Loving the Right Brother

by Marie Ferrarella

“Mine, I am hoping,” Yuri fairly shouted the words to her. Her grandfather began to rise from the table.

  She’d actually been thinking of going to her mother’s house. But that, she realized, would be insulting the old man, and the last thing she wanted was to hurt his feelings.

  Maybe tomorrow night, she promised herself.

  “Yes, but you don’t have to leave on my account, Grandpa,” she shouted back. “I know the way there,” she assured him.

  “Nights have a way of turning you around,” Shayne chimed in, raising his voice as well.

  Why was everyone treating her as if she’d just gotten off the plane in Hades for the first time? “I know,” she acknowledged. “I lived here for eighteen years. I’m not exactly a novice.”

  “No, just out of practice,” Brody told her, ingratiating himself to Yuri for taking his side in this. “Don’t worry, Yuri. I can take her home. It’s on my way anyway.”

  Yuri lowered himself back into his chair. He beamed his thanks—and approval. “Thank you, I am being grateful.”

  Irena did what she could to suppress the grin that came to her lips. She’d forgotten how endearing it was to listen to her grandfather employ his own version of the English language.

  She’d missed that, too, she realized.

  “Glad to do it,” Brody assured the older man. He removed Irena’s parka from the back of her chair and helped her on with it. She looked at him in mild surprise. “Got everything?”

  “If she leaves something behind, I’ll hold it for her,” Ike volunteered before Irena could answer. “Besides, nobody’s going to take anything.” And then he winked. “Unless, of course, it’s a juicy diary. Then I get dibs on that.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Irena tossed over her shoulder as she waited for Brody to put his fur-lined jacket on. “No ‘juicy diary.’ I never put anything like that in writing.”

  “Pity.” Ike laughed. Marta jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, and he pretended to wince.

  “Such a good boy,” Irena heard Ursula tell the others as Brody escorted her toward the front entrance. “Nothing at all like his brother.”

  Irena cringed inwardly. She slanted a glance at Brody to see if he’d heard. One look at his face told her that he had.

  She turned toward him when they reached the door. Sometimes Ursula talked before her brain was adequately engaged. “I’m really sorry you had to hear that.”

  “Why?” he asked, curious to hear her reasons. “It’s true. I am nothing like Ryan. And Ryan knew it, too. He said as much a couple of times. I’m not sure if he thought it was an insult or not.” Brody pulled open the door and waited for her to walk through. “He was always trying to get me to be more like him, to kick back and ‘pick the fruits of life.’ His words, not mine,” he said in emphasis.

  She recognized them. Ryan had said the same to her when she’d chastised him for not doing anything with his life. And for lying to her when he’d promised to enroll at her college. He’d told her that he was busy picking the fruits of life and that she should try it sometime.

  It was part of the last conversation she ever had with him.

  The wind seemed to go right through her the moment she walked out of the saloon. Irena picked up her hood, slipping it on her head. She tightened the ties beneath her chin.

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked, curious. “According to Ryan, there was certainly enough money for both of you to ‘kick back and relax.’”

  He couldn’t picture himself doing that. Or, more specifically, not doing anyway.

  “It wasn’t me,” he answered.

  Brody led her over to his vehicle. Like everyone else in the area, he didn’t keep his car locked any more than he locked his front door. Trust was the key factor in Hades.

  He opened the car door for Irena. “Doing nothing makes me restless,” he explained. “Everywhere I look, I see things that need doing.” He rounded the back of the vehicle and got in behind the steering wheel, closing his door before he continued. He didn’t want to have to compete with the wind. “People who need caring for.”

  Securing her seat belt, she shifted her body to look at Brody. He’s always been like this, she recalled. Why hadn’t she ever noticed how noble he was?

  “If you feel like that, why didn’t you become a doctor?”

  Brody laughed shortly as he put the key into the ignition. It took two tries to start the vehicle. It always became temperamental whenever the weather became colder.

  “I’m not patient enough or skilled enough to be a doctor, Irena. I am good at drumming up people to come help, pounding nails into wood, simple things like that.”

  The full moon provided the only illumination besides the vehicle’s headlights. Night made the surrounding area appear ever so bleak. Much as Irena hated to admit it, she realized that she would have been hard-pressed to find her way to her grandfather’s house. Getting turned around out here at night, especially in the winter, happened far more often than people thought.

  “That doesn’t sound all that simple to me,” she told him loyally. “You give quite a lot of yourself.”

  Brody shrugged off the comment. Unlike his brother, he’d always been uncomfortable with attention or compliments. He liked doing things behind the scenes, without any fanfare. His satisfaction came from accomplishing what he set out to do, whether it was to put food on someone’s table, provide a sick mother with medical attention or help a child realize their full potential. He was, he supposed, a matchmaker of sorts, matching people with other people who could help them. That was his gift, his talent, along with his drive. That was enough.

  “We all do what we can,” he said quietly.

  Which meant, in Brody’s case, that he went the extra mile—or ten. Irena thought of the people she worked with. All highly educated, all at the top of their class. A great many of them operating without a heart. Compared to Brody, they were a school of barracudas.

  “Not all of us,” she told him with feeling.

  He glanced in her direction for a moment, before looking back on the road. Was she talking about herself, or someone else? Ten years separated their last meeting from now. What had she been doing those years? Had there been someone special? Was there still?

  “Something you want to talk about?” he asked her casually.

  She’d been so busy living her life, focusing on her career, she hadn’t stopped to evaluate it, to see if it was worth it. She’d just assumed that it was; but now, she wasn’t as certain as she once had been.

  “Not really.”

  She looked straight ahead. Unlike her mother’s house, her grandfather’s was just on the outskirts of town, positioned halfway between the town’s buildings and the vast wilderness just beyond.

  It was hard seeing anything beyond the headlights, even with the moonlight shining down.

  This looked like the heart of midnight. “I’d forgotten how dark it is out here.”

  “It is that,” he agreed. “It’s kind of soothing after all that noise in the saloon.”

  Soothing. That wasn’t the way she saw it. The word that came to mind for her was “lonely” or maybe just “empty,” but she made no further comment. Instead, she leaned forward in her seat and looked up at the stars that were out in full force tonight.

  “They seem brighter up here,” she commented, then added, “the stars,” in case he didn’t know what she was referring to.

  “That’s because they are.” He turned and pulled up before the last house on the way out of Hades. “We’re here,” he announced.

  “So we are. Thank you for bringing me home.” She hadn’t realized that her grandfather’s house was up ahead until they were right in front of it.

  “My pleasure.” She didn’t need to thank him. They were friends. Friends did things for one another. Even if one friend was in love with the other.

  Irena began to open the door, then stopped. “And you’ll be here tomorrow at eight?”

  Brody nodded, watchi
ng the way the moonlight seemed to frame her where she sat, as if trying to shield her from the darkness.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Something distant and warm stirred within her. She smiled fondly at him. “And I could always take what you said to the bank.”

  The interior of his car seemed to shrink, shrinking to the point where a tiny bit of space between her and him remained. He could hear her breathing, could almost taste her breath on his lips and his senses filled with the scent of her fragrance.

  Whether that scent came from a bottle with a designer label on it or was just the intoxicating scent of her skin, he didn’t know. He did know that if Irena didn’t leave his car in the next couple of seconds, he would lose his battle with temptation. Badly.

  Since she didn’t make a move, he was forced to. Brody opened the door on his side and got out, then came around the back of the vehicle to her side. Opening her door, he stepped back to allow her plenty of space to get out.

  She still managed to brush against him when she emerged.

  Their eyes met as she began to tender an apology for bumping against him.

  The words froze on her lips.

  Irena wasn’t sure if it was because Brody reminded her of Ryan and she wanted to connect to the past one last time.

  Or because she just needed to make contact with someone, even for a moment.

  She didn’t know, didn’t bother to try to reason it out for herself, or even make some half-hearted attempt to talk herself out of it. Instead, she stepped forward, reached up to capture Brody’s face in her hands and, her heart pounding, her breath catching in her throat, Irena kissed him.

  Chapter Six

  There were times, especially when he was younger, when Brody would let his mind drift, unrestrained, uninhibited.

  Specifically, he would fantasize what it would be like to kiss Irena. What it would be like to feel her lips against his and get lost in her scent. Lying in bed, wrapped in the soothing darkness of an Alaskan night, he’d wondered what it would be like to make love with her.

  He’d sworn silently, more than once, to any deity who might be eavesdropping on his thoughts, that if he ever had the incredible good fortune to find out, he would never trample her feelings, never take her for granted.

  The way that Ryan did.

  This was far better than he’d imagined.

  That she would initiate the kiss captured him completely by surprise, sending adrenaline through his hard, lean body.

  Brody didn’t attempt to fool himself. He knew exactly why this was happening. It was displacement on Irena’s part, nothing more. She wasn’t kissing him. She was kissing the memory of his brother, and that was all right with him. He would take this kiss any way it was delivered. And besides, he understood the need for comfort. In an odd way, he was doing a good deed.

  Closing his arms around her, Brody deepened the kiss she had begun, allowing oh, so briefly his own feelings to emerge just a little. Just enough so that she wouldn’t suddenly become embarrassed at what she’d started.

  Damn but it was hard not to lose himself in her. Yuri and Ursula were still at the Salty Dog Saloon and probably would remain so for the next hour or more. They would be alone in the house.

  Alone together.

  And he could…he could…

  No, he couldn’t, a voice in his head declared firmly. He couldn’t, and he knew it, because then he would be taking advantage of Irena’s grief, of her vulnerability. And in the process, he would lose her as a friend, something he didn’t want to have happen at any cost.

  Even if she was only going to be in his life a few more precious days, he couldn’t take a chance on sacrificing them, on sacrificing the relationship they had, to satisfy the urgency he felt drumming throughout his body.

  So, with effort, struggling more with himself than he ever had before, Brody placed his hands on Irena’s shoulders and very gently, but firmly, created a space between them. Then he drew his mouth away from hers, even though everything within him protested loudly.

  As he separated himself from Irena, Brody saw the slightly dazed, confused look on her face, the dewy-softness of her eyes as well as the flush of her cheeks. Her expression very nearly made him give in to the demands pounding through his soul. Only the consequences prevented him from following through on his desires.

  “It’s cold out here,” he told her softly, forcing a smile to his lips. “You’d better go inside.”

  Cold? Was it cold? All she felt was this wild heat flaring all through her. She could have sworn she was close to burning up. Was that the result of misplaced attraction? Or was it embarrassment that caused her cheeks to feel so hot?

  This wasn’t like her, throwing herself at a man. She wasn’t the type to go from man to man on a whim, or because she had some “needs” that demanded satisfying.

  You’ve got needs tonight, a soft, taunting voice in her head insisted.

  She did, and those needs seemed to be eating her alive.

  Irena blew out a breath. Thank God Brody was so honorable. Another man would have probably dragged her inside and ravaged her after such an open invitation.

  “You’re right. I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, nodding.

  “Right. Count on it.” The words came automatically as he continued to struggle for control. “Now go inside,” he instructed.

  Go inside before I forget every decent thing I ever knew and make love with you until you forget you ever cared about Ryan.

  He knew he shouldn’t be thinking this way, given that his brother had just died, but that didn’t make what he was thinking any less true.

  Brody stood back, waiting until the only woman he’d ever loved closed the door behind her. For a second, he grappled with a renewed desire to follow her inside. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned on the heel of his boot and walked back to his vehicle, wondering if he was too old to receive a merit badge.

  Did the Boy Scouts give one for gallantry and abstinence?

  Eight o’clock the next morning found Brody back in front of Yuri’s door, feeling not unlike thirty miles of bad road. Behind him, the sun was just struggling to rise. They still had almost twelve hours of daylight, but that was changing rapidly with each passing day.

  He’d gotten very little sleep. Once in bed, he discovered that he was far too wired to fall asleep for more than a few minutes at a time. And whenever he did fall asleep, he wound up dreaming about those few wonderful moments in front of her grandfather’s door. Not that reliving the kiss over and over again was a bad thing but it certainly wasn’t conducive to restful sleeping.

  Or any sort of ultimate satisfaction.

  So here he was, with less than an hour and a half of sleep behind him, facing what promised to be a very full day of physical labor. He just hoped he wouldn’t suddenly fall asleep while handling a power saw.

  But he had to get to Yuri’s place. He had a promise to keep.

  Irena answered the door on the first knock. When she opened it, she looked incredibly refreshed.

  “Sleep well?” he heard himself asking. Hadn’t last night kept her awake at all? Had kissing him meant nothing to her?

  Don’t go there. You’ll drive yourself crazy.

  Irena smiled at him almost shyly. The truth was, she hadn’t slept all that well. A mixture of guilt and adrenaline had conspired against her. But years as a law student and then a lawyer had taught her two things: how to get by on very little sleep and how to look good doing it. She was very resourceful when it came to applying makeup.

  “Like a baby.” She held the door open rather than grabbing her parka and stepping outside. “Would you like to come in for some coffee?”

  “Coffee?” he repeated as if he’d never heard the word before.

  Irena’s mouth curved in amusement. There was something undeniably adorable about him this morning. It made her want to mother him and passionately hug him at the same time.

  Her lack of sleep was making
her a little crazy, she supposed.

  “Yes, coffee. You know, that black, inky stuff that supposedly kick-starts a lot of us into our day? I just made a fresh pot, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.” She opened the door wider in an unspoken invitation.

  He remained where he was, as if his powers of resistance wouldn’t work once he crossed the threshold. “What about Yuri and Ursula? Won’t they take care of your ‘surplus’?”

  Yuri and Ursula were not your traditional grandparent types. They liked to stay up till all hours and, from what she’d gathered when they came to visit her right after their wedding, their appetites were all intact. Ursula had said that the wedding was Yuri’s idea. She would have been perfectly happy to have lived with him without the benefit of clergy.

  Irena glanced over her shoulder toward the staircase. “They came in at about two-thirty. I doubt very much that they’ll be up anytime soon. The mail pouch doesn’t come in today, so Ursula doesn’t have a pressing reason to get to the post office before noon. By the time they get to the coffee, it’ll be almost solid.”

  He knew it would be best to go. He shouldn’t be alone with her.

  “Thanks, but I’ve already had coffee.” Which was true. He’d had several cups in an effort to wake up his system. “And,” he said as he glanced at his watch, “I’m on a schedule.”

  “Right, the reservation,” she said. Leaning into the house, she grabbed her jacket from the hook just inside the door. “I remember.”

  Irena flashed a smile at him that he hadn’t really seen up until now. Disarming, it went straight to his gut, settling in and taking him prisoner. He would have had a hard time getting through the next few days.

  Leading the way to his vehicle, Brody opened the door for her, then closed it once she sat down.

  Irena waited until he came around to her side before she said, “I really do appreciate this, Brody, you going with me to the funeral parlor.”

  He dismissed her thanks. He’d already told her it was unnecessary. “Don’t mention it.”

  “And I meant what I said,” she went on once he started up his car. “I want to help out at the reservation.”