“She’s sleeping.”
“She’s fine,” Sienna adds. “But you’ve got a whole lot of talking to do when she wakes up.”
“I will.” I rub the side of the empty brandy glass. “Wewill.” I glance at Bash. “We’ll speak to her together.”
“The topic didn’t come up in conversation,” he says now. “Everyone knows who we are.”
I snort. “Remy didn’t know that we were twins; how did we expect her to know the rest of it when our own sister was oblivious until a year ago?”
A different kind of silence settles around the table.
Caleb keeps his eyes on the bottle of brandy. Kyle sits back in his seat and then sits forward again. Victoria’s gaze hops back and forth between me and Bash.
“What do you mean, she didn’t know that you were twins?” she murmurs.
Sienna is staring at Bash, her eyes glittering, the scars beneath her collarbone turning a shade darker. “Which one of you is the father?”
This is the thing with half-truths and withholding information. It catches up with you eventually. Our mom knows the truth, but it isn’t her story to tell, so she has kept our secret close to her chest. When we spoke to Kyle about getting the real estate ball rolling, we let him believe that I was the father, not deliberately, but it was how the conversation organically presented itself. And Caleb has been too focused on the threat from the Leone family to get involved.
“We both are.” Bash meets everyone’s gaze in turn, his chin jutting defiantly, and I instinctively lean towards him. Presenting a united front.
Caleb rubs his neat stubble and releases a long steady breath. “Does Mom know?”
“Mom told us to do whatever it takes to make Remy’s life comfortable. This isn’t about us.”
“Sounds like Mom,” Kyle says.
Caleb is watching us both closely. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“What is there to know? We didn’t plan it this way. Remy would never have… If she’d known that I wasn’t Bash in the first place…”
It doesn’t matter how many times I repeat the story inside my own head it still doesn’t get any easier. Or any less complicated.
“I meant,” Caleb says, “does she know that neither of you can give her up?”
The temperature appears to crank up a couple of notches inside the air-conditioned boardroom. I rotate my shoulders; the tension in them doesn’t ease.
Bash has withdrawn back into his cocoon, peering out at the rest of us from between the folds while the conversation progresses without him.
Eventually, I go with, “That obvious, huh?” No point trying to deny it.
Everyone around this table understands what love is. They don’t need a degree in psychology to know what this is all about.
“Fuck!” Kyle reacts first, sliding his tablet towards him across the desk and tapping the screen. “We should pull Remy out of college. Move her into Cash’s apartment. Or Bash’s.” His fingers pause flying across the keyboard momentarily, while he processes the added complication. “On second thought, maybe it would be better if she stayed with you and Victoria.”
Caleb waves him back down to earth with both hands. “She’s already freaking out. What do you think she’ll do if you tell her that her life is in danger because she’s involved with the Murray family?”
His gaze travels around the table and settles on Victoria. They share something unspoken, and it literally glows through their pores. I don’t know how I never noticed it before; the exchange is both pillow-soft and titanium-strong. A partnership. Two people in love.
I look away. It feels wrong to watch them, like peering through their bedroom window while they’re being intimate. I want what they have. And I want it with Remy Jones. Only, I still don’t understand how Bash fits into the equation.
“You’re right,” Kyle mutters, powering down his tablet. “But with the Leone threat growing legs, what do you suggest we do?”
“We’ll do what we always do. We’ll keep her safe. Meanwhile, these two Muppets can get their asses into gear, man up, and show her that we’re not all bad.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Mom.” I refill my glass and sip it slowly now that Bash and I are out of the danger zone.
“There are worse ways to learn a lesson,” Caleb counters.
