Alec had been actively working to avoid his memories of his brother altogether.
I think we all retreated to our preferred refuges and now it’s time to step out of them.
Settling back in his seat, he absorbed each image, remembering his brother’s infectious grins, his athletic grace, the big-brother glee on his face when he threw both his siblings in the pool and then followed after them. Damn it, Alec thought, rage slicing through him like the blade of a knife. Simon shouldn’t be dead. Simon shouldn’t be fucking dead.
“Are you all right?” Lilly whispered, her hand tightening on his.
He glanced her way, light from the movie playing over her face and clearly showing her concerned expression.
Then a shout redirected his focus to the screen and it was Simon again, staring into the camera that last Christmas, just months before the fatal car crash. Simon looking as healthy and alive as he’d ever been.
Ready for Alec to remember him in just that way.
Gone, but not out of reach. Never out of reach, if Alec stopped filling his life with so much work and lists and numbers that they became a block that didn’t let his brother in.
His anger receded, the pain inside him morphing into something both bitter and sweet. Simon would always be available as a memory to smile about, an older-sibling voice in his head, right where Alec needed him, right there whenever he needed him.
Alec shouldn’t have shut Simon out for so long.
A small hand squeezed his once again. “Alec?”
“I’m okay, sugar.” Maybe on the way to being more okay than I’ve been in a long, long time.
The last minutes of the digital film returned the focus solely to Miranda and Vic. There they were on the top of the Eiffel Tower, riding tandem on a scooter in Italy, atop the deck of their recently completed house on the beach at sunset. As the song “Say You Won’t Let Go” played, they toasted each other with glasses of wine, turned to smile at the camera, then turned back to face the horizon as the orange orb in the distance slipped into the sea.
The crowd went wild.
Over their appreciative applause and calls of congratulations, he heard Lilly’s voice. “Bad things shouldn’t happen to those people.”
He gave her a sharp look. There were tears in her eyes. “Sugar?”
“Don’t mind me,” she said, then jumping from her seat, hurried up the aisle toward the exit.
Alec couldn’t follow immediately. As the lights came up in the theater, relatives and friends surrounded the Thatcher family to praise and congratulate. But he extracted himself as quickly as possible and went off in search of her.
Luck was on his side, because he found Lilly on one of the twisted paths leading back to the main part of the resort. She stood alone, her arms wrapped around her waist.
The self-comforting pose made him hurry toward her, tenderness and concern sluicing through his veins
Coming up behind her, he kept his voice low. “Lost?” he asked, trying not to startle her.
She whirled.
Oh, hell. Tears were streaming down her face. “Sweet girl,” he said, reaching for her even as she stepped back. “Let’s go to my room. We’ll order some…tea or something and you can tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, swiping at her cheeks. “And you should be with your parents right now. That was a beautiful movie.”
“Yeah.” He cupped her face, drying the leftover dampness with his thumbs. “But I don’t need to be with them.”
“You don’t need to be with me either. You probably shouldn’t be.”
“What?”
“Your brother. I…it had to be hard to see him on the screen. He seemed so…vibrant.”
“Yeah.” Alec’s hands tightened on her, then he forced himself to relax. “But it’s okay.”
“Are you okay? Because I got to thinking.”
He frowned. “Thinking what?”
“You said you hadn’t been with a woman in two years.”
“Yes…”
“And…maybe it’s because he can’t be with anybody.”
Shocked, Alec stared down at her.
“And then I came along. Before me you’ve been…you’ve been maybe honoring his memory or something like that.”
Something seriously fucked-up like that. Jesus. Jesus. He’d never taken the time to examine what had been behind his unwillingness to take someone to his bed during the last couple of years.
“That fucker,” Alec said now, half in admiration, half in frustration and he didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or bend the nearest lamp post in half with his bare hands. “That fuckity fucking fucker. He’d just love this, wouldn’t he?”
Lilly blinked up at him. “W-what?”
He grabbed her by the wrist and began towing her along the path.
“Who are you talking about?” she asked, scurrying to keep up with him.
“Simon’s got to be guffawing his ass off in the afterlife,” Alec said grimly. “But that’s gonna stop. It’s gonna stop right now.”
“What’s going to stop?”
“The fact that he’s been cockblocking his little brother from beyond the grave.”
Chapter 10
Lilly landed on the inside of Alec’s hotel room door, breathless and bewildered. Once there, he let go of her hand and crossed to the minibar, where he pulled out a beer and nearly downed it in one swallow.
Then he sent her an apologetic look. “Sorry, sugar. Can I get you something? Wine? We can call room service for that tea I mentioned.”
She shook her head. “I should leave.”
“Oh, no,” Alec said, setting the beer aside. “You definitely can’t go. We’ve got something to do first.”
Ignoring that, she smoothed her palms over her thighs. “I just wanted to make sure you got to your room okay. You seem…agitated.”
“Yeah.” He laughed, his expression turning crafty as his gaze ran over her. Beneath her clothes, heat gathered at the small of her back and between her breasts.
“Why don’t you come over here and let me agitate you a little?”
Uh-oh. Without thinking, she glanced in the direction of the dark alcove where a meager light over the padded headboard illuminated the
