She looks … different somehow. Glowing. Even more fucking gorgeous than I remember from the night we spent together in my brother’s guest room. Her hair is loose over her shoulders, her tank top and jeans cling to her curves, and the blood is pumping around my veins and straight to my throbbing loins.
Which is why it takes me a couple of beats to read the room.
She isn’t smiling. Her mouth opens and shuts like a goldfish, her eyes darting back and forth between me and Bash, her fingers fiddling with the silver pendant around her neck.
Bash is all cold metal and brittle energy. He hasn’t moved since I came in, and I might be biased when it comes to Remy, but I’m getting the distinct impression that he doesn’t want me to interfere.
“What’s going on? What did I miss?”
George Quinn’s smug fucking smile flashes behind my eyes. Surely not. She isn’t mixed up in whatever plans he has for world domination. She can’t be.
“You’re twins.” Her voice barely crosses the room to reach me, and I step forward involuntarily.
Remy steps backwards, the back of her knees colliding with the edge of the sofa. She resembles an animal keeping a predator in sight, no sudden moves, until she’s ready to run for her life.
It dawns on me like a thunderbolt striking me down from above. “I thought you knew.”
She shakes her head. “You never said.” Her eyes are still flitting back and forth between us. “You…” She points to me, her thought process clicking into place behind her eyes. “You said you were stuck here.”
It isn’t what I recall from that night, but I’m not going to deny it. She’s in flight-or-fight mode. One push, and she’ll be falling into a chasm so deep I might never get her back.
“Fran said you were Bash. Bastien. The boss.” She squeezes her eyes closed momentarily.
“Easy mistake to make. Bash was in Ireland on business.”
“So, you’re…?”
“Cassius. Cash for short. Our brothers chose the nicknames when we were kids, and they stuck.”
She shakes her head and then covers her face with both hands.
I glance at my twin brother and I realize that he hasn’t said a word. His lips are pressed together though, fighting to keep thewords in, his eyes dark and cold. It’s the calm before the storm. He’s about to blow, and I have no idea why.
Remy lowers her hands. She’s smiling now, but there’s no amusement. “Cash and Bash. Your hair. The scar.” She tilts her head back towards the ceiling and spreads her hands wide. “You even have the same tattoo.”
“How do you know that?”
I’m not normally this dense, but I’ve never met anyone like Remy before. Her presence interferes with normal frequencies, throws everything out of sync, tosses regular thoughts into the air to see where they land.
“Because I met Remy two days later.” Bash’s voice is cold, mechanical. “When she came to my apartment to find a lost pendant.”
“Oh, no, please don’t…” Remy murmurs.
“So, how did she know about the tattoo?” Because I’m still playing catch-up like I just woke from a deep sleep.
“How do you think?” Bash narrows his eyes at me, waiting for the question to land.
Which it does with a gigantic fucking explosion.
“You and Remy?” Bile rises in my throat.
I pace the floor, hands clasped around the back of my neck. No. It didn’t happen. His reaction in the boardroom when Remy’s name was mentioned was off, but I assumed he knew about Remy and me. I never thought…
“No.” I stop pacing and address Remy, not my brother. “I thought…”
Who knows what the fuck I thought. But it certainly didn’t involve my brother sleeping with the woman who crawled under my skin and made herself at home with our first kiss.
“I told you I couldn’t let you walk out of my life.” It sounds lame now, but I meant every goddamned word… and then she slept with my brother.
