by Selena Kitt
Eventually, she pulled her gaze from the velvet skin over his taut abs and yanked her eyes back up to his face.
“Ric?”
“Hullo.”
“Oh my God!” A laugh of utter disbelief and sheer happiness to see him rose up and threatened to escape, but at the same time, a knot formed in her throat at the tremendous scale of his transformation. She just couldn’t stop staring. “Look at you!”
“I’ve done a lot of that.” He chuckled. “It’s your turn to get used to it.”
“Come here!” She rushed at him, jumping up to get her arms around his shoulders.
“Whoa, Leese!”
“Shut up and let me hug you!” She hung onto him hard, barely able to comprehend the size of the biceps now pressing in at either side of her waist as she buried her face against the side of his neck and breathed him in. She was trying hard to keep the hug in the “sisterly” realm of affection, but it wasn’t easy. Her body wanted to melt against him like butter in a hot pan.
“It’s you! It’s really you!” She dared to plant a light kiss on his sweaty neck and felt a slight tremor go through him. “I didn’t think it could be you. I mean, I didn’t mean—it’s just that you always show up at the last minute for everything. And... you... you wanker! You never even mentioned losing weight. Oh bugger. I’m babbling.”
She swallowed, feeling stupid for having tears in her eyes. They were partly tears of relief. His hold on her felt as patient and affectionate as ever. It was like the start of a whole new world, only now her Ric was as beautiful on the outside as he was on the inside. If that was even possible.
“Sorry, I’ll try to button up about it if you want me to, but it may take me a while to get used to this new you,” she confessed, smiling up at him, so filled with feeling it was hard to get words out. “I’m just so chuffed. You can’t stop me being proud of my gorgeous big brother.”
“Do me a favor?” Ric’s arms stiffened around her and he set her back on her feet, putting his hands on her shoulders.
“What’s that?”
“No more of the ‘big brother’ stuff. Gorgeous or not. Your mum and my dad haven’t been married for years.”
She felt a clutch of anxiety rush through her at his stiff tone.
“I know. But they’re always going to see us as siblings...” She didn’t say anything about wishing that she and Ric had never been related in any way, shape or form, so they could have pursued the now-suppressed feeling that had eventually risen up between them.
“As for the gorgeous part?” She grinned, raising her dark brows at his solid build and smooth, taut gut. “It’s... my God, Ric! You look so different!”
“I know. I don’t blame you for not recognizing me.” He shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t want to be seen as that guy. Big Dick doesn’t exist anymore.”
Big Dick.
They’d all called him that, hadn’t they? She remembered, flushing.
“I’m less the man—and more the man—than the one who walked away from here years ago.” He squatted to grab his stuff and the muscles in his thighs tensed deliciously. “But Leesa—even if you don’t, I remember what happened the last time we ended up in each other’s arms.”
“Of course I remember.” His coolness stunned her and she tried a light laugh but failed to keep the tremor out of her voice. “How could I forget? You know, speaking of walking away... you never let me... explain...”
“No explanation necessary.” Ric flicked his towel over his broad, bronze, inked shoulder. “I’m going to shower. Meet me in the den in fifteen? We can catch up.”
“Yeah... sure.”
“Great!” He flashed her a grin and pushed out through the gym doors, leaving her standing, dumbstruck, in the middle of the floor, feeling like she’d just been punched.
So much for the ‘whole new world’.
Chapter 2
Ric, apparently, showered like he was trying to clean off a mud-encrusted elephant. It took forever. For-bloody-ever! Her legs were getting tired from all her pacing.
“‘Fifteen minutes’, my arse,” she muttered, flopping down onto the couch in the den. Tiredness crept over her. She wanted to stay awake so they could catch up with him, but her eyelids threatened to close—and stay closed. The couch was very comfortable.
“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
Ric’s voice jolted her awake and her eyes snapped open as he walked through the den and into the little U-shaped bar behind it.
She got to her feet, watching him like she just might be dreaming.
His hair was washed and pulled into a short, low ponytail that hung just below the collar of a pale blue shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His jeans were almost tight enough to show the muscle definition in his thighs and his feet were bare. She gulped as he reached up to a top cupboard, making his shirt pucker between his shoulder blades. It was going to take time for her to dismiss the mental image of the body she’d seen beneath that shirt.
But he’d made his feelings pretty clear—the past was in the past.
And clearly, should stay there.
He pulled two bottles from the shelf. One was Smirnoff Gold, which she’d never really liked. The other was a frosted bottle with a white metal top and a label that looked like a squashed version of the Danish Flag. She recognized it—Brad sometimes drank it.
Ric got out two cut-crystal glasses and put them on the bar surface between them.
“No vodka for me,” she said before he started unscrewing the cap.
“Okay, but I don’t think you’ll like this other stuff much.” He poured himself a generous measure before stuffing the glass under the nozzle of the ice-maker.
“It’s Akavit,” she said, annoyed at his dismissal of her alcohol knowledge. Akavit was like Norse vodka on steroids. It truly was the drink of gods—assuming gods didn’t suffer hangovers like mortals did.
“You know it?”
“The label’s helpful.” She smirked.
Ric waggled the bottle. “Annalesa, this bottle’s about twenty years old.”
“I don’t mind.” She smiled sweetly up at him until his stern face cracked and he chuckled, pouring a small single into her glass. He filled it with ice and slid it across the bar to her.
“Skol.”
“Proost.” She clinked glasses with him.
“Dutch?”
“I spent six months in Zaandam. A bit of the language had to rub off on me eventually, eh?”
Ric leaned back, propping his elbow against the bar. The motion broadened his chest and made his bicep bulge out against his sleeve. She could smell him, clean and newly shaven. It was intoxicating.
“...Annalesa?”
“Hmm?” Blushing, she jerked her gaze back to his face, realizing he’d been talking. And she’d been staring.
“Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?” She blinked in surprise.
“Sell yourself short. You’ve always been great at languages. You probably had Dutch down in three days. But you have to say stuff like it ‘eventually rubbed off on you’?”
Why did he have to be so aggressive, even when giving her a compliment? She put her glass back down on the bar and gave him a brittle smile, trying to focus on the compliment part.
“What’s that American expression? Isn’t it impolite to ‘toot your own horn’?”
“Oh, we’re being polite?” Ric cocked a fair eyebrow at her and she flushed. “God help you if you get a job interview. What are you going to say? ‘I’m just okay, I mean, I’m not bad, but I’m still probably not who you really want’?”
“I’ve had three interviews and two jobs,” she interjected, holding up three, then two fingers. “Not a bad record.”
“Real jobs? Or work-study?”
“Oh hush—don’t be so beastly.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
She’d just earned her first degree and it was true, her jobs had been college placements, no “real” interviews for “real” job
s. Their parents had a loads of money and paid for tuition, but they had to make their own spending money. That had always been the deal, even back in secondary school.
Ric leaned back, palms up, in amused, mock defense. She lowered her own eyebrows at him, meeting his smirk with a scowl until he realized she was actually mad. The knowledge that his teasing had hurt her—that he could hurt her, still—finally seemed to sink in. He averted his gaze across the den, into the dark gym.
“Was I being mean?” He shrugged one shoulder. “Touché.”
“I think the word is ‘sorry’.”
“Okay—sorry.”
“Should bloody think so.” She whisked his glass away and topped both of them up with Akavit, passing his back carefully. “So... this huge weight loss, it didn’t involve ditching alcohol?”
“Have to pick your battles—and your sacrifices,” he told her. “I kept some alcohol. And real, full-fat cheese.”
“It would be inhuman to give up cheese!” Annalesa gasped, as if he’d spoken blasphemy. “Low-fat cheese tastes like salty sponge.”
“Yeah, so I kept cheese.” He chuckled at her apt metaphor. “And liquor.”
“No more micro beers?”
“Meh.” He shrugged. “Three vodka doubles costs me twenty minutes on a treadmill—eight beers is a very long, boring hour. You do the math.”
“I never was good at math, but even I can figure that out.” She smiled, taking a long sip of liquor, enjoying the slight shudder that ran through her as the astringent drink made both her tongue and brain tingle. It was strong stuff.
She had to look away as Ric absently scratched a spot low on his waist, pulling his shirt up as he did so. It was hard to not think about brushing her lips over the warm skin of his now-perfect body. She wondered how much skin-removal surgery he’d had to go through. It wouldn’t surprise her if all those tattoos were hiding scars.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” She bit her lip.
He looked at her but didn’t answer.
“I just wondered... why didn’t you tell me? About the weight loss?” Her voice was soft, small. She was afraid of his answer, to be honest, but she had to ask. “You know I would have cheered you on. You know that, don’t you?”
“I didn’t want you to.”
“Oh.” Annalesa flinched. Now she was really hurt, but she tried to cover it. “All right, then...”
“It wasn’t just you.” Ric sighed, shaking his head and looking away. His profile was stunning. No double chin, no hint of chubbiness in his face. It was hard to get used to. The change was remarkable. “I had to put everything behind me. I was a fat kid and I had a pretty hard fucking time of it. I had to... I worked really hard to focus on shedding a lot of bitterness and resentment. It was just a journey I needed to take alone.”
Annalesa’s fingers trembled around her glass, knowing she’d been part of his hard fucking time—even if it hadn’t been intentional.
“You always did hide when you were hurt,” she said softly. “I remember the time you banged your thumb with the hammer when you and Brad were building the treehouse. No one even knew you’d done it. You just said you needed to go to the shed to get something—Mum and I came out with lemonade, and I found you.”
“You remember that?” His brow arched in surprise.
“You were just sitting there in pain.” Her voice trembled at the memory. “Holding your thumb, and it was all black and blue and swollen. When Mum saw it, she wanted to take you to the emergency room.”
“I was fine.”
“Uh-huh.” She met his eyes, seeing hurt there now, although she didn’t know if he knew she could tell. “You always said that. But you weren’t fine. Ric, I’m glad you lost the weight and got healthy—hell, I could take a primer from you on that. But... I’m just wondering if a friend along on your journey might have eased the pain a little.”
Ric swigged his drink, making a face, but he didn’t look at her.
“You let me kiss it,” she reminded him softly.
“What?” His gaze skipped back to her.
“Your thumb. You let me kiss it to make it better. Remember? You said it worked.”
“You were always too good at reading me, Leesa.” There was something painful in his eyes
“Was I?” She liked that he admitted it.
“Spot on. Isn’t that what you Brits say?” he snorted. “Like your mother...”
“Oh, hey, you know my mum loves you like a son, always has.”
“Oh I know.” He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not her fault. But that’s part of the reason I had to go it alone. People always have good intentions, but they end up saying the worst things. If you’ve never been fat... skinny people just don’t get it. They think saying, ‘Wow, you look so fucking great now!’ is a compliment. But all it does is remind you of how bad you felt when you didn’t look so great. That’s not the kind of encouragement I need.”
“All right.” She felt horrible now, for having exclaimed over his transformation. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“I know. I’m not mad—and I know seeing me now is a shock for most people—if they actually recognize me in the first place.” More Akavit disappeared down his throat. “I’m not blaming you, Leese. I spent most of my life with a superpower I didn’t even know I had. I was invisible. Now, suddenly, everyone is watching everything I do. I’ve lost the ability to disappear. That isn’t easy for a man who spent most of his childhood as a ghost.”
“I saw you.” It was hard to hear him say those things, so hard it was almost too painful to respond. “I was the one who opened the shed and found you’d hurt yourself.”
“Right.” He winced. “But Leesa, sometimes when a man walks away, he doesn’t want to be followed. Sometimes... there are things he has to do... alone.”
“And this was one of those times?” She bit her lip as his barbs hit her and dug in hard.
“Yes.” He gave a short nod. “When you’re a ghost, and someone sees you—I think it’s more terrifying for you than it is for them. You wonder why they can see you, when no one else can. And... then you wonder what they want from you. Because the only time anyone looked at me or paid attention to me—they always wanted something.”
She knew exactly what he was talking about. He didn’t have to say it.
That night when they thought their parents might have been in a plane crash, when her world was falling apart around her ears—she had turned to him, had needed him. Desperately, hopelessly needed him.
She knew now what it must have looked like to him—that suddenly she had all these feelings for him in the moment when she needed something.
Only when she needed something.
But Ric had always been there for her. Always.
He’d even punched an asshole boyfriend in the face to protect her once.
And that had been her own fault for not listening to him in the first place. Ric had tried to tell her once that her friends weren’t the girls she thought they were—that those giggling, beautiful, bright-eyed school chums of hers were vicious and abusive to him every chance they got. She hadn’t believed it, hadn’t wanted to believe it, not until she’d seen and heard it for herself.
Once her “friends” showed their true colors, Annalesa had finally been done with them. But she’d never been one for big confrontations—and she had to see them in class every day for the rest of the damned year, after all. At least Ric got to escape seven months out of twelve to University in Norway. So she’d let the girls believe what they wanted to believe—that Annalesa wasn’t “cool” anymore, that they’d outgrown their friendship with her.
She’d been a coward, and had ended those friendships with a whimper—but looking at her stepbrother now, she realized that he never saw it. And clearly, that still hurt. He’d wanted to see the “bang.” And she couldn’t blame him for that. For his hurt and his anger. He had every right to all of those feelings, and more. It broke her heart just thin
king about it.
“Hey.” Ric’s voice, much softer, nudged her back into the present. “You asked, I answered. Let’s drop the heavy stuff for now, huh?”
She smiled back in gratitude, relieved at the mutual agreement to totally ignore the subject hanging between them. Weight rolled off her shoulders, leaving her light-hearted with the extra buzz of the drink. He gave her a full smile, a gorgeous one that lit up his face and made her mouth go a little dry. He always had nice teeth, but the contrast against his tan made his grin almost solar.
“Congratulations on your degree, by the way,” he said, changing the subject. “My dad said you earned the hell out of it. I’m chuffed—isn’t that what you Brits say? Seriously.”
“Thanks.” She glowed at the sincerity in his eyes. Making him proud made her feel proud. Her degree in art history was her passion, but it was kind of considered Mickey Mouse in her family—at least on her Mum’s side—of engineers and actuaries. “And you! Mum was so proud when she sent me that email. I thought I would burst, I was so happy for you.”
“Yeah.” Ric’s smile faded just a little. “Too bad we couldn’t tell each other...”
“Nuh-uh.” She shook her head, pressing her lips together firmly, pretending to lock them and throw away the key. “No. Nix that.”
“Nix what?” He blinked.
“No heavy stuff, remember?” Annalesa slice one finger across her neck. “Let’s not talk about us not-talking. So, what are you going to do with yourself now? It must feel strange not studying for anything anymore.”
“Actually, most of the last year was done off-site, so it won’t be that strange. I’m gonna do what I always wanted to do, but never thought I could.” His eyes shone, and that made Annalesa’s chest swell. “I’m gonna head up Ryker Arms in a few years.”
“You’ll be great.” She couldn’t help blinking at his announcement in surprise. Not because she doubted his ability—but because he always had. He’d been convinced, all along, that running Ryker would be too much for him. “You’ve got the metallurgy, the mechanical engineering—”
“And the dissertation on diffusing recoil mechanics,” he reminded her with a wide grin. “Even Dad was impressed. He figures it’ll help us get the edge on Beretta in Europe.”