Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers (28 page)

Dylan was guarded, his gaze shielded the way he’d learned after their parents died. Beside him, Penny cast her fiancé a worried glance, but when she faced Miles, her dainty jaw went hard with determination.

“I know the last time we spoke, I said some things…” Miles began, more hesitant then he liked as he searched for the right words.

Sitting up straight in her ladder-backed chair, Penny tilted her chin up defiantly. “You certainly did. And I, for one, am not interested in hearing anything from you other than an apology.”

This was why Miles preferred to go into meetings already knowing what he intended to say. He hated losing control of the conversation.

“It’s okay, Penny,” Dylan said, probably reading the tension in the set of Miles’s mouth. “Let him say whatever he’s going to say. It doesn’t matter.”

Ouch. Knowing he’d earned the distance and distrust he saw in his brother’s eyes didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Still, he was here to apologize, anyway. Steeling himself, Miles looked Penny straight in the eye and said, “I’m sorry.”

Her lips tightened into a tight line. “Not me,” she hissed, the words
you dolt
heavy in her tone. “Apologize to Dylan.”

A quick glance at his baby brother’s raised brows showed Dylan didn’t know what was going on, either. “Uh, sweetheart, not to belabor the point, but you’re the one Miles called a gold digger.”

“Exactly,” Penny seethed, righteous indignation burning hot pink across her round cheeks. “He implied that the only reason a woman would want to marry you—his own brother!—isn’t because you’re kind and funny, or great with kids, or even fantastic in bed. No. The only reason I could possibly have accepted your proposal is to get my hands on your family’s money.”

She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, and the straightforward challenge in her stubborn scowl warmed Miles’s heart.

Focusing on his brother, Miles said, very seriously, “Your fiancée is absolutely right. I apologize—not only for implying that you’re basically a human ATM, but also for not realizing sooner that you’ve got impeccable taste in women. I should have known that any friend of Greta’s would be pretty special. But now … Dylan, if I had to comb the globe to find the perfect wife for you, I couldn’t do better than the woman at your side.”

Dylan stood half out of his chair, planting his hands on the table. He leaned over, eyes narrow and mouth drawn. “What brought on this change of heart?”

“I’m not actually done apologizing yet.”

Slumping back down in his chair, Dylan wiped a palm over his jaw. “There’s more,” he said blankly.

Miles thought about the night before, the way he’d felt while telling Greta about his family, and he knew he had one more apology to make if he was ever going to be able to let the guilt go and move forward to an adult relationship with his youngest brother.

“I want to tell you I’m sorry for abandoning you when Mom and Dad died. I know that’s how it felt—and I have no excuse. When you looked at me after the funeral, all shocked and pale, like you still didn’t quite understand what had happened … but you trusted me to make everything okay again…” Miles stopped talking, appalled at the break in his voice.

Across the table, Dylan had that hand over his mouth again, and Penny had stolen a comforting arm around his shoulders. “It’s fine,” Dylan said hoarsely. “You were halfway through college. It wouldn’t have made any sense for you to quit, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“Let the man talk,” Penny whispered, leaning her head on Dylan’s shoulder. “Now that he’s finally making some sense.”

That got Dylan to smile behind his hand, and Miles felt the constriction in his chest ease up. The sight of the two of them, so together, so in sync—and the memory of how close to that he’d come with Greta—dispelled the worst of the black cloud of grief.

Miles cleared his throat and pressed on. “You were just a kid, and I was legally an adult. I could have made a different call. But you looked up at me, with all this hope in your eyes. And I just … I panicked. I was so afraid I couldn’t live up to the responsibility, couldn’t take our parents’ place and give you what they would have given you. So I ran. And by the time I stopped running, it was too late.”

The wooden chair creaked under Dylan as he shifted his weight. Penny lifted her head to look into his eyes, and they had a whole silent conversation while Miles sat there with his guts exposed on the table between them.

Pressing a nudging kiss to his shoulder, Penny moved back to let Dylan stand up. Feeling awkward craning his neck to look up at his kid brother, Miles stood, too, his heart hammering.

Dylan squared his shoulders and held out his hand, reaching out to Miles for the first time in years. “It’s not too late.”

A heavy-linked chain that had been there as long as Miles could remember finally gave up its hold on his ribs. Drawing in his first clean, sharp breath in ages, Miles shocked the hell out of both of them by grabbing Dylan’s hand and using it to pull his brother in for a bone-cracking hug.

“I’m sorry, too.” Dylan’s thick voice was muffled against Miles’s shoulder. “I acted like a jackass for a long time, I squandered every opportunity you tried to give me, and I lived the kind of life I
knew
Mom and Dad would have hated.”

“But you figured yourself out,” Miles reminded him, pulling back from the hug but keeping his hands on his brother’s broad shoulders. “You know all Mom and Dad ever wanted was for us to be happy. And look who turned out to be the smart one, beating Logan and me to the punch.”

“I had some help.” Dylan turned to smile at Penny, who had tears running down her beaming face.

Miles let go of his brother, sending him into the waiting arms of the woman he loved without a qualm. “Sometimes life’s toughest lessons take a while to learn, and we can’t seem to make the leap on our own.”

Twining her arm around her fiancé’s waist with a fond squeeze, Penny arched a knowing look in Miles’s direction. “You never did answer Dylan’s original question. And not that we’re complaining, but … why the sudden change of heart, Miles?”

Miles looked into Penny’s laughing green eyes, and he knew that somehow she knew. Shaking his head, he backed toward the doorway. “Oh, man. I wish you all the luck in the world with that one, Dylan. You’re never going to get away with a damn thing.”

“What do you mean?” Dylan’s brows crinkled together exactly the same way they’d done when he was a little boy, frustrated at his inability to tie his own shoelaces. “What’s going on?”

Penny did a very convincing angelically innocent face. Miles stuck his tongue in his cheek and held in a laugh.

“What your fiancée—who is too perceptive for my peace of mind, or, frankly, yours—means is that I, too, had some help in figuring things out.” Miles cleared his throat, aware of a flush of heat traveling up his neck.

Dylan’s grin was wide and delighted. “Soooo, our little Greta Hackley showed you around Sanctuary Island and got you hooked, huh?”

“It wasn’t the island, although it’s a beautiful place.” Miles tucked his hands in his pockets, realizing for the first time that he didn’t have his jacket. The knowledge that Greta was wearing it sent a strange, possessive thrill through his bones. “It was all Greta.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty great,” Dylan agreed happily. When Penny poked him in the side, he glared down at her in confusion. “What?”

Arching a brow at Miles, the half quirk of Penny’s mouth clearly communicated,
Do you want to tell him, or shall I?

Miles shook his head. He definitely wasn’t saying it out loud to his brother before he even managed to tell Greta how he felt about her. But Penny had no such issues.

“Your brother,” she told Dylan with relish, “is withdrawing his objections to our speedy marriage because it has recently dawned on him that it doesn’t always take years to fall in love.” The smile she sent Miles was softer, although laughter still sparkled at the corners of her pretty green eyes. “Sometimes, with the right person, all it takes is one look.”

Dylan’s blue eyes went wide with disbelief before a huge grin overtook his face. Crossing the kitchen to clap Miles on the back, he said, “No kidding! This is incredible, we should call Logan up here and open a bottle of champagne or something. What a day!”

A low, bitter bark of laughter made them all turn toward the door that led to the front hallway.

Greta stood in the doorway with his jacket crumpled under one arm, his phone clenched in her right fist, and eyes dark as black coffee in the milky paleness of her face.

Miles started forward instinctively, fear clutching at his chest. “Greta, what happened? Are you okay, your mom—?”

She pitched the phone at him, a perfect curveball Miles managed to catch only by sheer luck and reflexes. “You lied to me,” Greta said in a voice like broken glass. “You spun me the perfect fairy tale, a dreamworld made to order, just for me…”

Shaking her head, Greta hardened her face until she looked like a marble statue of the vibrant, beautiful woman Miles loved.

“What happened, you ask?” Greta laughed again, and it was just as painful to hear as it was the first time. “What happened is that I finally woke up.”

Chapter Ten

The kitchen was filled with the ear-ringing silence of a detonated bomb. Greta lobbed her grenade, turned on her heel, and left Miles clutching his phone like a lifeline.

Numb with shock and moving on autopilot, he thumbed open the locked screen and scrolled through the most recent texts.

Two from Cleo. The first one about the private investigator made him wince, but it was the second that froze his heart inside his chest.

Boss. Wanted to talk in person about this, but since you’re not picking up … pls rethink what you’re doing with GH. Seducing a woman for info is not worthy of you, and you may regret it. She’s different from your usual, you were different around her. Smthg to think about.

In a single devastating glance, Miles took it all in. Greta must have seen the text, and she wasn’t an idiot. She’d obviously figured out the truth … but she didn’t have the whole story.

“What are you waiting for?” Penny exclaimed. “Go after her!”

“Hold on, what was she talking about?” Dylan’s heavy hand landed on Miles’s shoulder. “Miles. What did you do?”

“You, of all people, know how far I’m willing to go to protect my family.” Miles glanced at the dawning horror on Penny’s sweet, round face. “I thought Penny was a real threat. I figured her best friend would dish the dirt if I threw a little money around and showed her a good time.”

Miles expected Dylan to drop his hand, to back away with his lip curled in disgust. But instead, his baby brother squeezed his shoulder and said, “But Greta showed
you
something instead, huh?”

That brought Miles’s head up, finally, and he met Dylan’s sympathetic gaze with a sense of wonder. So he hadn’t lost everything in the last thirty seconds.

It only felt that way.

“Do you love Greta?” Penny asked abruptly. She still looked upset, but there was a spine of steel running straight up that woman’s back. “That’s the only real question.”

“She doesn’t know it,” Miles confessed, raw and painful. “But I do.”

“Then go tell her,” Dylan urged him. “Tell her everything, the whole truth, and don’t leave anything out. Then, if you’re as lucky as I am, she’ll look down into your soul and decide if you’re worth forgiving.”

“I didn’t have to dig all that deep,” Penny protested, stepping up to slip her fingers into Dylan’s hand.

Miles felt his lips twitch as a tiny spark of hope flickered to life in his heart. “I need to hear that whole story someday, but right now … I have some groveling to do.”

“Yeah, you do,” Penny said, but the approving smile she gifted him with made Miles want to hug her.

But he didn’t have time. He had to go after Greta—he couldn’t stand to leave her thinking the worst of him, and herself, for an instant longer than necessary. The only problem was …

“Uh, Penny? Can you give me her address?”

Penny’s face went slack. “The love of your life, and you don’t even know where she lives?”

“Hazards of a whirlwind romance. Address?”

Two minutes later, Miles was racing down Island Road and feeling grateful that Greta’s family store was so close to his family’s vacation home.

He ran up Main Street and paused to catch his breath in front of Hackley’s Hardware. The Hackley family owned the whole building—hardware store downstairs, and a couple of apartments upstairs. Greta lived in one.

And her mother, Esther, lived in the other.

When Miles pushed his way into the shop, he wasn’t surprised to find Esther waiting for him behind the counter, as stern and impassive as one of the guards outside Buckingham Palace. But instead of red regimentals and a tall furry hat, she wore a floral cotton shirtdress, a white cardigan, and a forbidding expression.

Miles steeled himself and rolled up his sleeves. He had a feeling he’d have better luck getting past the queen’s Royal Guard, but he wasn’t leaving here without talking to Greta. “Where is she? I need to see her.”

“Greta didn’t tell me everything, but she told me enough. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you need, Mr. Harrington,” Esther said serenely, flipping a page in her crossword book with vicious precision.

Resisting the urge to tear the building down with his bare hands to get to Greta, Miles called on years of experience in delicate, high-stakes business negotiations. God knew, the stakes had never been higher for him.

“Mrs. Hackley,” he started, sanding the rough edges off his voice. “There’s been a terrible misunderstanding. If I could just have a few minutes alone with your daughter, I’m sure we could work it out.”

“A misunderstanding.” Esther’s razor-sharp gaze raked over him, missing nothing. “So you didn’t deliberately set out to betray my daughter’s trust in the most despicably calculated fashion?”

Guilt surged like bile in the back of his throat, but Miles kept his body language open and accepting. “I can’t deny that when I met Greta, keeping my brother safe was at the top of my mind. Dylan … doesn’t have the greatest track record. I’ve had to deal with predatory women looking to score big off my baby brother’s frustration and loneliness. So you’re right, I was very deliberate and calculated in my efforts to avoid another heartbreak for my brother.”