His Brother's Bride

“Maybe,” she said. “A little.” And then, after a long pause, “Yes. A lot.”

Scott reached across and covered her hand where it was resting on the table. “It’s okay, you know.”

Afraid she was going to cry, Laurel nodded.

“Being back here, remembering, it’s natural that you’d relive it all.”

He made her sound so normal.

“It’s just that I’ve tried so hard,” she said. “I really thought I was ready to come home...come back here,” she corrected. Cooper’s Corner was not home to her. It couldn’t be. It was hell on earth—it represented all she’d dared to reach out for, only to have it cruelly snatched away.

But it was certainly the most beautiful, welcoming hell she’d ever known.

“I thought I was finally healing.”

“So why are you so sure you aren’t?”

“Because.” She couldn’t tell him—couldn’t tell anyone, but most of all not him.

“Because why?” His voice was soft, coaxing, his thumb rubbing gently across the top of her hand.

“I can’t tell you.” The words were almost a whisper.

“You can tell me anything, Laurel. You used to. We were almost related, for God’s sake. You’re the only family I’ve got left.” He paused, and then said quietly, “After all we’ve been through, we’ve earned the right to confide in each other, haven’t we?”

Tears swam in her eyes, blurring her vision, but Laurel couldn’t look away from him. She’d had no problem keeping everyone else in her life at bay these past three and a half years. For the past lifetime.

What was it about the Hunter men—about Scott—that kept calling out to her?

An affinity born of grief?

“I’m angry because every time I look at you I feel things that I shouldn’t be feeling,” she confessed. “At least not for you.”

His gaze took on a glint she’d never seen before. There was no danger in it, yet her heart started to beat such a furious tattoo she could feel its reverberation.

“What things?”

Licking lips that were uncomfortably dry, Laurel knew she shouldn’t tell him. But she couldn’t not tell him.

“Things I should only be feeling for Paul. Things I would be feeling for Paul if he hadn’t taken the easy way out and left me here to deal with life all alone....”

Scott didn’t say anything, but his grip on her hand tightened.

Things had just changed between them.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SCOTT DIDN’T SLEEP much that night.

After dropping Laurel off at Twin Oaks—obsessed with kissing her good-night and equally obsessed with not kissing her good-night, he’d gone home to the house he’d once shared with Paul and his father, and he could hardly stand being with himself.

He was in love with his brother’s woman. And she’d just opened the door to the possibility of a more intimate relationship between them.

He alternated between thinking he should have said something when she’d given him the chance, and hating a life that had taken away his right to do so. She was “feeling things” for him.

They couldn’t be anything like the “things” he’d been feeling for her for almost half his life.

But there could be nothing between them. Not now. Not ever. Scott was supposed to have been his brother’s keeper. Instead, he’d been his killer.