I turned toward the terminal.
“She wasn’t sticking around,” he called after me. “She wasn’t going to wait for you while you deployed.”
Maybe, maybe not.
I’d never know.
Pissed that I’d come here, I walked into the terminal.
Luna pushed off the counter he was leaning against and fell into step beside me. “I’m beginning to understand your choice on the next-of-kin notification form.”
“I’m not discussing it.” We exited through the front of the terminal.
“Fair enough. But know familia isn’t always blood, hermano.”
“Understood.” Luna was more of a brother to me than Vance ever had been.
Luna unlocked the armored Escalade. Getting behind the wheel, he cranked the engine and the AC. Then he leaned back in his seat and glanced toward the jets before looking back at me. “Gotta admit, not much surprises me anymore.” He broke out in a grin. “But goddamn, amigo. Sanaa? The Sanaa?” He chuckled. “Mierda. That’s next level, brother.” Still grinning, he shook his head. “It’s always the quiet ones.”
I stared straight ahead. “She’s not mine.” She never was.
“Yeah, but at some point she was. And by the look of it, she wishes she still was.” Luna threw the SUV into gear. “So what do you want to do?”
I glanced at the two private jets as Luna pulled away from the airport. “Nothing.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me that the one brother I never wanted was the only one who’d ever seen me naked.
Yes, Ronan had seen me in my bikini and, I was pretty sure, my panties and bra all those years ago when I changed out of wet clothes after we’d gotten caught in the rain walking home from school. We’d laughed about it at the time, dripping summer rain all over the kitchen floor.
Then the laughter in his eyes had died and his seriousness, the deep-rooted kind that came from too many responsibilities at too young an age, had taken over his beautiful features and his throat moved with a swallow.
It was the first time I’d been brave enough to reach out and touch it.
The memory surfaced.
“Do it again,” I whispered, placing my hand on his throat.
“Do what?” he asked quietly.
My heart ached at the soulful quietness to his voice. “Make it move.” I stroked his Adam’s apple with my thumb. “This.”
His hand covered mine, and he swallowed again. “I have to tell you something.”
My fingers tickled at the vibration from his voice, but my heart fluttered from the intensity in his stormy eyes. “What?”
His throat moved again. “I’m in love with you, Songbird.”
“Sanaa?”
I blinked and the memory faded, but I was staring at almost identical eyes on a man with the same Adam’s apple. “What?”
Vance smiled, and tiny lines formed that I didn’t know if his brother had because Ronan hadn’t smiled at me.
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you, love?” Vance brushed a knuckle across my cheek.
I wasn’t his love. But he’d been in London long enough to pick up certain endearments, and I was too tired to argue with him about it. “I’m sorry, can you please repeat yourself?”
Dropping his hand to my arm, Vance glanced at Adam. “It’s been a long flight. I need to get her to the hotel.”
I didn’t want to go to another nameless hotel. I’d lived in hotels for a decade. I wanted to stay on this plane until the very last whisper of his scent disappeared. Dry cedar, salty air and the unmistakable musk that was all him, Ronan smelled exactly how I remembered, and I wanted to stay here and breathe it in forever.
I wanted to drown in it.
I wanted memories that were bittersweet to give me hope, and I wanted to embrace him in the only way I could, because no one smelled like Ronan Conlon. There was nothing that felt more like home than his scent. Not even his twin came close.
Which was why I should’ve realized, all those years ago, the unforgiveable mistake I was making. Except I’d been so nervous and so desperate to make the man of my dreams mine before telling him that I’d done the unthinkable and signed the contract, that I didn’t think. I’d put my arms around him from behind, and I’d whispered I had a surprise for him.
I should’ve known it was Vance and not him. And Vance should’ve stopped me before I was dragging him to his brother’s bedroom, stripping, and pawing at him with all of my inexperience and desperation. Vance was partially at fault, but I blamed myself for all of it, including what I’d just witnessed.
“You’re still not speaking to him.” Vance had lied to me.
He chuckled. “I speak to him, darling. He just doesn’t answer.”
“You lied,” I accused. “When I first saw you in London, I asked after him, and you said he was fine.”
Vance stood and adjusted the cuffs of his custom-made shirt. “And he is.” He smiled without warmth. “You saw for yourself.” He glanced at Adam. “Are you coming with us to the hotel?”
His ankle resting on his knee, his suit pressed despite him also having flown here, Adam Trefor focused piercing ice-blue eyes on me. Looking every bit as imposing as he did when I first met him in a sterile office on a dreary English day, he spoke with a calmness that never touched his eyes. “Miss Narine, we need to speak about the very real possibility that this plan won’t work.”
The plan.
Hastily concocted, rushed to put into play, and wedged between two ticking time bombs. It wasn’t a plan. It was a fool’s mission.
Barely more than twenty-four hours ago, I’d given my second-to-last concert on the tour. In seven days, I would play the stadium where I’d started the tour. Unbeknownst to my fans, it was going to be my last live performance. I couldn’t afford for anything to go wrong.
“The plan’s going to work,” Vance reassured.
Adam tapped his fingers together in a repetitive pattern. “Assuming the person behind this follows us here, assuming he decides to plant another bomb, and assuming we find it before he detonates it, is a lot of assumptions.” His focus unwavering, he paused for a moment. “The prudent move would be to alert authorities in London, hand this over to them, and take their advice on safety protocols before proceeding with the concert. Then we do our job and keep you protected.”
“Protecting me doesn’t protect my fans.” The placement of the third bomb proved that.
Barely lifting his right shoulder, Adam shrugged. “If you’re not on stage, there’s no audience.”
“She’s still under threat whether or not she’s performing,” Vance interjected.
Adam stood. Addressing Vance, he tipped his chin toward me. “Her, we can protect.”
Even though Vance met my gaze with a locked expression, I could still surmise what he was thinking. They could protect me, but I wasn’t the only one at risk. Which was why Vance wanted us on US soil, why he’d come up with this plan, and why we were here. Vance suspected who it was.
I didn’t suspect, I knew.
The moment I read the first note, I knew. But Vance had wanted more information, so he’d done his due diligence over the past couple months. Now he had all of his intel neatly stacked up and pointing toward the suspect, but we had one problem.