Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
I’d been on my laptop for hours, desperate to find a way out. Knowing there wasn’t one. I was a victim to Jasper’s whims. To how long he deigned to let our history outweigh his duty.
It wouldn’t be an extended process. That I knew. I’d felt it. In recent years, I’d felt him slipping through my fingers, if you could ever really hold on to a man like Jasper Hayes. You couldn’t. It was like trying to grasp shadows. Even all the way back then, that day in the meadow with my hands clasping the naked skin of his body, I wasn’t really holding him.
What was worse was after the chilling revelation that my luck was running out, that the longest relationship I’d ever had with a man was growing more and more toxic and deadly… I’d had to deal with my broody brother on my doorstep at seven in the morning.
“It’s criminal,” I muttered to him, banging around making coffee after I’d let him in. “Just because you have children who wake you up early doesn’t mean you inflict the same on your childless—by choice—sister.” I poured him coffee with a hostile glare. “Criminal.”
I had barely slept, just tossed and turned. But I did it on my $10k mattress in Egyptian cotton sheets, panicking at my leisure. Without an audience. I needed a mask in front of Rowan so he didn’t catch a whiff of my unease. I’d already seen him note the two glasses I’d left drying by the sink. He didn’t ask questions, but he’d noticed them.
“Why are you here, Cal?” Rowan stared at me in that intense way of his. You wouldn’t know it then, with him being all broody and menacing, but there used to be a lightness to my brother’s eyes. He used to have a softness about him. A playfulness.
Sometimes I saw it when he was with Nora and his daughters, but it was tarnished right then.
I grieved that.
I knew I would never be soft and carefree, it wasn’t in my nature. But it was his. Until it wasn’t. Until he deployed and did things that were locked away in sealed files, files I’d hacked into and been horrified by. Horrified by the things that had taken my brother from me.
I mourned that lightness.
And I cursed that over-the-top, alpha protectiveness combined with instincts honed to detect and identify danger.
I glanced from him down to my computer screen. I’d opened it with bleary eyes since I considered that he was here at bumfuck whenever in the morning because he had something he needed doing. Which he did. He had a flourishing construction business, but his books were a fucking mess. Even with the considerable work I’d done of them. “Because the IRS would likely put you in prison otherwise,” I joked dryly.
“Calliope.” Rowan’s voice was never ‘light’—not anymore— but in that moment it was steely, probing, serious.
I met his eyes, though I really didn’t want to. Averted gazes were a sign of weakness. I’d happily stared down bigoted, criminal CEOs, dictators, organized crime hitmen, but my brother was much harder.
His icy gaze missed nothing. Furthermore, although he wasn’t a warm, fuzzy teddy bear, he cared about me. I did not need the inquisitive stare of someone who cared about me. I would’ve preferred Jasper’s cold, growing more and more indifferent, stare.
“You did not come to Jupiter to do our books.” He nodded to my computer. “You were controlling billion-dollar deals, running entire companies. You have said that you’d rather be shot in the face than live in a small town.”
I rolled my eyes to deflect from how close he was getting to the truth. I should’ve known Rowan would become tangled up and hopelessly in love with his wife before realizing something was amiss with me. He was a beacon for danger, and I was the most dangerous thing in this town. “I was dramatic in my teens.”
His stare was unyielding. “You said that the last time we were home for Christmas.”
I ground my teeth. He was a dog with a bone. I’d known something like this was coming, hadn’t I? I’d fallen into a false sense of security, thinking that romance, children, drama would distract him enough to leave me alone. Regardless, I was unprepared to go head-to-head with him, especially with Jasper’s visit hanging in the air, making it hard to breathe.
“What happened?” Rowan asked with a soft gentleness he hadn’t used with me … ever. “To make you, you of all people, run? Who hurt you?”
There was no softness in his second question. His tone morphed into one of menace. It was my brother, the protective soldier, avenger of honor, ready to ride off and punish whoever needed to be punished.
Skin prickling, I reminded myself this was my brother. He was not taking this role to hurt me, to control or belittle me. He was doing it because he loved me.