“I can think of a few words to describe her.”

  Matt and Grayson shared a smile. “She wasn’t like Kris. I don’t know what else to tell you.” Matt had never met anyone like Kristen, and that was why it was so hard for him to fathom letting her go. He questioned whether he would ever meet anyone like her again.

  “Have you seen Robin since she showed up here?” Grayson took a sip from his longneck.

  “Hell no. If I never see that woman again, it’ll be too soon.”

  “You may be able to avoid her, but you can’t avoid Paul forever.”

  “I sure as hell can try.” He couldn’t imagine forgiving Paul for his latest stunt, especially if it meant Kristen never spoke to him again.

  “Maybe having it out with him would make you feel better.”

  Matt pulled his cell out of his pocket as soon as it buzzed. His hope died as quickly as it had come when he saw the email was from a colleague. “He’s dead to me.” That wasn’t entirely true. Paul would always be his kid brother. They shared the same DNA, and even though Paul had taken a good run at destroying his life, Matt couldn’t forget he was alive.

  “I don’t believe that,” Grayson said. “Family means everything to you. Everyone who knows you knows that.”

  “You guys are more like family to me than he is.” He knew his partners would always have his back. He’d never been able to say the same for his excuse for a brother. “Who the hell needs him?”

  “That’s your hurt and anger talking. No one’s saying you don’t have a right to feel that way. I’m just saying you might be able to let some of it go if you talked to him. Let him have it. Beat the hell out of him if it’ll make you feel better.” Grayson chuckled when Matt blew out a breath that rattled his lips. “But don’t keep all your anger bottled up. It’s not healthy.”

  Matt pushed his chair away from the table. “You’re right. I think it’s time to pay my little brother a visit.”

  “Call me if you need someone to bail you out of jail,” Grayson called.

  Matt laughed, but the idea wasn’t implausible. A no-holds-barred showdown between him and Paulie had been a long time coming, and the more he thought about it, the more he was looking forward to it.

  ***

  Matt pulled into the drive of his brother’s overpriced house. It was on the golf course, way too big for one person, and too ostentatious for Matt’s tastes, but it suited Paul perfectly. He recognized the Maserati Robin had bought with her divorce settlement, not that he was surprised to find her there. He had a hunch she’d be shacking up with Paul since she had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t like she had friends, and her family lived halfway around the world. He rang the doorbell. When no one answered, he pressed it repeatedly. That would drive Paul and Robin crazy.

  “What the hell—” Paul threw the door open. The question died on his lips when he saw his brother. Paul was shirtless and the top button of his jeans was undone, leaving little doubt as to what he and Robin had been doing.

  “We need to talk,” Matt said, pushing past him.

  Robin was curled up by the fireplace and wearing one of Paul’s T-shirts, which was too short to be considered decent. “Nice to see you, lover.” She batted her fake eyelashes at Matt. “I was wondering when you’d get around to paying us a visit.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Matt ground out. He should feel something about his ex-wife and brother sleeping together—hurt, anger, confusion—but he couldn’t summon the energy to care.

  “Come on now,” she said, pouting. “Don’t be like that.”

  “What do you want?” Paul balled his hands into fists as he watched the exchange between his lover and brother.

  “I want to know why you did it,” Matt said to Paul, pretending that Robin was invisible. “I get why she did it.” He inclined his head toward Robin’s. “She thought she could get more money out of me—”

  “I’m still in love with you,” Robin said, raising her voice. “This had nothing to do with money.”

  Paul narrowed his eyes at Robin. Clearly she hadn’t shared her feelings for Matt with him. “You’re still in love with him? Then what the hell are you doing here with me?”

  Matt laughed. “Isn’t it obvious, little brother? It’s not you she’s after. It’s all those zeroes on your bank statement that gets her hot.”

  “Who asked you?” Paul shouted. “This is between me and Robin.”

  “You two can sort your mess out later.” Matt stepped forward. “All I care about is why you’re so hell bent on ruining my life.”

  “I don’t give a shit about you,” Paul said. “I never have.”

  Matt let his words settle in. Paul’s cold expression told him they were true. Paul felt no remorse for what he’d done. “So you think I deserved this?”

  “After what you did to Robin? Hell yeah, you deserved it.”

  “What I did to Robin?” Matt tried to maintain control, but it wasn’t easy when he thought about his brother siding with the woman who’d used him to advance her own cause. “What about what she did to me?”

  Robin jumped up. “If you’d given me a chance to explain instead of jumping into bed with the first pretty little blonde who offered to stroke your—”

  “You pretended to be pregnant with my baby.” Matt closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten. “You knew damn well it was your ex-boyfriend’s.”

  “It could have been yours,” she said, shifting her eyes to the ground.

  “If I were a betting man, I sure as hell wouldn’t take those odds.” Matt’s lip curled in disgust. He’d never put his hands on a woman in anger and he never would, though Robin continued to push him to his limit. “You slept with me once around the time you conceived that baby. How many times were you with him? Ten? Twenty?”

  “I don’t know. I—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, stepping around her. “That’s not what I came here to talk about.”

  “You never wanted to talk about the miscarriage.” She put her hand on his wrist as she tried to coax him to face her.

  He shook off her hand, keeping his back to her. “I went to the hospital as soon as I got the call. Imagine how shocked I was to learn I wasn’t the only heartbroken father there to comfort you.” That night would be forever etched in his memory. He’d already fallen in love with the baby Robin was carrying. Like a fool, he believed they were starting the family he’d always wanted.

  “So you went out and got loaded with your friends!” Robin shoved him hard. “Our baby died, and you went to your goddamn bar and hooked up with the first woman you saw.”

  Rebecca wasn’t a hook-up. She was a friend he’d known for a long time, not that that made the morning-after conversation less awkward. Becca had believed he finally saw her as more than a friend. He had to tell her he was reeling from learning what his wife had done to him and she’d just been a soft place to land. Matt wasn’t proud of what he did that night. When he’d taken those wedding vows, he intended to honor them. But after Robin’s betrayal, he needed an outlet. He was ashamed he’d found it in the arms of another woman.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” he told Robin. “After what you did, I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.” The person he wanted to explain to was Kristen, but with every minute that slipped by without a word from her, he feared he may never get that chance.

  “I was your wife!” She stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Paul. “How can you say you don’t owe me anything?”

  “You’re my ex-wife.” He wished she would just disappear so he could do what he came to do: have it out with his brother. “Our marriage was a mistake.” She looked wounded, but he knew better than to let her play the guilt card. She’d done it too many times to have any impact.

  “How can you say that?” She wrapped her arms around her waist, drawing her T-shirt up even farther as she tucked her arms under her breasts. “You loved me.”

  Looking her in the eyes, Matt wondered if that was true. He’d thought so. He built his life around her, imagined the babies they would have and the home they would build… until her betrayal made him realize he could never trust her again. Was that how Kristen felt about him? Like there was no going back?

  “I don’t know whether I did or not,” he said honestly. He was losing the will to fight. It wouldn’t serve a purpose. He needed to let go of his anger toward Robin. “It doesn’t matter now. The only thing that matters is that it’s over. Hopefully we both came away a little wiser because of it.” Matt knew he had. He would never allow another woman to play him the way Robin had. Kristen probably felt the same way after her experience with Robert. No wonder she wasn’t willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Isn’t there anything I can say to change your mind?” she asked.

  She’d asked him the same question the morning of the party. He’d responded in anger, telling her would rather take a bullet than be her lover again. That approach hadn’t worked, so he decided to try another. “You and I are two different people. We grew up with different morals, different values. You wanted to be rich and famous. All I ever wanted was to be happy.”

  “You’re already rich. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up dirt poor, the way I did.”

  Robin had never had the courage to share her whole life story with him. She thought her vulnerability and imperfections would make him love her less. In fact, they would have made him love her and want to protect her more.

  “You’re right. I don’t know what that was like, but my life hasn’t been perfect either. I don’t know anyone whose has. A lot of my friends have been through hell to get where they are, but they didn’t become angry and bitter. They found a way to make it on their own, to learn to trust people and rebuild their lives.”

  She said quietly, “I thought you could help me do that.”

  “How? How did you expect me to help you when you refused to let me in?”

  “I tried,” she said, sniffling.

  “No, you didn’t. Not really.” Matt hadn’t realized how much he needed to have that conversation with his ex-wife so he could forgive her and let go of the bitterness.

  “I wanted to.” She looked up at him, her heartbreak evident in her dark eyes. “You don’t know how much I wanted to.”

  With a heavy sigh, Matt felt some cathartic release. “I wanted it to work too, but it wasn’t meant to. We were passing through each other’s lives for a reason, presumably to teach the other a lesson.” He looked over her shoulder at his brother. “Maybe the lesson for you, Robin, is to appreciate what you have. I don’t know the deal with you and my brother, and I don’t want to know, but if he cares about you half as much as I think he does, maybe you have a chance at building on that.”

  Paul looked surprised but said nothing.

  Robin turned to Paul, looking hesitant. “Is it true? Do you care about me?”

  “What do you think?” Paul asked, showing a shade of vulnerability Matt had never seen in him.

  Maybe his feelings for Robin ran deeper than Matt suspected. Only time and patience would tell.

  “Do you mind if I stay?” Robin asked. “Maybe we can talk about it…”

  “Sure.” Paul shrugged, pretending to be indifferent. “Just let me have a few minutes alone with my brother first.”

  “Okay.” She glanced at Matt. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry. About everything.”

  “So am I,” he said, surprised to find he meant it. He was sorry for the pain they’d caused each other and sorry their dream of happily ever after had left them feeling so angry and bitter.

  “Your girlfriend…” She looked uncomfortable and shifted her eyes from Matt’s. “Did she break up with you?”

  “I haven’t spoken to her since that night,” he admitted. “So I’m not too sure where we stand.”

  “I know you probably don’t believe me, but I hope you work it out.”

  Matt let her walk away without responding. He didn’t know if Robin was sincere or not. Either way, it didn’t matter. The damage was done, and whether Kristen decided to give him a chance was up to her. Since he’d allowed Robin to say her piece, it was his turn. Looking Paul directly in the eye, he searched for a sign he was still the same kid who followed his big brother around, hungry for attention.

  “Why do you hate me so much?” Matt asked, knowing there was no other way to get to the heart of the matter.

  “I never said I hated you.”

  “You didn’t have to say it. Every time you look at me I see it.”

  “I could say the same about you.” He lifted his chin, wearing the same defiant expression he always did when challenged.

  “I don’t hate you, Paul.” The will to fight dissipated as Matt’s desire to understand overshadowed it. Like it or not, Paul was family.

  He sat down, hoping Paul would see the gesture as a white flag and opt to do the same, and waited. Eventually Paul claimed the seat across from him but remained silent, as though he was waiting for his brother to make the next move.

  “I don’t always like you,” Matt admitted. They knew they couldn’t mend their relationship in a day. It would take months, maybe years, to undo the damage. If that was even possible with all the hateful words floating under their broken bridge.

  “Same goes,” Paul muttered.

  “But we don’t have to like each other. The question is can we get back to loving each other like brothers?” On the drive over, Matt’s only thought had been of revenge. Watching Paul, he wondered if anger and revenge could share the same space as his hope for moving on with Kristen.

  “Did we ever?” Paul asked, his intense gaze pinning Matt.

  Matt realized he’d spent so many years condemning Paul that he’d never told him all the times he was proud of him. There had been times that he made Matt feel honored to call him family. “You remember the time we had dinner at the club for Mom and Dad’s anniversary, and the kid at the table next to us started choking on a piece of chicken?”

  Paul frowned. “What the hell made you think of that?”

  “You saved his life. If not for you, that kid wouldn’t have lived to see his sixth birthday.”

  Looking uncomfortable, Paul shrugged. “I couldn’t very well sit there and let the kid die, could I?”

  “I should have known what to do,” Matt said. “I was working part-time at the club. I’d taken the C.P.R. course. I should have known how to respond, but when it came down to it, I froze. You were the one who jumped up and took action.”

  “It was no big deal.” Paul reached for the drink he’d abandoned earlier. “Just say what you came here to say. Let me have it for interfering in your life, for driving your girl away. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is.” Matt thought through the implications of telling Paul he’d hurt and disappointed Matt again. That’s what Paul expected him to say. “But it wouldn’t do any good, would it? It wouldn’t change anything between us. Hell, it would just drive one more nail into the coffin.”

  “Isn’t that what you want, to put an end to this excuse of a relationship once and for all?”

  “You think I want to wash my hands of you, forget that you’re my brother?”

  “You don’t need me,” Paul said, taking a long drink of the amber liquid in his glass. “You have a band of brothers lining up to have your back.”

  Paul was jealous of his relationship with his partners. Why hadn’t Matt seen that? “That’s what friends do.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Paul drained the contents of his glass. “I’ve never had friends like that. How many times have you told me the only reason my so-called friends hang around is to help me spend my trust fund?”

  Matt had said that a time or two. He’d wanted to make Paul wake up and see there was more to life than spending money he hadn’t earned. But it wasn’t his place to dictate how his brother lived his life. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Why not? You were right.” Paul walked to the bar tucked away in the corner of the professionally decorated living room.

  Everything about the space screamed old money, from the two thousand-dollar table lamp to the burled walnut armoire hiding the flat-screen TV. The sofas were silk, the chairs chenille damask, and the curtains velvet. To Matt, it added up to one thing: discomfort. It was a place to show off like a museum to anyone lucky enough to warrant an invitation, not somewhere he could kick back and put up his feet.

  “You want a drink?” Paul asked, holding up the crystal decanter.

  Matt didn’t really, but he recognized it as a conciliatory gesture, so he nodded. “Sure, thanks.”

  Paul handed his brother a drink before sitting on the ottoman at the foot of the armchair he’d occupied earlier. “I saw you with her, and it reminded me of the way I felt the first time I saw you with Robin.”

  Matt knew they were getting to the heart of why his brother had sold him out. “How was that?”

  “Jealous.”

  Matt wasn’t surprised Paul felt that way, but he was stunned he’d admitted it. “I don’t know why. It’s not like me and Robin ever had an enviable relationship.”

  “But you had someone who loved you. That was a hell of a lot more than I’d ever had.”

  Paul had always had his fair share of women, but they were often as shallow and self-centered as him, keeping a meaningful relationship just out of reach.

  “What me and Robin had wasn’t love, man. It was two lonely people looking for a home.” Matt had tried to convince himself he’d found that with Robin… until he walked into that hospital and had to face reality.

  “A home?” Paul shook his head and looked around at his opulent surroundings. “What the hell is that? That little house with the picket fence and rose bushes you own or this mansion with manicured lawns and an indoor pool? It all just feels like four walls closing in to me.”