Page 18 of Fast Justice

Her brother’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I know. He’s involved with the case I’m currently working on. We’ve seen each other a couple of times recently, but always for business. Except for yesterday after the accident.”

“He was there?”

“He all but ripped my door off its hinges to make sure I was okay.”

“Aww,” he said, sitting up to put a hand to his heart. “And then what?”

“And then he left for a meeting here, and has done his best to ignore me ever since.”

Kevin narrowed his eyes. “But you still have feelings for him.”

She cleared her throat, pushed a piece of carrot around her plate. “I thought they would go away, but I guess not.”

“You should know better than that.” He folded his arms across his chest, cocking his head a little, his expression almost disappointed.

Yes, I should.It wasn’t easy to admit she’d made a mistake. Even though she’d cared about Malcolm a lot, she could see it wasn’t going to work out in the long run. Their jobs made it impossible, for one, and she figured the sensible thing was to make a clean break early on, before he got hurt.

Instead, they’d both gotten hurt. And her reasons, the ones that had seemed so definite and important at the time, seemed flimsy now. Sometimes hindsight sucked.

She frowned. “It’s my own fault. I was the one who ended it.” She’d been on her way to losing her heart. Ever practical, having seen the signs early on, she’d ended it with as clean a cut as she could manage.

“Yeah, and how’d that work out for you?”

A heavy pressure began to build beneath her breastbone. “I’m fine. I knew it was for the best, so I made the call and dealt with it.”

“But you just said the feelings never went away.”

There was no point in trying to put on the tough act in front of Kevin. He was the only person on earth she trusted with her deepest secrets. Her shoulders slumped. “All right. They’re still there. And seeing him again makes me…” She tried to find the right word.

“Ache?” her brother suggested.

She met his eyes, a dark blue like hers. “Yes.” She pushed out a deep breath. “I made a huge mistake when I broke up with him.”

Kevin studied her for a moment. “Was it because of that jackass you shacked up with before him?”

“Partly.” Her relationship with her asshole ex served as a cautionary tale for ever getting involved with another alpha male again. Malcolm had wound up an unwitting casualty of that decision. “Malcolm and I are both driven, and we both work too much. But we’re also so different.”

“So are Nick and I, and I’ve never been happier. I saw the sparks flying between you and Mal the night I introduced you at the gala, and anyone with eyes could see the connection there. I haven’t talked to him since a couple weeks after you guys broke up, but—”

“Wait, you talked to him afterward? You never told me.”

Kevin blinked at her. “Yeah, I called him up to see how he was doing.”

“And how was he?”

“Why do you care about that now?” he challenged, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you decided you did the right thing by walking away.”

She threw him a mock scowl. “Jerk.”

He grinned, ripped off a piece of pita bread and stuffed it into his mouth. “He was hurt, Ro. He didn’t come out and tell me that, of course, but I knew. And you must have too.”

Somehow it was worse hearing it from someone else. “Yeah, okay, I knew. It didn’t make sense to me at the time, though. We’d only been seeing each other such a short time. Hadn’t even slept together.” How could Malcolm have felt so strongly about her when they hadn’t been intimate that way? She didn’t understand that.

“Maybe not, but he was into you big time.”

I was into him big time too.“He’s pretty cold to me now. Strictly business, except for after the accident.” He’d seemed so concerned then, and that hug, brief as it was, had been amazing. Didn’t it show that he still cared about her on some level? God, she was so confused now.

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