The SEAL's Secret Heirs

Shyly, she peeked at him from under lowered lashes as she let that register.

He sat up so fast, his head cracked against the headboard. “You...what?”

She hadn’t been with anyone since him? Since ten years ago? At all?

Grace nodded. “I guess you could say you ruined me for other men. But that’s not the only reason. I just never found one I thought measured up.”

To him. She’d never found another man she’d thought was good enough. Had he been working himself up for no reason?

Grace had never been with another man. She’d been a virgin when they met. Kyle Wade was Grace’s only lover. The thought choked him up in a wholly unexpected way.

And then his brain latched on to the idea of Grace refusing suitors over the years and shoved it under the lens of what he knew to be the truth. His mood turned dangerously sharp and ugly again. “Well, now. That’s a high compliment. If it’s true.”

Confusion crept across her expression. “Why would I lie?”

“Good question. One I’d like the answer to, as well.” He crossed his arms over his thundering heart. “Maybe you could explain how it’s possible that you’ve never been with another man, yet I practically caught you in the act with one. Liam.”

Just spitting his name out cost Kyle. His throat tightened and threatened to close off entirely, which would be great because then he couldn’t throw up.

“Oh, Kyle.” She actually smiled as she tenderly cupped his face. “You’ve certainly taken your time circling around back to that. Nothing happened with Liam. I didn’t think you’d even noticed.”

“You didn’t...” He couldn’t even finish that sentence and jerked away from her touch. “His hands were all over you. Don’t tell me nothing happened.”

“First of all, we were broken up at the time,” she reminded him. “Secondly, it was a setup, honey. I wanted to get your attention, and honestly, I was pretty devastated it didn’t work. Liam was a good sport about it, though. I’ve always appreciated that he was willing to help.”

Kyle’s vision went black and then red, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he came perilously close to passing out for the first time in his life. Breathe. And again. Ruthlessly, he got himself back under control.

“A setup,” he repeated softly.

She nodded. “We set it up for you to catch us. It was dumb, I realize. Blame it on the fact that I was young and naive. I was expecting you to confront me. For us to have it out so I could explain how much you meant to me. How upset I was that we weren’t together anymore. It was supposed to end differently. But you left and I figured out that I wasn’t all that important to you.”

A setup. To force a confrontation. And instead, she’d decided his silence meant she wasn’t important to him, when in fact, the opposite was true.

“Why?” He nearly choked on the question. “Why would you do something like that? With Liam of all people?”

His brother. There was a sacred line between brothers that you didn’t cross, and she’d not only crossed it, she’d been the instigator. Liam had put his hands on the woman Kyle loved as a favor. Somehow, and he wouldn’t have thought this possible, that was worse than when Kyle had thought his brother was just adding another name to his growing list of conquests. The betrayal was actually twice as deep because it had all been a setup.

The reckoning was going to be brutal.

“Because, Kyle.” She caught his gaze and tears brimmed in her eyes. “I loved you. So much and so intensely. But you were so distant. Already seeking that horizon, even then. We’d stopped connecting. Breaking up with you didn’t faze you. I figured it would take something bold to shake you up.”

Yeah, it had shaken him up all right. “But that?”

He couldn’t wrap his head around what she was telling him. He’d enlisted because of a lie. Because he’d felt as though he couldn’t breathe in Royal ever again. Because he’d sought a place where people stood by their word and their honor, would take a bullet for you. Where he could be part of a team alongside people who valued him. And found that place.

Which wasn’t here.

“Yeah. Like you used Emma Jane to make me jealous.” She shrugged. “Same idea. Funny how similar our tactics are.”

The roaring sound in his head drowned out her words. Similar. She thought the idea of Kyle flirting with a woman out in the open in broad daylight was the same as walking by Liam’s bedroom and hearing Grace’s laugh. The same as peeking through the crack at the door to see the woman he’d given his soul to entwined with his brother on his brother’s bed.