Breathless (Steel Brothers Saga 10)

“Yeah, actually. Maybe just some scrambled eggs and dry toast.”

“You want me to bring it in here?”

“No. I’ll come out to the kitchen.”

Oddly, she didn’t interrogate me about last night.

But it was coming. I knew Jade too well.

Once she’d sat down at the table and I’d placed her breakfast in front of her, the questions began.

“You going to tell me, or what?”

“Tell you what?”

“Yeah. Play coy,” she said sarcastically. “That always works.”

“I’m a grown woman, and—”

“I get it. That’s what you told Talon. He told me. But it won’t fly with me. Since when do we have secrets, Marj?”

“I’m really sorry if I worried you guys.”

“I know you can take care of yourself, but Tal was a little worried. I mean, after all we’ve been through and all.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Obviously you’re fine, so spill it.”

Words began tumbling out of my mouth in what I hoped was coherent speech. I held back the tears that threatened. For me, being strong meant no crying. I’d grown up with three brothers, and crying was for girls. Yeah, I was a girl, a girl who once liked pink and yellow unicorns, but I always vowed to be as strong as my brothers were.

I vowed that to this day.

Jade didn’t interrupt my jumbled speech, just nodded a few times.

Finally, I stopped talking.

Nothing more to say.

“He just left,” I said. “He said, ‘see you around.’”

“Sounds like you said it first.”

“Well, yeah. What else was I going to say? I wasn’t going to thank him.”

“How about something like, ‘I had a nice time’?”

I stayed silent. “I had a nice time” seemed so light and airy and noncommittal, so nonspecific. We hadn’t had a “nice time.” We’d had some intense lovemaking, the kind of lovemaking that doesn’t come along all that often. It went so far beyond “a nice time.”

At least I thought it had.

“If you want something more with him, tell him,” Jade urged.

“Like you told Talon?”

“Talon was different. He told me up front that he couldn’t love me. I accepted that.”

“Not so different. Bryce has basically said the same thing. And as I recall, you kept going back for more Talon, no matter what he said.”