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“By letting Leeri know we’re on the same side, she might be more helpful,” I said, throwing her a lifeline.
She nodded, and her features smoothed. “Si,” she said, smiling gratefully.
I smiled back and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “You’ll figure it out, darling,” I reiterated what I’d said to her earlier.
Ten years ago, I was young and impulsive. I was older now, and wiser. I could be patient.
***
“Come to visit me in prison?” Leeri asked, glaring up at me from where she sat on the floor at the end of the bed.
“Cut the act, Leeri. We know he’s not Javier Domínguez,” I said, leaning back against the wall of my sister’s elaborate “prison”. Really, I’d spent some time on the inside of a jail cell. I’m pretty sure there were no ensuite baths or satin sheets the last time I was there. Hell, this room was probably bigger than the house we grew up in.
Her eyes narrowed, looking at me like she was searching my face for answers. “What do you mean he’s not—”
The door opened and Greta walked in, carrying a bottle of something in one hand and three glasses in the other.
“Refreshments for our little party?” she said, closing the door behind her with her hip.
Leeri looked up at her with a look on her face like maybe Greta had lost her mind.
“What?” Greta said, shrugging. “I’m betting you’re tired of being treated like a prisoner, and I’m tired of having to treat you like a prisoner, so I say we try something new.”
It could have been an act, but there was nothing contrived about her demeanor. And ever since she’d put two and two together back at my place, there’d been something lighter about her.
“New?” Leeri said suspiciously. “As in, try to get me drunk and hope I pour out all my deep, dark secrets?”
“Well, we could get drunk and make out, but that might be a little awkward for your brother,” Greta replied without missing a beat.
Yeah, maybe just a little, not that I’d ever do anything to quash a woman’s interest in enjoying another woman.
Greta sat down next to Leeri, set the glasses down in front of her, and filled each one halfway full.
After she’d taken a healthy sip, she set her glass down and turned back to Leeri. “So, I say we skip the girl-on-girl action for now, and since I don’t have an interest in all your deep, dark secrets, how about we move on to the part where you realize we’re on the same side here?”
“The same side?” Leeri said as she reached for one of the glasses, moving slowly, like she wasn’t quite sure if it was going to try to bite her.
I crossed the room, and Greta handed me the remaining glass. “I was just starting to fill her in on our common interest in therealJavier Domínguez. We’re guessing you already know that the man you’re with is really Mateo Flores.”
Leeri’s eyes narrowed as her gaze swung back and forth between Greta and I, but there was a difference in the set of her shoulders now. “How could you know that?”
Greta opened her mouth to respond, but I cut in. “I also know that the night on the docks, you were trying to help me, Leeri.”
Her eyes widened, and finally, I could see my sister. She was there in her eyes, real and unguarded. “You don’t know that,” she argued.
“Yeah, I do.”
Finally, she looked away. She stared down at the amber liquid in her glass, and her shoulders shook. “You’re not lying, are you?”
“No, I’m not, and neither is Greta. Everything we’ve told you is true, Leeri.”
“And we don’t have any interest in going after Flores,” Greta added for some reason.
Leeri sighed. The taut shoulders were gone, the fuck-off air around her vanished. “I wanted to tell you, Brute, but I couldn’t. If I’d told you that Mateo wasn’t the man you were after, you wouldn’t have believed me. And you can’t go after Flores. I can’t let you do that.”
“You love him,” Greta said.
Love? My baby sister was in love? All of a sudden, I couldn’t see the grown woman in front of me, but the gangly, little, dark-haired girl she’d been. Love?
