Page 22 of Auctioned to her Stepbrothers

Her body stiffens, and her expression goes dark, and I know what she's going to say before her answer comes. "She's passed away." She lifts her chin and blinks a few times, holding back the tears that begin to well in her eyes.

I want to wrap my arms around her, but she won't welcome my comfort.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Nate says with a solemn nod.

"What happened?" I ask, hoping it won't hurt too much for her to discuss it.

"Cancer. Ovarian cancer."

Unable to stop myself, I lay my hand on her knee. She looks down at it but doesn't stiffen. "I'm sorry," I say. "When did she pass?"

"It's been nearly a year." She takes a long sip of her drink and straightens her spine. "What about all of you? How's your father?" Nate unwittingly brought up a tender topic, and now she's returning the favor.

Kylian barks out a laugh. "You want to know how Dick-Ass is doing?"

Nate clears his throat and takes a drink from his glass, no doubt worried about where this is headed.

When Honor lifts her brows in response, Ky says, "He's completed professional clown training, and now he spends his days entertaining patients at the children's hospital."

I can't contain a snort at the thought of our dear father doing such charitable work.

"And on the weekend, he rescues puppies," Ky adds after taking a swig of his whiskey. "Just kidding. He's the same old asshole he's always been since you and your mother left us."

Nate glares at Kylian and starts to say something but is interrupted by a muffled ring.

"Excuse me." Honor pulls her small purse, which had been hanging from the side of her chair, onto her lap and opens the flap to reveal a lit screen on her phone . With only a quick glance, she rejects the call and toggles a button on the side, presumably to silence it.

"I always thought Dick-Ass would run off to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity," she says, triggering laughter from Nate and me and a hint of a smile from our older brother. Honor was always so clever, making my brothers and me laugh even on the hardest days.

"I'd love to see him doing manual labor," Ky says. "Rush him along to a heart attack."

"Where are you living these days, Honor?" Nate asks, steering the conversation back into neutral territory.

"For the next several days, she's living in room twenty-eight, on her knees," Kylian says before she can answer. "Drink up, everyone. Time's a wastin'."

"I have an apartment across town," Honor says, ignoring him. "What about you?"

"We're still at Montgomery House. None of us particularly like living there, but the estate was in our mother's family," Nate explains.

Honor nods. "So one day it will be yours. Sooner if you can bring about that heart attack," she says with a glance at Kylian. "And how about your work? Family business, I suppose?"

"Among other things," Nate says as Honor's purse vibrates with another incoming call.

I wonder if it's a boyfriend. As beautiful as she is, I can't imagine her not having a boyfriend, but I hope she doesn't. Besides, no decent man would allow her to do what she's doing with us.

It's been on the tip of my tongue to ask her why she needs the money from the auction, but I don't want to push her away, not when we seem to be starting to get along. There must be a dire reason because the Honor I knew as a child never cared much for material things. She was the exact opposite of spoiled; she always seemed content with what she had. Could she have changed in the intervening years?

I'm sure we all have to some extent, but she seems so much like she was as a girl—same smile, same quick wit, same laugh. I really want to see her smile and laugh more.

I was miserable when she left us. I have to label it as what it was—love. I loved her, and now here she is, back in our lives, seeming so familiar, even though everything is different between us.

Am I stupid to think there could be something more than a financial transaction between us?

Ky is grinning again in response to something she's said, and Nate is laughing. When have I last seen them in this way? Honor always was the shining light in our lives.

Her phone vibrates again. "Do you need to get that?" Nate asks.

Kylian reaches across the table and grabs her purse from where it hangs. Buzzing phone in hand, he swipes across the screen and brings it to his ear. "Who the fuck is this?" he snarls.

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