Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

“It is in fact insane that I would leave you,” Zilla said. “And I know insane.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It is. A little.” She smiled at me, but I didn’t take the bait.

“You have a life to get back to,” I said. “School?”

“Poppy,” she sighed. “It’s my first year of nursing school. I can defer a semester.”

“No. You’re not going to defer anything on my account. You’re just getting back on track.”

“You realize you’re saying Fundamentals of Nursing is more important than the total unravelling of my sister’s life, and I am here to tell you it is not.” She grinned at me. The grin it was impossible not to return. God, Zilla could be so fun, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had fun.

Ronan in the dark at the party, my brain supplied, as if it had been waiting for the chance to remind me.

“Come on, let me take care of you, Pops,” she said. “You fired the senator’s secretary. You fired the housekeeper. You’re alone.”

“I still have Theo.”

“Yeah, and if you knew how to drive you’d get rid of him, too.”

She wasn’t wrong. I studied her profile.

Zilla was a stunner. Olive skin and dark hair cut short and edgy, making the most of her delicate features from my mother’s side of the family. She had a tiny frame she covered in tight shirts, dark denim and high heeled boots. I was a giraffe compared to her. All elbows and hips. Long red hair I dyed blonde because . . . well, because the senator liked it that way.

My sister looked like a punk imp. And not at all like the type of person who’d held a knife to a priest’s genitals after he’d been caught abusing young boys.

But it was hard to guess what that kind of person looked like.

No matter what Zilla looked like, she was a twenty-one-year-old woman in nursing school. A woman with a future she could finally see and grab a hold of, and I wanted no part of derailing that. I was a widow at 22. Full of dust and fear.

“I don’t need taking care of,” I lied. Or maybe it wasn’t a lie. I didn’t need taking care of. I wasn’t injured or prostrate with grief, it was just nice. Nice to be someone else’s priority for a second.

She parked in the long driveway, and we stepped out of the car. I grabbed the box from the lawyer from the back seat.

“We should go through that,” Zilla said.

“Not today,” I said. Maybe never.

“You want me to put it in the office?”

See? I should be stronger. I should be able to say, no, I can do it. But I wasn’t that strong. Not yet. I nodded, and my sister took the box of paperwork to my husband’s office. A room I hadn’t been in since he died and, truthfully, if I had my way, I would never go into again.

I made tea and strengthened my case for Zilla to get back to her life.

We argued that night and for another week, but finally I won and Zilla packed her bags.The day she was leaving, she came into the kitchen with her roller bag, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“Don’t,” I told her, thinking I might cut her off. But no one got in the way of Zilla and what she wanted to say.

“Hear me out. You said you wanted independence, and the only person you’ve kept is your driver. Let me teach you how to drive and you can fire him, too! You like firing people.” Her eyebrows were cocked, the devil in her bright eyes. “We can cut your hair. Get drunk. Like really smashed. We haven’t done that. Oh!” she said like she suddenly had a great idea. “Getting laid. How about that? A little rebound action with some random at a bar. I’ll be your wingman. Doesn’t that sound good?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Okay, you can be my wingman.”

“I would be a terrible wingman.”

“It’s true. But I’m willing to give you a try.”

I laughed until it caught on a sob.

“I can stay,” Zilla said, her voice soft. “I want to stay. My course load this semester is light, and I can take it all online, right here from your kitchen. Let me take care of you. We don’t have to do anything.” She stroked back my hair. “Except get your hair back to its natural color. This blonde is so Stepford wife I can’t take it. Or! Let’s leave. You’re rich now. Let’s go meet randoms in a bar in Tahiti?”

I pulled Zilla into a fierce hug, holding her so hard hoping maybe to absorb some of her fire, hoping maybe she would absorb some of my calm. “I’m all right. I am. I haven’t been alone in years, Zilla. Let me just . . . be alone. Please,” I said. “I will call you if that changes.”