sank down on the couch, suddenly entirely too aware that Thor was on a video call and she was naked. Covered up in a comforter, sure. Out of frame, he’d said. But she was naked all the same, and that felt...wrong when there was another voice. And when it sounded like that.
“I assume you mean that my Nordic sensibilities offend you,” Thor was saying in reply.
And he sounded...not quite like the man she thought she’d come to know over the course of a night that Margot felt had lasted several lifetimes already. Something scraped at her, thick and insistent, and she realized that he sounded like the Thor she had met downstairs last night. There in the bar, when he’d come up behind her and she’d thought he was nothing but another hotel guest. Who’d been attempting to hit on her.
It made her feel a little dizzy to think about how different things were now. How much a single night had changed them both.
“Sensibilities don’t offend me, brother,” the same voice replied.
“Aloha, motherfuckers,” a third voice chimed in then. Richer, darker. And with a lilting sort of hint of an accent that Margot found unfamiliar but assumed went along with the Hawaiian greeting.
She peeked her head up over the back of the couch to sneak a look at the screen, hoping she really was out of frame. She assumed she must have been when no one said anything, and that allowed her to study the screen. It was split in two. On one side sat a very large, gorgeously muscled man bathed in sunlight with palm trees and blue water behind him. His eyebrows were arched and jet black, a fascinating contrast to his brown skin and the smirk on his surprisingly lush mouth. His black hair fell around his face, a little too long to Margot’s way of thinking. A little too messy.
He wasn’t beautiful, but he was purely carnal. Margot was surprised he didn’t sizzle.
She was surprised she didn’t, simply from looking at him.
The man on the other side of the screen was blond, though a darker, dirtier blond than Thor. He was also built out of lean, hard muscles and razor-sharp lines, like those fascinating cheekbones of his. And maybe it was his similarities to Thor that clued her in: his blue eyes, though a darker, moodier blue than Thor’s; a tilt to his head that suggested he was up to no particular good; the kind of mouth that made Margot’s mind seem to go blank for a whole beat or two.
She understood that these must be Thor’s half brothers. Thor’s famous half brothers, made objects of international interest the moment their existence had been confirmed at the reading of Daniel St. George’s will six months ago.
Her heart thudded a little too hard for her peace of mind, but it wasn’t because Thor’s half brothers were so ridiculously attractive. It was because Thor himself looked so...stern and disapproving as he glared at his screen.
“I thought aloha was a Hawaiian thing,” the blond with the drawl said.
He was Charlie Teller, if Margot remembered her research into Thor correctly. The article she’d read about Daniel St. George’s long-lost sons had made vague references to Charlie’s brushes with the law and potentially dangerous associates. He didn’t look dangerous on screen—or he didn’t only look dangerous. He was grinning broadly, tipped back in a chair in a room somewhere. With terra-cotta walls that struck Margot as...insistent, somehow.
“It is a Hawaiian thing. I’m a Hawaiian thing.”
That third voice was Jason Kaoki. She’d read about him, too. A local Pacific Island boy turned good, the fawning article had called him. He had gone off to college on the mainland on a full football scholarship and had even played a few years pro before sustaining the kind of injuries that had forced him into early retirement. He was rumored to be a major, if anonymous, philanthropist in Hawaii and other Pacific Islands. And then had come the will.
“You’re not actually in Hawaii, though, are you?” Charlie asked. “I thought you were on some random ass island out there in the middle somewhere.”
“Are you trying to throw down with me about some Pacific Island shit, you haole fuck?” Jason demanded, then belted out a big, broad laugh that seemed to warm up even this cavernous room where Margot lay, far across the planet from his light and sea and palm trees, surrounded by snow and ice.
And a chilly Thor besides.
“As delightful as this questionable camaraderie is,” Thor interjected coolly then, as if he could hear Margot’s thoughts, “I believe this is meant to be a business call, is it not?”
“I’d tell you to chill out, brother,” Charlie said, and Margot wondered if she was the only one who heard the sardonic kick in the way he used that word. Brother. “But I’m not sure that Viking ass could get any colder.”
Jason laughed again and it had the same effect as before. Bright and loud, as if he didn’t have a care in the world and didn’t care what the idiots on his screen were talking about.
Though Margot imagined it would be a very foolish person indeed who failed to note the clever gleam in his dark gaze.
“I find Viking commentary entertaining,” Thor said. “I do. But these conversations are supposed to be about money.”
“I like money,” Jason said, and he still sounded as merry. As lazy. “But how much can any one man have?”
“Meaning you’re still holding out,” Charlie replied, as if that was a code. “You might as well surrender, brother. The long arm of Daniel St. George reaches from beyond the grave whether you want it to or not. You can tell yourself whatever lies you want, but believe me, you’re going to end up building that hotel.”
Jason smiled, big and broad, but Margot was caught on the shrewd look in his gaze.
“You had a lot of good reasons to leave the mainland. I’m assuming Italy was one of those reasons. Maybe your life choices on the mainland were another reason.” Jason shrugged as if it was no matter to him. As if he couldn’t see the way Charlie’s smile became indefinably more dangerous. “But I like my island the way it is.”
“Jason is still holding off on development plans. How is the Amalfi Coast treating you?” Thor asked Charlie with no particular inflection in his cool voice.
“Italian, Thor. It seems really fucking Italian.”
There was more laughter, though somehow, it didn’t surprise Margot that Thor didn’t join in.
“Everything continues apace here in Iceland,” Thor told them. “Business is booming.”
“Sex always sells,” Charlie said with a shrug. “And water is wet, the sun comes up in the east and a douchebag is what a douchebag does.”
“Is that life advice?” Jason asked.
“I’m a life coach in my spare time,” Charlie drawled.
“We could all say a great many things about the man, certainly,” Thor said, an edge in his voice that made goose bumps prickle along Margot’s arms—and also cut through his half brothers’ laughter. “But our father always had excellent taste in hotels.”
“Don’t call that asshole our father,” Charlie muttered. “Jesus.”
“He’s
