Page 1 of Falling For The Enemy (The Gilbert Curse)

One

The Gilbert sister was the key.

Somehow when Kit Palmer referred to his teenage crush, the woman whose life had been ruined by his older brother and a family grudge, it was easier to pretend she was a stranger. Like there was distance between them despite their tragic connections.

If he was brutally honest with himself, he knew that there was no putting distance between Aurora Gilbert and himself. When she, her brother and her cousin moved to Gilbert Manor and he saw her for the first time, he’d fallen.

Hard.

It hadn’t mattered to his eight-year-old self that he and his family lived in the old factory houses on the outskirts of Gilbert Corners or that his father was the shift manager at the old factory. As a child he hadn’t seen that they were in any way different, and at that summer party where all the kids from Gilbert Manufacturing families played together, he’d found himself alone with Rory for the first time.

She’d been brave and fearless, and when the older kids, including his brother, had walked across the river that surrounded Gilbert Manor and flowed through the town, Kit had hesitated. He didn’t know how to swim and didn’t want to be left behind but... Rory had held out her hand to him. Taken his palm in hers and said, “We can do this together.”

And they had. And in that moment, his life had changed.

Which was why he was referring to her as Dash’s sister and not his childhood heroine. She was the key to reckoning with his past. As long as she was a Gilbert, nothing else could matter.

Kit’s family hadn’t stayed in the factory houses for long. His father and his brother were ambitious and started moving up in Gilbert Manufacturing, until old Lance Gilbert promised Kit’s brother, Declan Orr, the position of CEO of Gilbert Manufacturing. Finally, they had arrived and would be a force to be reckoned with in Gilbert Corners.

But the car crash had changed all of that. The factory had closed down, and in his grief his father had bought up shares in Gilbert Manufacturing, mortgaging their house and selling assets to take over the company and the position that had been promised to Declan. Something that Dash Gilbert had gotten wind of and had used to lure his father deeper into debt until all that was left of their assets was the deed to that crappy, run-down factory-provided duplex.

Now as he sat in front of the house that held too many mixed memories, watching as his new neighbor Rory Gilbert moved in, he couldn’t help but think that he might finally have everything he needed to destroy Dash Gilbert, cure the bad karma that the Gilberts had passed on to his family and at long last get over the woman who was at the heart of his plan.

There was a rap on his car window and he turned, surprised to see Rory Gilbert standing there. Her hair had darkened over the years from that white blond she’d had as a child to a dark honey-blond. She had a heart-shaped face and pretty blue eyes. Her mouth was full, her nose delicate and she quirked her head to the side as she waited for him to open the window. He turned off the car and got out.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, that’s what I hired you for,” she said.

Hiredhim. “I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I’m not a mover.”

“Oh, I know that,” she murmured. Her voice was as he remembered, light and lilting, sweetly melodic. “But you are here for the thing that I hired you for, right?”

He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but before he could tell her so, her brother, Dash, walked out of the house with a sour look on his face.

Rory looped her arm through his. “Just pretend we’re old friends and don’t mention what you are really doing here. I hate lies but I can’t take another minute of having my older brother and cousin telling me I am too fragile to do anything.”

Her touch on his arm was electric and sent through him a pulse of awareness that he tamped down. He had no idea what Rory was up to, but if it meant irritating Dash then Kit was all in.

“Sure. My name is Kit, by the way.”

“Kit. Great. Just follow my lead,” she said.

He intended to do just that. He had been trying for years to come up with a plan to find something to use as leverage against Dash Gilbert, and he had known in his gut that the sister was the perfect ammunition, but nothing had come of it. Rory had been in a coma, and after his engagement had been broken almost eight years earlier, Dash had become a recluse.

“Dash, you heading off?”

“Not yet. Who’s this?”

“This is one of my old friends, Kit,” she told him. “Kit, this overbearing dude is my brother, Dash.”

Kit hadn’t met Dash Gilbert before. He’d been eighteen on the night of the ball that had culminated in the car crash that had taken his brother’s life. He held his hand out to the man that Kit had wanted to destroy for the last ten years. However, when their eyes met, instead of the pure evil he’d expected to find, he saw an easy smile and a semi-exasperated look.

“I’m not overbearing,” Dash said. “Well, not too much. This one thinks that six months from waking up from a coma she can climb Everest.”

“Not Everest yet,” Rory replied.

“Then what?”

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