and ensuring everyone had as much of a work/life balance as possible in their stressful environment.
Seeing Ash standing up for Kiera made him feel better. But only a little. He wanted to have the right to stick up for Kiera but she was pulling away, becoming more and more distant even while the sex between them was getting better, more explosive and addictive. He couldn’t imagine a time when she wasn’t sleeping next to him. In fact, the nights she insisted on sleeping at her own apartment were the nights he barely slept at all.
“We knew each other over six years ago,” Axel finally said. His head was leaning back against the leather sofa and his eyes were closed, so he didn’t see the surprise in his brothers’ faces, but he could feel it. “Stop looking at me like that,” he said, still with his eyes closed.
His brothers all chuckled because they knew each other so well. “Why didn’t you say something when I presented her to be hired,” Ash asked.
Axel felt one of his brother sit down at the opposite end of the sofa and he peeked out. “What was I supposed to say? ‘Don’t hire her. She’s the woman who broke my heart.’?”
Ryker was leaning against the mantle but Axel caught his eyes widen at that confession. “So she’s the one?” he asked, just to clarify. All three of them remembered when Axel had come back from Washington, D.C. He’d been driven, mindlessly pushing harder than necessary to get his division up and running. He’d been a bear to be around and had worked eighteen and twenty hours every day no matter how fast his business was growing.
Axel sighed as he nodded his head. “Yep.”
Xander shrugged his shoulders. “So what’s the problem?”
Axel leaned forward, holding the cold beer in both his hands. “We met in Washington, D.C. when she was in school and I was finishing up my time clerking at the Supreme Court. By the time I’d met her, more than half the pieces were already in place for me to come back here and start my section of the law firm.”
“That was a tough time in your life,” Xander said, concern on his face as he watched his brother struggle with the story.
“I was pretty angry with her. And coming on board with you guys, I saw it as if I were starting my own law firm. I didn’t want to lean on you two for clients or any other support.” He turned to Ash and smiled. “You were doing your own clerkship for a federal judge out in California at the time so you weren’t around yet.”
Ash nodded, then swung his beer out, indicating Axel should continue the story.
Xander interrupted before he could go on. “Why didn’t you just bring her back here with you?” he asked.
Ash laughed and the other three brothers looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “What’s wrong with that suggestion?” Ryker asked.
That made Ash laugh even harder. “You wanted her to give up everything so she could come back here and hang out with you?” Ash asked. He reached out and punched his older brother on the arm.
Axel glared at his brother, but didn’t retaliate as he normally would. He was too interested to figure out why Ash had said those words. “That’s almost exactly what she said. But I still don’t get it. I wanted to marry her.”
That surprised all of them but they quickly recovered. “And now?”
“I’d marry her in a heartbeat if she’d have me. But she’s only here until the next big assignment comes along.”
Ash definitely didn’t like that. “Has she said this to you?”
Axel finished off his beer. “Not in so many words, but it’s true. So I’m only her boyfriend out of convenience.”
There was a long silence before Xander spoke up. “I don’t believe that for a minute.”
Axel stood up and walked over to the fridge, pulling out four more beers and popping the tops before he came back, handing them out to his brothers but keeping one for himself. “What makes you say that?” he asked when he was sitting down again.
Xander shifted on the huge leather club chair so he could see Axel better. “I’ve seen the way she looks at you. She’s hooked. And if you’re too stupid to realize it, then you don’t deserve her.”
Axel’s eyes looked at his older brother, then at Ryker and Ash, both of whom were obviously thinking the same thing. Xander was saying