Loving the Right Brother Read online

  There was no one to call. Her mother and stepfather were away on a cruise, and she didn’t keep in close contact with anyone else. Her boss, Eli Farley, certainly didn’t need to be notified of her safe arrival.

  Her hand in her pocket, Irena curled her fingers around her cell phone. Taking it out, she held it up. “I take it there’s still no cell phone reception.”

  He surprised her when he didn’t automatically confirm her assumptions. “There’s some, actually. But it plays by its own set of rules. Reception has a tendency of whimsically going in and out.”

  Irena laughed. “Not all that different from the lower forty-eight.”

  She saw the corners of his mouth curve. Unlike Ryan, Brody’s smile was boyish—or at least it had been, she realized. There was something almost sexy about it now. Or was that just her imagination, running off with her like it had when she’d first glimpsed Brody and thought he was Ryan?

  “What?” she asked, wanting to be let in on the joke if there was one.

  “Nothing, you just sound like a tourist instead of a native.”

  “I’m not a native anymore,” she told him. “My home is in Seattle these days. I just came…” Suddenly, her voice failed her. For a second, emotion choked her throat, blocking her words. This was silly, she silently insisted. Fighting past it, she tried again. “I just came—”

  “For closure?” Brody supplied.

  Closure. My God but that sounded so trendy, so pretentious. She wasn’t here for closure; she was here to say goodbye to her youth. To love, because she’d loved Ryan Hayes with all of her young, naive heart. Loved him the way she’d never loved again and in all likelihood, would never love again.

  “To pay my respects,” she finally concluded.

  Brody stared at her for a long moment. “I doubt if you really mean that.” He saw the surprise on her face. She opened her mouth to protest. He cut her off. “He was my brother and I loved him, but Ryan didn’t deserve anyone’s respect. Because he never gave any.”

  She hadn’t expected that from Brody. He’d always been so easygoing. “You’ve gotten harder than I remember.”

  “Not harder, just more honest,” he corrected. “But I should have been harder. Maybe if someone had gotten tougher with Ryan, if someone took the trouble to shake him up a little and made him fly right, he might still be around.”

  It wasn’t easy keeping the sorrow out of his voice. He still hadn’t worked through the anger he felt. Anger because at bottom, he felt what Ryan had done was a waste. It was a terrible, terrible waste of a human life.

  Looking back, he supposed it had been a waste for a very long time.

  She placed her hand on his arm, feeling his pain. Brody had never been one to talk about his feelings. Maybe they could help one another.

  “What happened, Brody?” she asked softly. “My grandfather said that Ryan…that he died by his own hand.” It was a polite way of saying that he committed suicide, but she just couldn’t bring herself to use the words. It was just too awful to imagine Ryan willingly killing himself.

  “That was the immediate cause of death,” Brody confirmed. Ryan had been found in a pool of blood, holding the gun that he’d used to end his life. “But the process for Ryan started long before this Monday.” He saw the look that came into her eyes and instantly realized what she was thinking. Irena had a tendency to take things on, to shoulder blame where there wasn’t any. “No, not ten years ago. You’re not to blame,” he said firmly. “Hell, you were the best thing that ever happened to him, but he was too dumb at the time to realize it. And as for what I just said, Ryan started destroying himself long before you left.”

  Guilt still spouted, taking root at the speed of light. If she’d remained, maybe she could have helped Ryan, kept him from destroying himself.

  “But if I hadn’t left—”

  Brody shook his head. In his own way, when it came to Irena and Ryan, it was Ryan who had the strong personality. He could always bend Irena to his will.

  “If you hadn’t left, Ryan would have probably managed somehow to take you down with him.” A hint of a smile surfaced again. “Although I don’t know. You were always pretty strong.”

  She laughed at the notion, shaking her head. “I certainly didn’t feel strong.”

  “Well, you were,” he contradicted. “Nobody else ever walked out on Ryan. When you did, it really shook him up. I thought—hoped—that it would wind up being a wake-up call for him. Instead, he just wound up drinking a little more.”

  She knew it wasn’t his intention, but the words cut deep. “Then it was my fault.”

  “No,” he insisted. Damn you, Ryan, you’re dead and you’re still messing with her. “It wasn’t your fault any more than it was my fault.” He took her hands in his as he spoke. “Don’t go down that path, Irena. It’s self-destructive, and there’s nothing to be gained. Ryan was a big boy and he was responsible for himself. He had looks, money, charm. He could have done anything, but he wanted to be a drunk.” Brody’s mouth twisted in a cynical smile. “Not the wisest of career choices. My father certainly proved that. His death should have served as a warning to Ryan. But it didn’t.”

  Her eyes searched his face. “How did you manage to escape?”

  Brody shrugged. It was a question that he’d asked himself more than once in the last decade, whenever a sadness gripped him or when his spirits plummeted so low he couldn’t even locate them.

  “I supposed what saved me was that I wanted to be everything that they weren’t. Instead of focusing on me, I looked around and saw that I could be accomplishing things with my life, with my money, beyond just making Ike a wealthy man.” He grinned. “No offense to Ike.”

  She didn’t quite follow him. “Ike? How does he figure into it?”

  “Ike and his cousin, Jean Luc, own the Salty Dog, the saloon that Ryan practically lived in during the last few years of his life. Whenever he was there, Ike would cut him off at a sensible point or refuse to allow him to be served if Ryan came in already a couple sheets to the wind. But—I don’t know if you heard—Ike and his cousin have a number of irons in the fire these days, and he divides his time between different establishments when he’s not home, doting on his wife and kids. I couldn’t expect him to be Ryan’s guardian angel.”

  “I heard about the first part,” she told him, “but not the second. Ike’s married?” It seemed impossible to imagine. Almost as impossible as imagining Ryan married, but for a different reason. Ike was, or had been, a flirt, but he’d made no secret of the fact that he loved women and felt that each had a unique quality all her own. “Ike, the eternal bachelor?”

  Brody grinned again. “Not anymore. His sister, Juneau, died, leaving her baby daughter for him to raise. He got really domestic after that. And when Dr. Shayne Kerrigan’s wife had her best friend come up for a visit, Ike just lost his heart.”

  Pausing in his narrative, Brody looked up at the sky. It was swiftly turning an ominous shade of gray, and once again, the wind was picking up.

  “You know, I don’t mind catching you up this way, but I think that we should either do it inside the house, or better yet, drive over to your grandfather’s before it snows and strands us here.”

  Although, he added silently, that wouldn’t exactly be the worst thing in the world. How often had he played that very scenario in his head—he and Irena, stranded in a cabin? And it had always ended the same way, with Irena suddenly realizing that she’d loved him all along and not Ryan.

  “I know that Yuri’s anxious to see you again—and he’ll worry until he sees you walk through the door, especially if it starts snowing again.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” she agreed.

  “I always am.” There was a twinkle in his eye as he appraised her.

  Irena laughed, feeling the tension drain away. Brody could always make her relax, she thought. She’d missed him. Missed talking to him. She’d shared a good part of her childhood with him, and all of her feelings. It fel
t good, finding out that she could pick up almost where she’d left off with him.

  “God, it’s good to see you,” she told him with feeling.

  She couldn’t quite fathom the smile that played across his lips. “Right back at you.”

  Moved by impulse and fueled by a swirling mixture of feelings that she had yet to label, Irena threw her arms around Brody and kissed him. She kissed him for a number of reasons. To connect to the past, to show Brody her gratitude that the years hadn’t changed him. And maybe just because she needed to.

  She hadn’t expected him to pull back.

  Chapter Three

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to…”

  Embarrassed, at a loss as to what to say, Irena felt color creeping up her neck to her cheeks. She abruptly turned away and was about to hurry into her vehicle.

  But Brody caught her by the arm, preventing her getaway. “Sorry,” he said, apologizing for his reaction. “You just caught me off guard, that’s all.”

  After years of reining in his feelings whenever he was around her, he’d reacted instinctively and pulled back.

  But there was no reason to react that way anymore. Irena was no longer Ryan’s girl, not even if his brother were still alive. More so now that Ryan was gone. He didn’t have to keep her at a respectful arm’s length or secretly enjoying the contact between them while behaving as if she were his sister instead of the woman he’d been in love with since middle school. He was free to make his feelings known—if he so chose.

  Old habits died hard.

  “No, it’s my fault,” Irena said, not wanting him to feel as if he had done anything wrong. The misstep was hers. “For a second, it was as if no time had gone by at all.” Color flushed over her cheeks again as she told him, “I just took it for granted that you were still just Brody.”

  Smiling Brody assured her, “I am.”

  “I mean—”

  Since when had her tongue gotten so thick and unwieldy? Finding the right words had never been a problem for her. These days, she stood up in front of juries, making brilliant summations. That wasn’t her observation; it belonged to Eli Farley, the oldest senior partner of the firm. And very little pleased Eli, not the least of which was her taking time off to fly to Hades. She’d made sure that her cases were all well covered. Eli had still been displeased.

  But, despite her ability to find the right word at the right time, her mind was close to a blank right now. Why was that?

  Because she’d made a mistake, taken a situation for granted, and she shouldn’t have.

  “You’re probably happily married and here I am, behaving as if we were still in high school. If your wife saw us—”

  “There is no wife,” he told her quietly, cutting into her words. “I’m not married.”

  Irena closed her mouth and looked at him. Brody was such a wonderful person. Why hadn’t some woman snatched him up by now?

  “You’re not? Why?”

  Brody glanced down at her left hand and saw that it was conspicuously devoid of jewelry. “Why aren’t you married?” he countered.

  She shook her head, not about to focus on herself. “I asked first.”

  “I’ve been too busy working to take time out to cultivate the kind of relationship women out here have come to expect.” And because the only woman I ever loved left ten years ago.

  He’d come to realize falling in love was not an inalienable right guaranteed to happen. Love was a mysterious emotion made up of many components. He’d never had all the pieces available to him once Irena had left Hades.

  “Busy?” she repeated, her curiosity aroused. “Doing what?” Ryan had told her that his father had left them both enough money to make sure that neither one of them ever needed to work. And Ryan, she knew, had taken full advantage of that.

  But then, Brody had always been different from his brother. Now that she thought about it, the fact that he had dedicated himself to a career didn’t really surprise her.

  “Using the funds that Dad left us to help out some of the less fortunate people in the area.”

  He should have known that it wasn’t enough to satisfy her. Instead, it only raised more questions.

  “Less fortunate?” she repeated, raising her voice to be heard above the wind that had begun to moan. “And how do you help them?”

  He didn’t want to talk about himself. Because the temperature was dropping, Brody raised her collar for her. Tiny fingers of emotion swept all through him as he did so. He caught himself just drinking in the sight of her. Before he knew it, she’d be gone again. Leaving the same void she’d left the first time.

  He nodded toward the house. “Do you want to go inside?”

  That was why she had come here first, Irena reminded herself. The sight of Brody, looking so much like his brother, had driven that right out of her head. But now she nodded.

  “Sure.”

  The front door was unlocked. Pushing it open, she walked in. Irena fully expected to find a mess. After all, time had a way of taking its toll, and neither she nor her mother had lived here for more than eighteen years. They’d moved out when Yuri insisted they come live with him shortly after his son had been killed during the cave-in.

  Hesitating at first, her mother had wound up agreeing because she just couldn’t bear to stay in a house haunted with memories. Memories that lived in every corner of the single-story house and would ambush her without any warning.

  But, by the same token, because there were so many memories here, her mother couldn’t bring herself to part with the house and sell it. So it had remained in the family. A silent shadow of the past.

  Irena scanned the rooms. Instead of being buried under the grit of almost two decades, the house was amazingly spotless. There wasn’t so much as a spider’s web visible anywhere.

  Stunned, she turned to Brody. He’d mentioned electricity and water and she’d seen him making repairs. Had he cleaned up the rooms as well?

  “Did you—”

  Brody knew what she was going to ask. “No, can’t take the credit for this,” he told her. “Sydney, Marta, Alison, Lily and some of the other women from town pitched in to clean this up, just in case you wanted to stay here.”

  He didn’t add that it had been his initial suggestion to Dr. Shayne Kerrigan’s wife that had gotten the ball rolling. Remembering how she had felt when she had first come to Hades and had seen the chaotic condition of Shayne’s house, Sydney had instantly gotten her friends together to restore order in the abandoned residence.

  Irena eyed him, puzzled. “I don’t know any of them.” Why would total strangers do something like this for her?

  Again, he could see the unspoken question in her eyes. Ten years and he could read her like a book. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  “Did you forget how neighborly everyone is here?” he asked her.

  She had a nodding acquaintance with her neighbors back in Seattle, but for the most part, she didn’t even know their names and they didn’t know hers. Anonymity was something she had come to take for granted.

  “I suppose I did.” Her eyes swept over the living room again, remembering happy times. She didn’t realize that she was smiling now. “This is wonderful. You’ve got to introduce me to Sydney and the others so I can thank them properly.”

  He’d forgotten how much he enjoyed just watching her react to things. He’d loved her innocence, her naïveté back then. There was still a glimmer of the girl she used to be in the woman she had become. The discovery warmed him. “No problem. You’ll probably meet them at the Salty Dog tonight.”

  “Excuse me?” She had no real firm plans, other than seeing her grandfather and going to the funeral parlor where Ryan was laid out.

  “Another thing you forgot,” Brody observed, amused. “The people here like to throw parties to welcome people when they come to Hades,” he told her, watching her face for any signs that she remembered what he was talking about.
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  She recalled the tradition, but it didn’t apply to her. “But I’m not staying long,” she reminded him.

  “Doesn’t matter. There’s still going to be a party. Lily’s been cooking all day.” The look on her face told him she needed another clarification. “Lily runs the main restaurant here.”

  “Ike’s got competition?” As she recalled, the Salty Dog Saloon offered simple meals to its patrons, which virtually included the entire population of Hades.

  “He couldn’t begin to compete with Lily’s,” Brody told her. “The restaurant Lily ran in Seattle won awards.”

  “Then what’s she doing here?”

  “Being in love,” Brody told her simply. “Lily married Max, the sheriff.”

  “Oh, right, April told me that,” she recalled.

  Brody looked down at her hand again. “Okay, I told you why I’m not married.” And, since he was baring his soul, he had the right to ask her a question. “Now it’s your turn. Why are you still single?”

  Irena shrugged, pretending to look around the house some more. She really didn’t like talking about herself. They had that in common, she recalled. “Same reason.”

  “Too busy helping the less fortunate?” he guessed, tongue in cheek.

  Irena laughed. This time, she looked at him. “No, wise guy, too busy with work to take the time to socialize.”

  That was only part of it. He still had the ability to know when she was lying. “Oh, I thought maybe it had something to do with the way Ryan thoughtlessly broke your heart.”

  She shrugged again, uncomfortable with the way Brody had honed in on the reason. She wasn’t used to blatant honesty anymore. It pleased her that Brody could still see through her smoke screen and lies.

  “There was some of that, too,” she admitted. Then, because they verged on an uncomfortable topic, she turned the conversation back to him. “So, what is it that you do to ‘help the less fortunate,’ exactly?”