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Even though she was standing between him and what he needed to do, he couldn’t help thinking that it was damned good to see her again. Too good. He should have been past this, Kellan told himself.
He’d stayed away from her deliberately for years, because being close to her and not having her would have killed him. Hell, she was part of the reason he’d moved to Nashville. But even distance from her hadn’t been enough to wipe away the memory of her. She’d still been with him. In his dreams. In those quiet, waking moments when he didn’t have enough to occupy his thoughts.
And every time she popped into his mind—way too often—he shut it down fast. He spent empty nights with other women telling himself that sex with them was just as good as it had been with Irina. Lies he wanted to believe because they made it all that much easier.
But standing here, with her just out of arm’s reach, those lies rushed back to bite him in the ass. So naturally, he buried what he was feeling beneath the anger still riding him since the will reading.
“Since when are you Miranda’s friend?” he asked. “You’re really ready to stand with her against me?”
“And how do I owe loyalty to you? You disappeared, Kellan.”
“I had to.”
“Yes, I’m sure.” She entered the room but walked a wide path around him to do it. She dropped onto a corner of the couch, curled her legs up beneath her and tipped her head to one side to look up at him. “She’s Buck’s guest.”
“Buck’s dead.”
Emotion flashed briefly in her eyes. “I know. But this is his home—”
“And mine,” he added.
“Not for years,” she reminded him. “You walked away, Kellan. From your home. From your family. From Buck. From me.”
And there it was. The past was in the room with them, with its hungry, snapping jaws, not really caring whom it bit into, just wanting the pain. The blood.
He’d known that the minute they saw each other again, they’d have to relive this. He’d have to look at old decisions and would be forced to defend them. He didn’t know that he could.
“I had to leave.” He shoved his hands into his pockets.
Irina looked up at the man around whom she’d once built ridiculous dreams. The oldest son of the man she’d worked for—the man she owed so much. Buck had rescued her. Given her a chance she might never have had otherwise. She’d come to this house broken, to work as a maid, to go to school, to rebuild a life that had been shattered.
Kellan was the man who had touched her in so many ways, he’d left her breathless. She’d trusted him, in spite of everything she’d already been through. She’d believed in him when she shouldn’t have. And then, he’d simply left her.
Seven years ago, they’d had a week together. He’d been wounded. She’d been hurt. And yet, somehow, for that one week, they’d reached beyond themselves and found something she had believed was magical. Stolen time, stolen passion and her silly dreams of something more. Then it was over and she was broken again.
Irina wouldn’t let it happen this time. Wouldn’t let her heart overrun her mind. But even as she thought it, she knew that the reason she’d dropped onto the brown leather sofa was because Kellan still made her legs weak. Her heartbeat was racing and there were tingles of expectation, anticipation, at the core of her. It seemed her body didn’t care what her mind had to say. It only wanted.
Irina looked up at him and deliberately hid everything she was feeling.
“Yes, you had to leave. You said as much to me. Seven years ago.” The leather felt cold and that chill was seeping inside her. “You said a lot of things. I remember.”
Kellan nodded. “Yeah, I do, too. I didn’t want to hurt you, Irina.”
Her gaze locked on him and she drew a long, shallow breath. Irina didn’t want to talk about any of it, either. Didn’t want to remember the sound of his voice saying, I can’t be what you want. Or, This isn’t real, Irina. It can’t be. I won’t let it be. So she swallowed hard and hid what she was feeling. “You may not have wanted to, but you did. Still, that’s not why you’re here now, is it?”
“No,” he said, inclining his head slightly. “It’s not.” He braced his feed wide apart, as if preparing for a battle. “Tell me this. How long is Miranda staying in Royal?”
She shrugged as if indifferent. “I don’t really know. She’s made no plans to leave as far as I know.”
“Of course she hasn’t,” he muttered, pushing one hand through his short, neat hair. “Why would she? Has the run of this house, all the money Buck left her and plenty of time to cause more trouble.”
Miranda had always seemed like a nice woman to Irina. In fact, they’d bonded some over a shared past of heartbreak and mistrust. And seeing how Buck’s grown children had treated Miranda had guaranteed that Irina would stand up for her. Since she’d once been an underdog herself, she would always stand up for people she thought were being bullied.
“What exactly, apart from her marrying and divorcing your father,” Irina asked, “do you have against her?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“No.” Love died. Marriages ended. She’d lived it herself and usually there was more than one person to blame for it.
“It is for me,” he countered. “She’s got no rights here as far as I’m concerned.”
Shaking her head, Irina watched him. “Then it’s good it’s not up to you.”
“What the hell, Irina? I don’t understand this,” he admitted. “You were always more loyal to Buck than he deserved, so why would you switch that loyalty to Miranda?”
“And you were always harder on Buck than he deserved. Your father was more than you think he was.”
“I don’t believe it,” he snapped. “And that doesn’t answer the question. Why are you being so damn protective of Miranda of all people?”
Because, Irina thought, she understood Buck’s ex-wife. She knew what it was to be called a gold digger. Knew what it was to love and lose. Knew how hard it was to start over. To rebuild your life. How could Irina not stand by Miranda, when Buck had stood by her?
“It was your father’s fortune to do with as he pleased. Why do you get to say that he can’t leave Miranda everything?” Forcing herself to her feet, Irina locked her traitorous knees so they wouldn’t wobble on her again and tipped her head back to stare up at him. Looking into those lake-blue eyes of his sent tendrils of heat spiraling through her, but Irina did her best to ignore them. “I am being loyal to Buck. To his wishes.”
He slowly shook his head and watched her curiously. “What the hell did he ever do for you?”
Everything, she thought but didn’t say. Buckley Blackwood had played guardian angel to a lot of people and he’d insisted on remaining anonymous. So no one—not even his children—knew what a good man he really had been. But Irina would never forget.
“That’s none of your business, Kellan. You walked away. You don’t get to show up seven years later and demand answers to anything.”
He huffed out a breath and took a step closer. Irina steeled herself because she could smell his cologne. That same wild, spicy scent that seemed to chase her through sleepless nights. His jaw was clenched, his eyes snapping with sparks of frustration, and tension practically radiated from him in thick waves.
She felt that same tension pulsing inside her and she hated it. He’d once had so much power over her. One look from him turned her body into a molten puddle of need. One touch and she was burning. Orgasms with Kellan were more than she would have thought possible.
But strangely, what she missed most was lying in the circle of his arms, darkness all around them, while they talked and laughed together. That closeness, that intimacy, had meant everything to her and had hurt her the most when it was gone.
“I used to admire that hard head of yours,” he said, his voice lower, more intimate.
Now it was more than her knees that were feeling weak. Everything in her yearned. A slow burn started deep inside and bubbled in her bloodstream. This was dangerous. A temptation to go back rather than forward. She’d fought hard to reclaim her life, her heart, her mind after Kellan left. Irina couldn’t let herself be swept into another temporary liaison. And with Kellan, she knew it would be nothing but temporary.
“Kellan…” Warning? Invitation? Even Irina didn’t know for sure.
“You’re still so damn beautiful,” he murmured.
And he was still enticing.
“I think I’m going to kiss you,” he said, one eyebrow quirking. “Do you have a problem with that?”
Say yes. Say yes. Say yes.
“No,” she whispered.
So he did and the first touch of his lips to hers set that slow burn free and turned it into a wildfire deep within her body. She remembered that fire so well. She welcomed the flames, though she knew she shouldn’t. Irina was helpless to stop herself. Kellan had always had this effect on her and seven years hadn’t changed a thing.
His hands came down onto her shoulders and pulled her toward him. She kept her mouth on his as her arms snaked around his waist. The feel of him pressed against her made her body ache. An aching, molten heat settled in her core and left her hungry for so much more than a kiss.
His tongue swept into her mouth and tangled with hers. She tightened her hold on him, and met him stroke for stroke, need for need. The kiss awakened her from a years-long sleep and the awakening was almost painful. Her body hummed with anticipation. Her mind clouded over with too many sensations rising and falling to make sense of any of them. Her breath caught in her chest as she gave herself up to the wonder of the fire even while a small voice within shouted at her to be careful. To step back. To remember that though his touch was magical, he wasn’t staying this time, either.
And that thought was finally enough to penetrate the fog in her brain. To push past what he made her feel long enough that she could remind herself that only pain waited for her if she let this go on.
Irina pulled back, shaking her head as much to convince herself as him. She took a deep breath to steady herself and met his gaze, no matter what it cost her to look into those blue eyes again. “We shouldn’t have done that.”
He scrubbed one hand across his face, then the back of his neck. His breath came hard and fast so she knew he’d been as affected as she had been. Small comfort, she supposed.
Nodding, he said, “Right. Mistake.” His gaze locked on hers, he added, “A good one.”
Her stomach jumped. “No, it wasn’t.”
“Liar.”
Her heart jittered.
“Fine. It felt good. But then, chemistry was never our problem,” she said, remembering. God, how she remembered what happened when they were together.
“No. It wasn’t.” He stepped back from her as if he didn’t quite trust himself not to reach for her again.
And Irina didn’t know if she was sad about that or grateful.
“I couldn’t stay back then, Irina,” he was saying. “There were too many memories in Royal. Too much pain.”
She knew that. He’d lost his wife a year before he and Irina got together. So he’d come to her, a widower with a broken heart and a shattered soul, and for a very short while, they’d healed each other.
“So you left and shared the pain.”
His head snapped up and his gaze fixed on hers. “That wasn’t my intention.”
“And yet it’s what you did.”
Clearly irritated, he pushed one hand through his hair. “I didn’t come here tonight to argue with you.”
“No,” she said. “You came here to spy on Miranda.”
“I want answers,” he countered.
“Get them another way.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I hope Miranda appreciates how you’re defending her.”
“I’m not doing this for her,” Irina said. “Or not just for her. I’m doing this mainly for your father. Buck wrote his will. It laid out his wishes. Kellan, you don’t get to disregard them simply because you don’t like them.”
“Man, I hope Buck appreciated the tiger he had defending him.”
A small smile curved her mouth briefly. “He did.”
Nodding, Kellan studied her for a long minute. “I’m not going to let this go.”
“I didn’t think you would,” she said. “But you should. And, Kellan, you should know that Buck loved you. Loved all of you.”
“Please.” He snorted dismissively and waved one hand at her as if erasing her words entirely.
“He did.”
“And he proved that by leaving our family legacy to a woman he chose to not stay married to?”
“I don’t know why he did that,” Irina admitted. “But I always trusted Buck.”
“There’s the difference between us, then,” Kellan said softly, his gaze locked with hers. “I never trusted my father. And I won’t start now.”
“So you’re not going back to Nashville?” She had hoped that after the funeral and the reading of the will that Kellan would once again leave Royal.
“Not a chance,” he promised. “I’m not going anywhere until this whole situation is settled.” He turned on his heel and headed for the front door. He paused only briefly to look back at her. When their eyes met, he said, “You haven’t seen the last of me, Irina.”
That sounded like a promise, too, and she hated that she was pleased by it.
“How’d the big spy operation go?”
Kellan glanced over his shoulder at his younger brother as Vaughn walked into the great room and dropped onto the closest sofa. Since Vaughn lived in Dallas now, he was staying at their mother’s friend Dixie’s ranch, Magnolia Acres. Since Kellan was in Royal for a while, though, Vaughn was dropping in and out. It was good to spend real time with his brother and sister instead of the quick visits he usually made. The only time Kellan stayed at his ranch himself was when he came back to Royal to see his brother and sister. Now he was rethinking the whole drop-in-anytime thing.
Scowling, Kellan said, “As well as you said it would.”
Vaughn laughed shortly. “It was a crappy plan, Kel. Face it. Storm Dad’s house, snoop through Miranda’s stuff?”
Kellan stalked to the wet bar in the corner of the room. Bending down, he opened the fridge and grabbed a beer. “You want one?”
“Hell yes.”
Kellan crossed the room again, handed a beer to his brother and then took a seat opposite him. “I never got to go through her things. Irina was there and stopped me.”
Vaughn’s eyebrows lifted. “Interesting,” he mused. “I didn’t know anyone could stop you once you had your decision made.”
Kellan took a swig of beer and avoided looking at Vaughn. His brother was entirely too perceptive. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Uh-huh. So, how’s Irina?”
Now he did fire a hard look at his brother. “She’s fine.”
“Better than fine, if you ask me,” Vaughn said with a small smile. “We both saw her at the service, and gotta say, she’s still hot.”
“Hot?”
