Beautiful Ruin (Nolan Brothers #1)

by Amy Olle

  Drew slipped both hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Your latest round of permits should be approved this week.”

  “That was fast.” Blatant mistrust attached to her words.

  Drew shrugged. “I called in a favor.”

  “You didn’t need to do that.”

  “What’s the point of being mayor if you can’t pull some strings once in a while?”

  Then an odd expression came over Drew’s face and lifted the hairs on the back of Noah’s neck. “You look good. Have you been talking to Dr. Smallwood?”

  Two bright spots of color stained her cheeks. “No.”

  “I hear she’s an excellent therapist. You should give her a call.”

  The emotions flitted across Mina’s face so quickly he couldn’t distinguish one from the next. He shifted his weight to his other foot, the slight movement causing the back of his hand to brush up against the back of hers.

  “I don’t mean to embarrass you. I’m worried about you,” Drew said. “We all are.”

  “Your concern is touching.” With sarcasm, her voice gained strength. “But it’s none of your business.”

  Drew’s expression showed all the wounded affront of a kicked puppy. “I was only trying to help.”

  “I don’t want your help.” She drew up to her full height. “I want you to leave.”

  Drew’s mouth turned down in a petulant grimace, and he flung an accusatory glare at Noah.

  “You understand, don’t you?” Noah sprinkled a dash of smug asshole over his words for added flavor. “Mina and I were catching up.”

  “Is that what you kids are calling it these days?”

  “Drew, time to go.” She pushed between the men and held open the screen door.

  Drew seemed more amused than offended as he ambled toward the door. He stopped before her. “Call me if you need anything.”

  She shoved him the rest of the way through the threshold and let the door fall shut with a bang.

  They listened to the sound of his footsteps fade.

  “Charming fellow,” Noah said.

  “I’ll get those papers to you as soon as possible. Thanks for dropping them off.”

  He frowned. “You’re kicking me out, too?”

  “It’s not like that.” Her hands twisted in front of her. “It’s just... I need to get over to the house and get some work done.”

  “And we need to talk about what happened before the mayor showed up.”

  Alarm flickered across her face. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”

  “I do.”

  “Why?” Desperation added an extra syllable to the word.

  Noah gaped at her. Why? Because he’d almost fucked her on her dining table. Would have done so if Mayor Frosted Tips hadn’t intruded when he had.

  Mina pushed away from the wall. “Let’s not ruin it by talking. What does it mean? Where do we go from here? Blah, blah, blah. It was fun, right? Can’t we leave it at that?”

  Noah clenched his teeth. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the guy in this relationship. Those are my lines.”

  That earned him a smile.

  A real smile.

  And he felt suddenly, slightly winded. Like he’d sprinted a half mile or taken a kick to the nuts.

  “Nothing philosophical.” His voice sounded faint to his own ears. “I promise.”

  She nodded. “All right, but not right now, okay?”

  He wanted to push it, to push her, but given the chaos in her eyes, he suspected it’d be to disastrous effect.

  “I can wait,” he said easily. “Until you’re ready.”

  “Thank you.”

  Noah waited one heartbeat, two. “When will that be?”

  Her mouth quirked with a small, crooked smile. “Tomorrow.” One of her small hands flitted through the air. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  He crossed to her, and as he drew nearer, the now-familiar heat sparked between them. Her lashes swept down to hide her eyes from him, but her body hummed with tension. Anticipation. His cock pressed against the fly of his blue jeans.

  He didn’t understand his reaction to her, but nor could he deny it. And now that he’d had a good, long taste of her, he wanted more.

  He stroked a finger over her rounded cheek. “Until tomorrow then. And Mina?”

  Big blue eyes clamped on his face.

  “Next time, I won’t be distracted.”

  Chapter Eight

  The next day, she ignored Noah’s papers as she passed by the dining table on her way to the kitchen to fix her morning coffee. Though anxious to sign and return them, she couldn’t bring herself to sit down to the task.

  Her cheeks warmed with the memory of what had happened on that table only a few hours before. The aftershocks of that orgasm still reverberated through her and kept her off-balance. Insecure.

  She’d never done anything like that. Never used sex to change the subject. To be honest, she was surprised it had worked so well.

  She made a quick run to Mike’s Hardware and stocked up on supplies. At the checkout, she spent some time chatting with Mike’s daughter, Abbie, who ran the store and kept herself informed of all the interesting things happening on the island.

  Back at the carriage house, the papers Noah had left screamed at her as she fixed a sandwich. She approached the table with caution and peeked at them out of the corner of her eye.

  The first page explained the steps of the survey and excavation and included everything he’d told her on the hill. On the next page, an itemized list of equipment and services included brushes, sifting tables, nylon rope, and lab analysis. Not an invoice but only a listing of necessary supplies and their estimated costs.

  Air wheezed through her lungs at the number totaled at the end of the list. Though the estimate came in below the figure he’d cited the other day, a choking fear wrapped around her heart.

  She flipped open her laptop, stabbed at the on button, and spent more than an hour combing through her spreadsheet, looking for places to cut and scrimp costs so she could find the money to pay for the excavation. Anything at all she could justify eliminating, she did.

  When she calculated it’d save her several thousand dollars, she resolved to sack the painters and prune the lawn maintenance crew. She could do the work herself. So what if she’d never painted in her life or as of yet managed to keep a houseplant alive through a cold, gray winter?

  She liked to learn new things. Growing up in a privileged political family, she’d never lifted a finger to do chores or tasks that were deemed menial or that might ruffle her appearance—you could never be certain a media hound wouldn’t jump out of the bushes and snap an unflattering photo.

  She hadn’t known how much she didn’t know until after high school, when she’d foregone college and discovered just how much she’d lacked. No skills, no ambitions, not a single thing or attribute she could point to with pride to show her worth in the world.

  Until she’d bought this house.

  She stared at her ever more chaotic spreadsheet but soon needed to turn away from the dismal math.

  She canceled her cable TV, dropped the insurance coverage on her car to the bare minimum allowed, and traded in her smartphone for the dumbest one available.

  Next, she prepared a half-dozen job applications to go with the batch she’d sent out the previous week.

  Still, the problem remained of finding money for the excavation.

  In the garage below her apartment, she dragged two large packing boxes out from behind the stash of furniture she’d begun collecting for the house and carted them back upstairs. She flung open the closet door in the bedroom and, on her hands and knees, cleaned out the space.

  She worked until both boxes heaped with size single-digit designer castoffs and overpriced men’s dress shirts Drew had left when she’d kicked him out of their apartment. She hauled the boxes downstairs, crammed them into her mom’s hand-me-down BMW, and drove them to a secondhand shop in an upscale part of Tra
verse City.

  When the store clerk complimented Mina’s purse, Mina emptied it and sold it along with the rest of her loot.

  She pushed the contents of her purse into a plastic shopping bag and made the drive back to Thief Island, several hundred dollars richer.

  Back home, Noah’s papers taunted her. You weren’t this shy yesterday, when you begged him to touch you.

  It wasn’t that she was avoiding him.

  It was just... It was a lot of money. Yeah, it was the money that troubled her.

  And maybe a little, teeny-weensy bit of her wariness was due to him.

  He’d dislodged a hoard of memories. Memories she’d worked hard to squeeze from her mind.

  Of course, Drew’s surprise visit hadn’t helped her peace of mind, either.

  Her engagement to the son of her uncle’s political enemy had managed to catch the attention of a local media outlet, which had painted her relationship with Drew as a Cinderella story. True love against all odds. The story had gone national, and when the jerk had cheated on her, a national tabloid had picked that up, too, including photo evidence and a side-by-side comparison of Mina and Phoebe Taylor.

  Mina had found out about the story—and the cheating—on Facebook.

  After which she’d instituted a self-imposed lifelong ban on all social media.

  When she’d confronted Drew, he’d blamed her sexual deficiencies for driving him to sleep with another woman. He’d called her cold and withdrawn. He’d said she was bent.

  She’d believed him.

  She’d believed him because, by that time, they’d been together for two years. Two years with a handsome, successful man. A man she hadn’t wanted to have sex with. Clearly, something was wrong with her.

  She’d tried everything she could think of. Dirty books and movies. New positions. Props and toys. Each thing had worked for a little while, but nothing had changed her. Nothing had made her better. More. The numbness always returned, and with it, the lack of interest. She didn’t want to have sex. Not with her ex. Not with herself. Not with anyone.

  She wasn’t just bent. She was broken.

  But then, with one meaningless orgasm, Noah had blasted through her wall of indifference.

  So she didn’t call him. Not that day or the next. By the third day, she couldn’t bear the pressure one more moment. She snatched up her cell phone to call him, but her hands shook when she punched the digits, and the sound of her heart thundering in her ears made it impossible to focus.

  Her fingers fumbled to type a text message instead. I have your papers. Where can I mail them?

  There. Done. That wasn’t so hard.

  Feeling lighter, she stepped into her work boots and tied the laces. It might be hours before he responded—

  Her cell jangled with the chime of an incoming text. Mina straightened and frowned at her phone. She scooped it up and opened the new message.

  Coward.

  That was all.

  She waited, but no other texts came. Not that night or the next morning. She went through the entire next day wondering if he’d follow up on that one stupid word, but her phone remained silent.

  Did he think her depraved now? Slutty?

  She should just call him.

  A tangle of emotions curled through her, but she couldn’t tease them apart.

  What was she afraid of?

  Everything.

  No, not everything. That’d be ridiculous.

  That was it. She was afraid she was ridiculous.

  Again.

  Still.

  Whatever.

  What if this was all a game to him? His interest in the house? The kiss? The orgasm?

  What if it’d all been a ploy to, uh, ease his access to her land? What if he’d planned the whole thing from the start? Beginning when she’d thrown herself at him that first night in the ballroom and continuing right on through to the other day, when she’d served herself up to him on her own dining table?

  Did he believe one little orgasm—no matter how soul-stirring—was all it’d take?

  Damn.

  Maybe that was all it took. Which meant she was still the idiot who couldn’t tell the difference between a man who liked her and one who would use her, even going so far as to sleep with her, or propose marriage, for the sole purpose of advancing his career.

  “What do you know about Drew Alexander?”

  Shock warred with suspicion for control of Shea’s features.

  Noah was surprised, too, but Jack hadn’t been able to supply the information Noah needed, and Luke had instructed Noah to meet him here, at the rundown house in the south-side neighborhood, where the brothers had spent their adolescence. Where Shea, it appeared, now lived.

  “The mayor?” Shea scratched his jaw. “Not much. Why?”

  “Our paths crossed a few days ago.” Four days, to be exact, and since then, Mina had sent him one pitiful text. She was running from him. So, while he let her think she was getting away with something, he’d decided to do some independent research about Mayor Drew.

  “I couldn’t get a good read on him,” Noah lied.

  Shea angled the front door open. “You, uh, wanna come in?”

  Not even a little. Noah reminded himself Daniel Nolan was dead and buried, not passed out in his stained brown recliner, and ducked inside.

  In the living room, Shea kicked a laundry basket full of clothes aside and bent to scoop up the spread of fast-food wrappers on the coffee table.

  “He comes into the pub once in a while,” Shea said as he crumpled the wrappers into tight balls and stuffed them in the paper bag. “Likes the hard stuff. Bit of a pretty boy.”

  “He has money?”

  “Yeah, he has money.”

  A wry smile twisted Noah’s mouth. “Some things never change.”

  “You got that right. That’s about all I can tell you. He and I don’t exactly run in the same circles. His high-profile engagement ended badly last year.” A humorless grin touched Shea’s face. “And he’s a politician. I assume the worst and hope to be pleasantly surprised if I’m proven wrong.”

  Noah planned to do just that.

  A crack of noise from the kitchen shattered the quiet in the house. The back door banged shut, followed by a series of footsteps, and then—

  “Dada!” A child’s squeal rang out, and a two-foot blur launched into Shea’s arms.

  The lines etching his brother’s face smoothed away in an instant.

  “How you doing, buddy?” Shea buried his face in the little boy’s dark hair.

  He couldn’t be more than two or three years old. He sported a tiny Red Wings jersey and a pink tutu. Noah’s gaze clashed with Shea’s over the child’s head, where a sparkly butterfly captured a hank of his hair.

  Even as he bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from smiling, the scene tore at something in his chest, like an old wound ripping open.

  “Give me a second?” Shea said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Of course.”

  Shea ducked into the kitchen and Noah found himself alone. With the ghost of Daniel Nolan.

  He twisted away and crossed to the sliding glass door. He stared past his own reflection and into the small backyard.

  The old oak tree, once small and sickly, had grown to twice its size. He recalled the last time he’d scrambled up the massive tree, fear and anger pumping through him. Threatening to tear the sobs from his throat, even against his will. He’d climbed as high as he could and huddled on a too-thin branch, his back pressed to the tree’s solid trunk.

  With everything in him, he’d prayed. Prayed that his mom was still alive and that he might find a way to stop making his dad so angry. That his youngest brother, Leo, would start talking again.

  Noah turned from the window and the memories to a pair of round, vivid blue eyes pinned on him. A mixture of interest and alarm swam in their depths.

  Shea’s eyes.

  She hovered in the doorway, one miniature pink croc s
tacked on top of the other.

  “Hey there,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  She fixed him with a dark look of mistrust and ducked her chin, showing him the crown of her head covered with dark hair. Much like her mother’s hair.

  As if summoned by his thoughts, Isobel appeared from the kitchen and laid a hand on the little girl’s head. She’d changed little. Her large eyes held a sadness he didn’t recall, but otherwise the creamy mocha skin and rich brown hair inherited from the Mexican half of her ancestors were unchanged.

  Her thickly lashed gray eyes trained on Noah. “It’s really you.”

  “Good to see you, Isobel.”

  She approached with caution, as though she feared he might startle and bolt.

  When he didn’t, her smile warmed the room. “I’m so glad you’re here. How long are you staying?”

  “A few months, it seems.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Isobel scooped the little girl up into her arms.

  “How old is she?” Noah asked.

  “Three,” Isobel said. “This is Maisie.”

  Maisie laid her head on Isobel’s shoulder and regarded him with suspicion.

  “What are you all doing here?” Shea broke up their reunion.

  “It’s your weekend.” A crispness Noah couldn’t recall ever hearing crept into Isobel’s tone.

  “I’m working tonight,” Shea said. “One of the bartenders called in. I have to cover.”

  In Isobel’s arms, Maisie whimpered.

  “It’s okay, pumpkin,” Isobel soothed. “Mommy and Daddy are just talking.”

  Still, Maisie’s oversized eyes filled with tears, and she clung to Isobel.

  “I just have to stay through the dinner rush,” Shea said.

  “We’re doing inventory tonight.” Isobel rocked back and forth, trying to soothe the toddler in her arms. “I have to be there by seven. I can’t call in again. I told you that last week—”

  “Stop.” Shea’s eyes darkened with pain. “I’m not out to sabotage you. I forgot.”

  “Of course you did,” Isobel muttered.

  “Where’s Finn? Can’t he sit with them for a few hours?”

  Isobel shook her head. “He’s staying at a friend’s house.”

  The little one in Shea’s arms, too small to understand his parents’ tense exchange, clamped his tiny mouth shut tight while his wide brown eyes took it all in.