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Chapter 25
Travis wasn’t the leastbit surprised to see Sebastien all but shove past the freelance security agent who’d opened the door.
“Damn it, man, I told you it was my brothers—I’d think I know who my brothers are,” Bastien said with a smirk before turning to Travis and throwing his arms around him. “Get in here ... Man, what the fuck! What are you doing here? Did Mom threaten to beat your ass if you didn’t show up soon? And shit, Trey, too! Why are you here? Abby’s due any day and Zach will beat my ass if you don’t stop in and visit him with the baby so close.”
Sebastien Barnes had born living life at top speed, and apparently, that hadn’t changed.
The youngest of the Barnes siblings shoved Travis into the house, past the bodyguard who met Travis’s gaze with a bemused sort of grimace, before turning his attention to Ressa.
Despite the rapid-fire pace of Sebastien’s questions, he didn’t slow down or pause to give anybody a chance to answer, just hugged Ressa and nudged her into the house after Travis before grabbing the other twin and giving him the same treatment as his brother had received.
After pushing Trey in with the others, he stooped and caught the kids in his arms, questions and comments still tumbling from him as he stepped inside and spun the kids around.
Both Neeci and Clayton whooped while Sebastien laughed, the fading scar that bisected his face on one side doing little to decrease the attractiveness of a face most of the world consideredpainfully beautiful.
Feeling a gaze on him, Travis looked up and saw Marin at the top of the stairs, one hand on the swollen mound of her belly, the other on the railing.
“Mare,” he said, nodding.
She eyed him for a long moment, then nodded back. Then she turned her gaze to Sebastien. “Sebastien, maybe you’d like to move your playdate somewhere the rest of us won’t have hearing loss.”
“I’m sorry, what? Canwe rewind this conversation some?”
Travis met Sebastien’s baffled gaze levelly. “To where?”
“Oh, I dunno ... how about to the part ... what was it ... ” Sebastien squinted his eyes, then in an eerily accurate echo of Travis, he repeated what his older brother had said several minutes earlier. “I’ve been working alongside federal agents helping bring down human trafficking operations.”He snapped his fingers and gave the room at large a big, broad smile that was patently false. “That part is where I’m getting hung up. Can we rewind back tothere?”
“Seb ... ” Trey rubbed his temples.
Sebastien came off the couch in a barely controlled explosion of movement. “Hey, look, maybe you’re cool with this—you’ve probably known a while and I get it. You two don’t have secrets, but I kind of need a few minutes!”
Travis saw Trey flinch and he hated himself a little bit in that minute.
“I didn’t tell him, Sebastian,” he said, sharpening his voice to a blade.
Sebastian was already forging ahead, though, and it took a second for Travis’s cold words to penetrate.
He stopped and blinked, rubbing the back of his neck before looking at Travis. “What?”
Jamming his hands into his pockets, Travis said, “When you’re doing undercover or off-the-books work for the federal government, you don’t get a pass to tell family, even if it’s your twin.Nobody knew.”
For once, Sebastien seemed rendered speechless.
“Your face,” Marin said quietly.
