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Nick scowled. “What’re you talking about?”
“I know what it feels like to be bored between battles.” He was talking about his time in Afghanistan, about the time afterwards when he’d come home and they’d started MIS, taking clients back-to-back in a kind of frenzy that had felt reckless to Nick even as Ronan had seemed to need it. “It can make you do stupid things, make stupid decisions, just to feel something. Just to do something.”
It felt like he was referring to something specific, and for a split second Nick wondered if he knew about Alexa.
But that was crazy. There was no way anyone knew about his relationship — if that’s what you could call it — with Alexa Nash. And if Ronan had known, he wouldn’t dance around it. He’d put Nick into a headlock and tell him he was the stupidest motherfucker on the planet.
“I’m fine.” Nick rinsed his beer bottle and tossed it in the recycling bin, then headed for his keys, hanging on the wall with everyone else’s. “I’m heading to the office for a bit.”
Ronan stopped what he was doing. “Now?”
Nick shrugged. “Going to go over next month’s expenses. I might need to transfer some money to cover us until we’re up and running again.”
“Maybe you should take a cue from Dec,” Ronan said. “Go out, blow off some steam.”
Nick knew what Ronan was suggesting: that Nick get drunk, that he get laid by some stranger he would never see again. It’s not like Nick had never done it, but he’d never enjoyed it the way Dec had.
Now the thought turned him cold. There was only one woman he wanted in his bed. The fact that she was the one woman he shouldn’t be seeing didn’t change a fucking thing.
“Maybe another time,” Nick said, feeling like a liar. Feeling like a traitor. “Good luck with dinner.”
He shut the door behind him before Ronan could reply.
He made his way through the courtyard that sat in the middle of the U-shaped house they’d designed in Back Bay. It had been an old apartment building when they’d found it, but they’d turned it into a compound with private suites for each of the brothers and two guest rooms, plus a communal living and kitchen area.
The house had felt ridiculously huge when they’d moved in, but it was filling up fast. He tried to imagine Alexa moving in, becoming part of the family, then pushed the thought away. As much as he wanted it, he was a realist, and they were a long way from that being possible.
He hurried down the stairs to the street and got into his BMW. He’d just fired up the engine when his phone dinged with a text.
Pizza or Thai?
He smiled.Pizza of course.
Ben and Jerry’s or Haagen-Dazs?
He could picture her, sitting at her desk at the AG’s office, typing into her phone. Did she smile when she texted him? He hoped so.
Ben and Jerry’s. Why are these things even questions?
I’m just testing you.A winking emoji followed.See you soon?
On my way.
I’ll be waiting.
All of his concerns about Ronan faded into the background. That’s how it always was when it came to Alexa — the guilt of hiding something so huge from his brothers followed by the I-don’t-give-a-fuck moment of wanting nothing except to be with her.
She was going to be the death of him.
He pulled into traffic and hit the gas.
2
Alexa Nash took her feet off her desk, slipped her feet back into her heels, and put her phone away. She picked up a stack of folders and added them to her bag, then sat back in her chair, trying to calm the butterflies in her stomach.
It was an exercise she’d developed during the six weeks she’d been seeing Nick Murphy, the six weeks since he’d saved her from the man hired by Frederick Walker to silence her about the accident that had killed her best friend Samantha.
She and Samantha had been so young, on their way home from a graduation party the summer before college, their whole lives ahead of them. Then Samantha was dead and Alexa was fighting for her leg and her life.
