it still didn’t make it right. Nothing would make any of this fucked-up situation right.
I turned toward the terminal.
“She wasn’t sticking around,” he called after me. “She wasn’t going to wait for you while you deployed.”
Maybe, maybe not.
I’d never know.
Pissed that I’d come here, I walked into the terminal.
Luna pushed off the counter he was leaning against and fell into step beside me. “I’m beginning to understand your choice on the next-of-kin notification form.”
“I’m not discussing it.” We exited through the front of the terminal.
“Fair enough. But know familia isn’t always blood, hermano.”
“Understood.” Luna was more of a brother to me than Vance ever had been.
Luna unlocked the armored Escalade. Getting behind the wheel, he cranked the engine and the AC. Then he leaned back in his seat and glanced toward the jets before looking back at me. “Gotta admit, not much surprises me anymore.” He broke out in a grin. “But goddamn, amigo. Sanaa? The Sanaa?” He chuckled. “Mierda. That’s next level, brother.” Still grinning, he shook his head. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
I stared straight ahead. “She’s not mine.” She never was.
“Yeah, but at some point she was. And by the look of it, she wishes she still was.” Luna threw the SUV into gear. “So what do you want to do?”
I glanced at the two private jets as Luna pulled away from the airport. “Nothing.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me that the one brother I never wanted was the only one who’d ever seen me naked.
Yes, Ronan had seen me in my bikini and, I was pretty sure, my panties and bra all those years ago when I changed out of wet clothes after we’d gotten caught in the rain walking home from school. We’d laughed about it at the time, dripping summer rain all over the kitchen floor.
Then the laughter in his eyes had died and his seriousness, the deep-rooted kind that came from too many responsibilities at too young an age, had taken over his beautiful features and his throat moved with a swallow.
It was the first time I’d been brave enough to reach out and touch it.
The memory surfaced.
“Do it again,” I whispered, placing my hand on his throat.
“Do what?” he asked quietly.
My heart ached at the soulful quietness to his voice. “Make it move.” I stroked his Adam’s apple with my thumb. “This.”
His hand covered mine, and he swallowed again. “I have to tell you something.”
My fingers tickled at the vibration from his voice, but my heart fluttered from the intensity in his stormy eyes. “What?”
His throat moved again. “I’m in love with you, Songbird.”
“Sanaa?”
I blinked and the memory faded, but I was staring at almost identical eyes on a man with the same Adam’s apple. “What?”
Vance smiled, and tiny lines formed that I didn’t know if his brother had because Ronan hadn’t smiled at me.
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you, love?” Vance brushed a knuckle across my cheek.
I wasn’t his love. But he’d been in London long enough to pick up certain endearments, and I was too tired to argue with him about it. “I’m sorry, can you please repeat yourself?”
Dropping his hand to my arm, Vance glanced at Adam. “It’s been a long flight. I need to get her to the hotel.”
I didn’t want to go to another nameless hotel. I’d lived in hotels for a decade. I wanted to stay on this plane until the very last whisper of his scent disappeared. Dry cedar, salty air and the unmistakable musk that was all him, Ronan smelled exactly how I remembered, and I wanted to stay here and breathe it in forever.
I wanted to drown in it.
I wanted memories that were bittersweet to give me hope, and I wanted to embrace him in the only way I could, because no one smelled like Ronan Conlon. There was nothing that felt more like home than his scent. Not even his twin came close.
Which was why I should’ve realized, all those years ago, the unforgiveable mistake I was making. Except I’d been so nervous and so desperate to make the man of my dreams mine before telling him that I’d done the unthinkable and signed the contract, that I didn’t think. I’d put my arms around him from behind, and I’d whispered I had a surprise for him.
I should’ve known it was Vance and not him. And Vance should’ve stopped me before I was dragging him to his brother’s bedroom, stripping, and pawing at him with all of my inexperience