suddenly realizing that she’d loved him all along and not Ryan.
“I know that Yuri’s anxious to see you again—and he’ll worry until he sees you walk through the door, especially if it starts snowing again.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she agreed.
“I always am.” There was a twinkle in his eye as he appraised her.
Irena laughed, feeling the tension drain away. Brody could always make her relax, she thought. She’d missed him. Missed talking to him. She’d shared a good part of her childhood with him, and all of her feelings. It felt good, finding out that she could pick up almost where she’d left off with him.
“God, it’s good to see you,” she told him with feeling.
She couldn’t quite fathom the smile that played across his lips. “Right back at you.”
Moved by impulse and fueled by a swirling mixture of feelings that she had yet to label, Irena threw her arms around Brody and kissed him. She kissed him for a number of reasons. To connect to the past, to show Brody her gratitude that the years hadn’t changed him. And maybe just because she needed to.
She hadn’t expected him to pull back.
Chapter Three
“I’m—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t mean to…”
Embarrassed, at a loss as to what to say, Irena felt color creeping up her neck to her cheeks. She abruptly turned away and was about to hurry into her vehicle.
But Brody caught her by the arm, preventing her getaway. “Sorry,” he said, apologizing for his reaction. “You just caught me off guard, that’s all.”
After years of reining in his feelings whenever he was around her, he’d reacted instinctively and pulled back.
But there was no reason to react that way anymore. Irena was no longer Ryan’s girl, not even if his brother were still alive. More so now that Ryan was gone. He didn’t have to keep her at a respectful arm’s length or secretly enjoying the contact between them while behaving as if she were his sister instead of the woman he’d been in love with since middle school. He was free to make his feelings known—if he so chose.
Old habits died hard.
“No, it’s my fault,” Irena said, not wanting him to feel as if he had done anything wrong. The misstep was hers. “For a second, it was as if no time had gone by at all.” Color flushed over her cheeks again as she told him, “I just took it for granted that you were still just Brody.”
Smiling Brody assured her, “I am.”
“I mean—”
Since when had her tongue gotten so thick and unwieldy? Finding the right words had never been a problem for her. These days, she stood up in front of juries, making brilliant summations. That wasn’t her observation; it belonged to Eli Farley, the oldest senior partner of the firm. And very little pleased Eli, not the least of which was her taking time off to fly to Hades. She’d made sure that her cases were all well covered. Eli had still been displeased.
But, despite her ability to find the right word at the right time, her mind was close to a blank right now. Why was that?
Because she’d made a mistake, taken a situation for granted, and she shouldn’t have.
“You’re probably happily married and here I am, behaving as if we were still in high school. If your wife saw us—”
“There is no wife,” he told her quietly, cutting into her words. “I’m not married.”
Irena closed her mouth and looked at him. Brody was such a wonderful person. Why hadn’t some woman snatched him up by now?
“You’re not? Why?”
Brody glanced down at her left hand and saw that it was conspicuously devoid of jewelry. “Why aren’t you married?” he countered.
She shook her head, not about to focus on herself. “I asked first.”
“I’ve been too busy working to take time out to cultivate the kind of relationship women out here have come to expect.” And because the only woman I ever loved left ten years ago.
He’d come to realize falling in love was not an inalienable right guaranteed to happen. Love was a mysterious emotion made up of many components. He’d never had all the pieces available to him once Irena had left Hades.
“Busy?” she repeated, her curiosity aroused. “Doing what?” Ryan had told her that his father had left them both enough money to make sure that neither one of them ever needed to work. And Ryan, she knew, had taken full advantage of that.
But then, Brody had always been different from his brother. Now that she thought about it, the fact that he had dedicated himself to a career didn’t really surprise her.
“Using the funds that Dad left us to help out some of the less fortunate people in the area.”
He should have known that it wasn’t enough to satisfy her. Instead, it only raised more questions.
“Less fortunate?” she repeated, raising her voice to be heard above the wind that had begun to moan. “And how do you help them?”
He didn’t want to talk about himself. Because the temperature was dropping, Brody raised her collar for her. Tiny fingers of emotion swept all through him as he did so. He caught himself just drinking in the sight of her. Before he knew it, she’d be gone again. Leaving the same void she’d left the first time.
He nodded toward the house. “Do you want to go inside?”
That was why she had come here first, Irena reminded herself. The sight of Brody, looking so much like his brother, had driven that right out of her head. But now she nodded.
“Sure.”
The front door was unlocked. Pushing it open, she walked in. Irena fully expected to find a mess. After all, time had a way of taking its toll, and neither she nor her mother had lived here for more than eighteen years. They’d moved out when Yuri insisted they come live with him shortly after his son had been killed during the cave-in.
Hesitating at first, her mother had wound up agreeing because she just couldn’t bear to stay in a house haunted with memories. Memories that lived in every corner of the single-story house and would ambush her without any warning.
But, by the same token, because there were so many memories here, her mother couldn’t bring herself to part with the house and sell it. So it had remained in the family. A silent shadow of the past.
Irena scanned the rooms. Instead of being buried under the grit of almost two decades, the house was amazingly spotless. There wasn’t so much as a spider’s web visible anywhere.
Stunned, she turned to Brody. He’d mentioned electricity and water and she’d seen him making repairs. Had he cleaned up the rooms as well?
“Did you—”
Brody
