

  Esther’s silvery-blond brows climbed toward her hairline. “My, my. Someone’s in a good mood.”

  Hiding a small, secret smile, Greta went to power up the cash register and flip through the change drawer to check if they needed to make a run to the bank. “I had a good night, is all.”

  “Oh? Care to share?”

  Greta hesitated. She’d always told her mother everything, but this … she wanted to hug the memory of last night to herself for just a little longer. Plus, she decided, she wasn’t at all in the mood to deal with Esther freaking out over the helicopter ride, and she could only imagine her mother’s horrified reaction to the death-defying trip to the top of the Empire State Building.

  So all she said was, “I spent some more time with Miles Harrington.”

  “Hmm.” Esther sounded amused. “I figured.”

  With a sudden jolt, Greta wondered if she actually looked different today than she had yesterday. Could her mother tell she’d been with Miles?

  But before she could spin out too wildly into embarrassment, Esther tugged lightly on Greta’s sleeve. Pinching the fine Italian wool between two fingers, she smirked a little.

  “Is this the billionaire CEO version of giving you his varsity letterman’s jacket?” Esther asked.

  Relief washed through Greta’s body, the sudden relaxation of tensed muscles making her vividly aware of the unusual ways she’d strained and stressed those muscles the night before. “I forgot I was wearing it,” she admitted, hunching her shoulders to inhale the complicated scent of Miles still clinging to the material of his suit jacket.

  She wondered if she should tell him that the cologne he no doubt paid big bucks for smelled exactly like fresh cuts of the expensive cedar wood her brother bought to redesign their mother’s closet as a birthday gift.

  The smell made her mouth tingle as if she’d just been kissed. Greta hugged herself, bunching the extra fabric and probably wrinkling it horribly, but if Miles minded that, he wouldn’t have draped it over her while she napped on the helicopter.

  Something vibrated inside the inner jacket pocket. Startled, Greta fished out Miles’s slim black smartphone. A missed call from Cleo showed on the locked screen.

  “Uh oh. I bet he’s already looking for this.” Greta stroked the phone fondly, remembering how she’d teased Miles about having it permanently welded to his hand.

  “I can mind the shop if you want to run out and give it to him,” Esther offered.

  “Nah.” Greta smiled her thanks at her mother. “Miles is on a mission this morning.”

  “A mission that doesn’t require a cell phone?”

  “A mission I don’t want to interrupt,” Greta corrected her. She couldn’t help smiling when she thought of Miles tipping up her chin and kissing her good-bye. For luck, he’d said.

  He might need some luck. It was going to take more than a quick apology to mend fences with his brothers, but giving his blessing to Dylan and Penny’s upcoming wedding was a good start.

  Joy bubbled up from her chest like fresh spring water. Everything was happening so quickly, and coming together so perfectly! The happiness she’d found with Miles made her immensely grateful to have been able to play even a small part in helping Miles come to grips with his brother’s engagement to Greta’s best friend.

  Greta wanted everyone she loved, everyone she knew, everyone she’d ever met to be as happy as she was at that moment.

  The phone buzzed in her hand, and she absently glanced down to see a text message from Cleo lighting up the screen.

  She didn’t mean to read it, but the name “Penny Little” jumped out at her. Frowning, Greta looked more closely, confusion and dread tightening her stomach.

  Got the PI report on Penny Little background check today, no obvious flags. I’m attaching in email, but she looks clean.

  Greta breathed out, shaky and a little sick. Okay, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. So Miles hired an investigator—probably when he first heard about the engagement—and hadn’t called the guy off yet. No big …

  The phone buzzed again. Greta tightened her suddenly clammy fingers around it and told herself not to look. It was a private message, between Miles and his assistant, and it had nothing to do with her.

  But it might have something to do with Penny. They were so close, all of them, to getting what they wanted; Dylan and Miles were about to make up, then Penny and Dylan would live happily ever after. It was meant to be.

  Unable to stand the idea of anything messing with her best friend’s perfect happy ending, Greta peeked at the phone’s screen one more time … and felt the bottom drop out of her world.

  *

  “Thanks for agreeing to sit down with me.” Miles spread his hands on the kitchen table, the same table his grandparents must have eaten at when this was their summer hideaway, and met the eyes of both people sitting opposite.

  Dylan was guarded, his gaze shielded the way he’d learned after their parents died. Beside him, Penny cast her fiancé a worried glance, but when she faced Miles, her dainty jaw went hard with determination.

  “I know the last time we spoke, I said some things…” Miles began, more hesitant then he liked as he searched for the right words.

  Sitting up straight in her ladder-backed chair, Penny tilted her chin up defiantly. “You certainly did. And I, for one, am not interested in hearing anything from you other than an apology.”

  This was why Miles preferred to go into meetings already knowing what he intended to say. He hated losing control of the conversation.

  “It’s okay, Penny,” Dylan said, probably reading the tension in the set of Miles’s mouth. “Let him say whatever he’s going to say. It doesn’t matter.”

  Ouch. Knowing he’d earned the distance and distrust he saw in his brother’s eyes didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Still, he was here to apologize, anyway. Steeling himself, Miles looked Penny straight in the eye and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Her lips tightened into a tight line. “Not me,” she hissed, the words you dolt heavy in her tone. “Apologize to Dylan.”

  A quick glance at his baby brother’s raised brows showed Dylan didn’t know what was going on, either. “Uh, sweetheart, not to belabor the point, but you’re the one Miles called a gold digger.”

  “Exactly,” Penny seethed, righteous indignation burning hot pink across her round cheeks. “He implied that the only reason a woman would want to marry you—his own brother!—isn’t because you’re kind and funny, or great with kids, or even fantastic in bed. No. The only reason I could possibly have accepted your proposal is to get my hands on your family’s money.”

  She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, and the straightforward challenge in her stubborn scowl warmed Miles’s heart.

  Focusing on his brother, Miles said, very seriously, “Your fiancée is absolutely right. I apologize—not only for implying that you’re basically a human ATM, but also for not realizing sooner that you’ve got impeccable taste in women. I should have known that any friend of Greta’s would be pretty special. But now … Dylan, if I had to comb the globe to find the perfect wife for you, I couldn’t do better than the woman at your side.”
<
br />   Dylan stood half out of his chair, planting his hands on the table. He leaned over, eyes narrow and mouth drawn. “What brought on this change of heart?”

  “I’m not actually done apologizing yet.”

  Slumping back down in his chair, Dylan wiped a palm over his jaw. “There’s more,” he said blankly.

  Miles thought about the night before, the way he’d felt while telling Greta about his family, and he knew he had one more apology to make if he was ever going to be able to let the guilt go and move forward to an adult relationship with his youngest brother.

  “I want to tell you I’m sorry for abandoning you when Mom and Dad died. I know that’s how it felt—and I have no excuse. When you looked at me after the funeral, all shocked and pale, like you still didn’t quite understand what had happened … but you trusted me to make everything okay again…” Miles stopped talking, appalled at the break in his voice.

  Across the table, Dylan had that hand over his mouth again, and Penny had stolen a comforting arm around his shoulders. “It’s fine,” Dylan said hoarsely. “You were halfway through college. It wouldn’t have made any sense for you to quit, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “Let the man talk,” Penny whispered, leaning her head on Dylan’s shoulder. “Now that he’s finally making some sense.”

  That got Dylan to smile behind his hand, and Miles felt the constriction in his chest ease up. The sight of the two of them, so together, so in sync—and the memory of how close to that he’d come with Greta—dispelled the worst of the black cloud of grief.

  Miles cleared his throat and pressed on. “You were just a kid, and I was legally an adult. I could have made a different call. But you looked up at me, with all this hope in your eyes. And I just … I panicked. I was so afraid I couldn’t live up to the responsibility, couldn’t take our parents’ place and give you what they would have given you. So I ran. And by the time I stopped running, it was too late.”

  The wooden chair creaked under Dylan as he shifted his weight. Penny lifted her head to look into his eyes, and they had a whole silent conversation while Miles sat there with his guts exposed on the table between them.

  Pressing a nudging kiss to his shoulder, Penny moved back to let Dylan stand up. Feeling awkward craning his neck to look up at his kid brother, Miles stood, too, his heart hammering.

  Dylan squared his shoulders and held out his hand, reaching out to Miles for the first time in years. “It’s not too late.”

  A heavy-linked chain that had been there as long as Miles could remember finally gave up its hold on his ribs. Drawing in his first clean, sharp breath in ages, Miles shocked the hell out of both of them by grabbing Dylan’s hand and using it to pull his brother in for a bone-cracking hug.

  “I’m sorry, too.” Dylan’s thick voice was muffled against Miles’s shoulder. “I acted like a jackass for a long time, I squandered every opportunity you tried to give me, and I lived the kind of life I knew Mom and Dad would have hated.”

  “But you figured yourself out,” Miles reminded him, pulling back from the hug but keeping his hands on his brother’s broad shoulders. “You know all Mom and Dad ever wanted was for us to be happy. And look who turned out to be the smart one, beating Logan and me to the punch.”

  “I had some help.” Dylan turned to smile at Penny, who had tears running down her beaming face.

  Miles let go of his brother, sending him into the waiting arms of the woman he loved without a qualm. “Sometimes life’s toughest lessons take a while to learn, and we can’t seem to make the leap on our own.”

  Twining her arm around her fiancé’s waist with a fond squeeze, Penny arched a knowing look in Miles’s direction. “You never did answer Dylan’s original question. And not that we’re complaining, but … why the sudden change of heart, Miles?”

  Miles looked into Penny’s laughing green eyes, and he knew that somehow she knew. Shaking his head, he backed toward the doorway. “Oh, man. I wish you all the luck in the world with that one, Dylan. You’re never going to get away with a damn thing.”

  “What do you mean?” Dylan’s brows crinkled together exactly the same way they’d done when he was a little boy, frustrated at his inability to tie his own shoelaces. “What’s going on?”

  Penny did a very convincing angelically innocent face. Miles stuck his tongue in his cheek and held in a laugh.

  “What your fiancée—who is too perceptive for my peace of mind, or, frankly, yours—means is that I, too, had some help in figuring things out.” Miles cleared his throat, aware of a flush of heat traveling up his neck.

  Dylan’s grin was wide and delighted. “Soooo, our little Greta Hackley showed you around Sanctuary Island and got you hooked, huh?”

  “It wasn’t the island, although it’s a beautiful place.” Miles tucked his hands in his pockets, realizing for the first time that he didn’t have his jacket. The knowledge that Greta was wearing it sent a strange, possessive thrill through his bones. “It was all Greta.”

  “Yeah, she’s pretty great,” Dylan agreed happily. When Penny poked him in the side, he glared down at her in confusion. “What?”

  Arching a brow at Miles, the half quirk of Penny’s mouth clearly communicated, Do you want to tell him, or shall I?

  Miles shook his head. He definitely wasn’t saying it out loud to his brother before he even managed to tell Greta how he felt about her. But Penny had no such issues.

  “Your brother,” she told Dylan with relish, “is withdrawing his objections to our speedy marriage because it has recently dawned on him that it doesn’t always take years to fall in love.” The smile she sent Miles was softer, although laughter still sparkled at the corners of her pretty green eyes. “Sometimes, with the right person, all it takes is one look.”

  Dylan’s blue eyes went wide with disbelief before a huge grin overtook his face. Crossing the kitchen to clap Miles on the back, he said, “No kidding! This is incredible, we should call Logan up here and open a bottle of champagne or something. What a day!”

  A low, bitter bark of laughter made them all turn toward the door that led to the front hallway.

  Greta stood in the doorway with his jacket crumpled under one arm, his phone clenched in her right fist, and eyes dark as black coffee in the milky paleness of her face.

  Miles started forward instinctively, fear clutching at his chest. “Greta, what happened? Are you okay, your mom—?”

  She pitched the phone at him, a perfect curveball Miles managed to catch only by sheer luck and reflexes. “You lied to me,” Greta said in a voice like broken glass. “You spun me the perfect fairy tale, a dreamworld made to order, just for me…”

  Shaking her head, Greta hardened her face until she looked like a marble statue of the vibrant, beautiful woman Miles loved.

  “What happened, you ask?” Greta laughed again, and it was just as painful to hear as it was the first time. “What happened is that I finally woke up.”

  Chapter Ten

  The kitchen was filled with the earringing silence of a detonated bomb. Greta lobbed her grenade, turned on her heel, and left Miles clutching his phone like a lifeline.

  Numb with shock and moving on autopilot, he thumbed open the locked screen and scrolled through the most recent texts.

  Two from Cleo. The first one about the private investigator made him wince, but it was the second that froze his heart inside his chest.

  Boss. Wanted to talk in person about this, but since you’re not picking up … pls rethink what you’re doing with GH. Seducing a woman for info is not worthy of you, and you may regret it. She’s different from your usual, you were different around her. Smthg to think about.

  In a single devastating glance, Miles took it all in. Greta must have seen the text, and she wasn’t an idiot. She’d obviously figured out the truth … but she didn’t have the whole story.

  “What are you waiting for?” Penny exclaimed. “Go after her!”

  “Hold on, what was she
talking about?” Dylan’s heavy hand landed on Miles’s shoulder. “Miles. What did you do?”

  “You, of all people, know how far I’m willing to go to protect my family.” Miles glanced at the dawning horror on Penny’s sweet, round face. “I thought Penny was a real threat. I figured her best friend would dish the dirt if I threw a little money around and showed her a good time.”

  Miles expected Dylan to drop his hand, to back away with his lip curled in disgust. But instead, his baby brother squeezed his shoulder and said, “But Greta showed you something instead, huh?”

  That brought Miles’s head up, finally, and he met Dylan’s sympathetic gaze with a sense of wonder. So he hadn’t lost everything in the last thirty seconds.

  It only felt that way.

  “Do you love Greta?” Penny asked abruptly. She still looked upset, but there was a spine of steel running straight up that woman’s back. “That’s the only real question.”

  “She doesn’t know it,” Miles confessed, raw and painful. “But I do.”

  “Then go tell her,” Dylan urged him. “Tell her everything, the whole truth, and don’t leave anything out. Then, if you’re as lucky as I am, she’ll look down into your soul and decide if you’re worth forgiving.”

  “I didn’t have to dig all that deep,” Penny protested, stepping up to slip her fingers into Dylan’s hand.

  Miles felt his lips twitch as a tiny spark of hope flickered to life in his heart. “I need to hear that whole story someday, but right now … I have some groveling to do.”

  “Yeah, you do,” Penny said, but the approving smile she gifted him with made Miles want to hug her.

  But he didn’t have time. He had to go after Greta—he couldn’t stand to leave her thinking the worst of him, and herself, for an instant longer than necessary. The only problem was …

  “Uh, Penny? Can you give me her address?”

  Penny’s face went slack. “The love of your life, and you don’t even know where she lives?”