Falling for the Brother

But when, an hour later, with the sand in her clothes scratching at her skin as she walked arm in arm with him up the beach back toward their cars, she wasn’t the least bit sorry.

Or ashamed of what she’d done.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

HE’D BEEN IN the darkest night his soul had ever known and she’d come to him. Not used to fanciful thinking, or at least to allowing it to enter his conscious thought, Mason walked up the beach feeling like he’d just been given new life. He’d been living in an emotional cocoon all his life, keeping his own feelings contained in order to make room for his brother’s.

It was what Bruce—and to an extent his parents and grandparents—had expected of him. It was what he’d expected of himself once he became an adult.

He didn’t regret the choice he’d made to protect his younger brother. He regretted the things he hadn’t seen.

He hadn’t been able to find a way to get past that. To live with it in any semblance of peace.

In one sentence, Harper had shown him the way.

They could choose. If they were to stop being victims of Bruce’s manipulation, they had to choose.

He wasn’t Mozart.

Neither was Bruce, but he’d been gifted. In a way, his brother had been the anti-Mozart.

“If I hadn’t come here tonight, would you have called me? Ever?” She was looking up at him, but he didn’t meet her gaze. Still trying to grasp the fact that Harper was there with him. Perhaps for more than a moment.

“I was going to come by tomorrow to see Brianna, you knew that.”

“I know,” she said, and let it drop.

But he couldn’t. He hadn’t called her five years ago, after the most incredible night of talk and sex, because of his brother.

And he’d been staying away for the same reason. Sort of. He’d just begun to understand how much that sort of mattered.

“I’m not going to pressure you, Harper,” he told her. “Or try to convince you that we belong together. Nor am I going to suffocate you with what I need…”

She halted in the sand, her arm dropping away from behind him. “Would you stop?” she said, in the angriest tone she’d ever used with him. “You think I don’t have the strength of mind to stand up to pressure? Because let me tell you—”

He stopped her with a finger to her lips and a smile on his face.

“Okay, tiger, I get it,” he said. “And you’re right. That was insulting. You left Bruce. Do you realize you’re the only one who was ever able to do that?”

“Not completely I didn’t.”

“Because you had Brianna. Without that, I’m sure you would have.”

Her smile was sad, but her eyes glowed for him again. “Maybe. I hope so.”

Suddenly he had a million things to say and had to get them lined up in his mind. “I think we should go on a date,” he said. First things first. He’d been wanting to go out with her for six long years.

“We’ve had sex…twice. We have a daughter—and you’re asking me out?”

“Yep.” Pulling her up against him, he added, “I’m not saying that’s all we’ll do. We need to face facts, and a major fact is, we’re combustible when we’re together. But we’re family. We share a daughter. It just seems like…if we’re going to have it all, we should take a little time to date.”

Harper’s life was filled with beach, the air, the sea. “I love you, Mason Thomas,” she said. And stopped, horror filling her eyes.

As though she felt guilty… As he should. No. Bruce had had his chance. He’d hurt everyone. Mason was going to spend the rest of his life doing what it took to make sure his brother never hurt anyone again.

“I love you, too, Harper Davidson, soon to be Thomas, I hope. And I’ll stand on my brother’s grave and tell you so. What Bruce brought into our lives wasn’t a healthy love. This is, like a flower that blooms forever, and a burning fire, just like Gram said.”

Harper pulled back. “Miriam… She’s not going to like this. Bruce had her convinced that I was always after you, and that’s why I took the first chance I had to get out of our marriage, because you never came around…”