“Meaning, if it was anything other than him being an overprotective idiot, he’d have blown up your phone by now.”
Even if I didn’t understand the tension between her and Nash over the past few days, she had a point. “All right. Let’s go.”
Orla relaxed into her seat. “And this,Locke, is why I love you.”
She didn’t seem to realise what she’d said. She closed her pretty eyes, head bobbing to the music, and zoned out.
Me? I fixated on those three little words all the way to her flat. Cos I was a sap, and I loved her too.
I parked outside her building and waited for the brothers who’d escorted us to scout the area.
Saint checked inside. He re-emerged and blew Orla a kiss, and it was probably the most unexpected thing I’d seen in a while.
I got out of the car and did a final scan of our surroundings before I opened Orla’s door, offering my hand to help her out. “Do you see him like an extra blood brother?”
Orla took my hand and rose with all the regal dignity she deserved. “Who? Saint?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a complicated question.”
I shut the car door and steered her into the building and up the stairs. “How so?”
“It’s Saint. Everything about him is complicated.”
Couldn’t argue with that. I guided her onto the landing and through the front door Saint had left open, kicking it shut behind me and engaging the security system. It was second nature now to follow her inside.
Among other things.
I watched her ditch her leather jacket and shake out her hair. Wet my lips as my gaze zeroed in on her tattooed shoulders.
Stop.
I did. But it took enough effort that I needed a fuckin’ nap.
Orla moved to the kitchen while I contemplated the couch. She came back with beer and folded her sweet body onto the red velvet. “The first time I saw Saint, I didn’t know he was Cam’s. Until you came along, he was the only man to ever turn my head away from Nash.”
I frowned, doing the maths.
She laughed. “Yeah, I know. By that reckoning, I should’ve been a twenty-something-year-old virgin, but it wasn’t about sex. Not really. I just loved him the second I saw him, and it took me a while to figure out what that meant.”
“Where did you land?”
“Not on the mattress in the back of Saint’s van.” Orla chuckled again, dirty and low. Then she sobered. “I could never, but he’s more than a brother to me. Alexei too. I don’t think there’s a word for how I feel about them.”
“I feel that way about Remy.”
“Logan’s Remy?”
I nodded, lifting my beer bottle to my lips. “Rem’s magical. He made my brother happy when I was so fuckin’ scared Lo would never find that with anyone. Made me love him before I ever knew him.”
“Nash said he’s beautiful.”
I thought back to the traumatic night me and Nash had dragged Remy from my brother’s bed to tell him that Logan had been hurt in an oil depot fire. Slender and blond, he’d seemed so fragile next to my burly big brother, but it hadn’t taken me long to learn he had enough heart for us all. “You wanna see a photo?”
At Orla’s nod, I fished out my phone and showed her the man who existed in my contacts as Remy Sunbeam. I showed her Logan too, my nephews, and Willow and Nicky when they were a few years younger than they were now.
“Your boy looks more like Logan than you. Is that weird?”
