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My father had gutted that room afterward and then nearly rebuilt the house from the ground up. Talon and Jade lived there today. I lived in the guest house.
I hadn’t seen my mother’s body. My father hadn’t let us. He’d thought it would be too traumatizing. After what we’d been through two years before with Talon’s abduction, I doubted we could have been more traumatized, but I was the youngest, and I never questioned my father.
None of us did.
I’d resented him for years because he wouldn’t let us see her, but I eventually got over it. Still, it had affected us—so much so that none of us had looked at our father’s dead body when he passed.
My sister, Marjorie, didn’t even remember our mother. That was a shame, because she was the only one of us who actually looked anything like her. The three of us boys all favored our father. Jonah the most. There didn’t seem to be a speck of our mother in any one of us. Especially not in me.
My memories were sparse, but at least I had some memories. She had been a good mother. A loving mother. I hadn’t been as close to her as Jonah was. I always thought he was her favorite. Then, once Talon returned, she had a hard time with all of us, Marjorie especially. Marjorie was a brand-new baby and needed her mother, but I never felt that my mother connected with her. She had a hard time connecting with all four of us once Talon returned.
Talon’s abduction changed my mother.
We had found two of his abductors. Larry Wade, our mother’s half brother, was in prison awaiting trial. Tom Simpson, the mayor of Snow Creek and Joe’s best friend’s father, had killed himself
rather than face the music. Only one was left. Theodore Mathias, the father of a Grand Junction detective who was a friend of Melanie’s.
He was the one who had been the most elusive throughout our entire investigation.
According to Talon, Mathias was the worst of all three.
I shook my head to clear it. Why was I thinking about all this shit because of some stupid prank phone call? My brothers were getting married next week. In sunny Jamaica. We were going to have a fucking blast. We hadn’t had a vacation in so long.
Marjorie was making all the arrangements. She had booked us into an all-inclusive resort in Negril called Destination Desire. It was an all-adult resort, complete with a nude beach and clothing-optional pools. Thankfully, it also had another beach and other pools where clothing was required. I wasn’t sure how I felt about walking around naked in front of my brothers’ two fiancées and my sister. Or my brothers, for that matter. It was the only resort where Marj could get reservations on such short notice, so we’d agreed to turn a blind eye to the nude side of the resort.
However, I planned to sneak over…by myself.
Knowing Marj, it would be first class all the way. Jonah had asked me to be his best man, which was nice of him, since Talon had wanted Joe to be his. I was a little disappointed that Talon hadn’t chosen me. I loved both of my brothers equally, but Talon… Talon was my hero.
Because of Talon, I had been spared the torture that he endured for two months. He and I had been walking together that day, trying to dig up clues about the disappearance of his friend Luke Walker.
When the two men attacked us, Talon had gotten me free and yelled at me to run.
And damn, I had run.
I’d run like my life depended on it, which it most likely had.
That was the day. The terrible day. The day that had brought us to where we were now.
Talon was finally getting the help he needed and was healing. He was better each day. Now he was strong enough to take the plunge with Jade and get married.
I was ecstatic for him. And I was honored to be Jonah’s best man. Still, Talon meant so much to me.
No matter.
This was going to be a great vacation for all of us. And I was just as happy for Jonah and his new bride, Melanie. Melanie had worked miracles as Talon’s therapist and was now working more miracles with Joe. She was pregnant, too. I would be an uncle.
Watching my brothers fall in love and prepare to get married made me happy. But it was all just a little bittersweet. I wasn’t sure anything like that was in the cards for me. Oddly, I was the only one of the three of us who had ever had a serious relationship. I had been in a relationship with Anna Shane, a woman from a neighboring ranch, for several years. We were comfortable together, we’d thought we were in love with each other, but now, seeing what Jonah and Talon had with their women, I knew Anna and I had made the right choice not to continue. We’d had a lot in common. But that fire? That fire that I witnessed between Talon and Jade, and Jonah and Melanie? That had been missing.
I kept busy at the ranch. We all did. But winemaking was especially tedious in the summer and fall. I had been working twenty hours a day the last three months, and I was looking forward to a break.
So I wasn’t getting married. So I wasn’t Talon’s best man. So what? I was Ryan Steel, and Ryan Steel had fun no matter what he did.
I was known around town as being the most jovial and having the best personality of all three Steel brothers. I wasn’t sure if that was true, but I did like to have a good time.
And next week in Jamaica? I was going to party it up, Ryan Steel style.
Rum punch, beach bunnies, a little boating, a little surfing.
