Can't Tie Me Down! (Sinclair Sisters 1)

“Do you realize how early it is?” Sean said as he swung his door wide.

Keir stalked inside and headed straight for the kitchen, which was at the back of Sean’s second-story apartment. “It’s eight.”

“Like I said, do you realize how early it is?”

“I’ll make coffee.” Keir reached for the pot.

“Then I forgive you. Now what the hell is wrong?” Sean slumped at the tiny two-person table in the corner of his equally tiny kitchen.

Keir purposely kept his back to his brother while he filled the coffee machine, because he really didn’t want to see his reaction. “Mairi’s taking me up on my offer to get married.”

There was silence. Keir carried on, spooning coffee into the pot and waiting for a reaction. Once he’d switched the machine on, he turned around to find Sean was no longer half-asleep.

“This is good, right?” Sean ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “I mean, this is what you wanted.”

Keir leaned back against the sink and rubbed his hands over his face. What a bloody mess.

“I thought it was what I wanted. I thought I’d be happy to take Mairi any way I could get her. Turns out I was an idiot. She doesn’t love me. She made that clear when she said she’d marry me. I don’t think she’ll ever love me again.”

Once the words were out, he turned away, and took mugs from the cupboard above the coffee maker. The pain in his chest was getting worse by the minute, and he rubbed the spot over his heart. The spot that was being torn in two.

“She literally said, ‘I don’t love you’?” Sean sounded somewhere between panicked and incredulous.

“No, she said she had no choice, that her back was against the wall. She’s marrying me because she has no other option. It isn’t like she has the money to run off and start again somewhere else.” Keir took a breath and looked out of Sean’s kitchen window over the rooftops of Campbeltown to the boats in the harbor. “Marrying her now will mean she’ll always resent me. It will ruin any chance I have of getting her to love me again.” He snorted. “Even if I had a chance to begin with.”

“You’re talking mad now. Of course you have a chance. You just fell for the world’s most stubborn woman. You can’t expect it to be easy. This is Mairi we’re talking about. Nothing is easy with that woman.”

Keir turned back to face his brother. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s possible to get past the damage I did to her.”

Damage that had taken her out of his bed in the middle of the night, because she’d rather sleep alone on the sofa. Keir had woken in a panic, thinking she was gone. Instead, he’d found her curled in a ball, looking broken and bruised, as she told him she’d marry him.

“I can’t do this,” Keir said. “I can’t hurt her again.” He pushed away from the bench. “I’m taking off for a few days. I need you to explain to Mairi that it’s for the best. She doesn’t really want to marry me anyway.”

“Are you insane?” Sean shouted, and crossed the distance between them.

For a moment, Keir thought Sean was going to try to shake some sense into him.

“You can’t head off for a few days. That’s exactly what you did last time. You left her when things got intense.”

“Not by choice,” Keir pointed out.

“Like she’d see the difference.” Sean clasped handfuls of his hair. “Look. You need to stay. You need to see this out. You’ll never get her back if you leave.”

“I can’t marry her, not like this. Not when she doesn’t love me. I can’t do that to either of us. I’m not running away. I just need a few days to think things through and regroup. I’ve got her into bed—that’s further than I thought I’d get with her—but I can’t marry her. Not when she’s doing it under duress. What I need to do is slow things down, get her used to being with me again, without this marriage thing hanging over her head.” He nodded. “It’s for the best. I can’t marry her like this.”

“You stubborn bastard. Put your hurt feelings in a box and man the hell up. You can’t back out now, not when she’s told you she’s willing to marry you. It’s taken months to get to this stage. I didn’t set this whole thing up to give you a chance at the woman, just so you could get all noble and bail at the first bloody setback.”

Keir stilled. “You what?”

Sean’s eyes went wide, and the color drained from his face. “Oh crap.”

Keir stepped into his brother’s space. “You set this up?”

His mind raced. This was just the sort of dumb thing Sean would do. He had the computer skills. Hell, he had a degree in computer design and spent his life setting up websites for people all over the world. On top of that, he was carrying around a ton of guilt over being the reason Keir went to jail and blew his relationship with Mairi. Of course he’d done this.

The interfering bastard.

Keir pulled back his arm, made a fist and punched his little brother right on the jaw. It was very satisfying.