This did little to encourage sibling harmony between the two, and somehow Cody, as the eldest, had felt compelled to allow for Ivan’s rebelliousness. Until that day. What Ivan had done was so sick, so twisted, there would be no going back from it.
“I killed them,” he said that fateful day when Cody had been taking Megan to the lake, intent on stealing a first kiss from her. Cody would not have believed him had his parents not been lying there, in a crimson pool. Dead.
Dead at his brother’s feet.
“I told you I would.” Ivan had looked at him with hard blue eyes, a monster with Cody’s own face.
And deep down, Cody feared that a monster lived inside him, too.
One that made him steal that kiss from Megan. One that imagined taking her virginity, the virginity of the only girl he really cared for. The monster that even then, after seeing with his own two eyes what Ivan had done, urged him to hide his brother, to protect him.
Maybe that monster would have surfaced if Megan hadn’t been there, her face pale and frightened, her eyes round as moons. The horror and pain he felt that day, that she be witness to what had become of the Nordstroms, made him want to tear off his face, the face of a murderer, and forget he’d ever had the last name Nordstrom.
But his parents’ sightless eyes, staring from the ground, seemed to yell their disappointment. And he knew that he’d spend the rest of his life trying to make amends.
“It was my fault,” he told her, when Ivan dropped the weapon and ran. “It’s all my fault, Meg.” And he’d hugged her for as long as he could, until the first officers on scene pried her away.
Those were the last words he ever said to her before his new family claimed him. He saw her little face in the windowpane watching him being taken away. He didn’t know if she was crying, he could hardly raise his face to see his neighbors, knowing they all thought: One of those boys did it.
His brother had, yeah, but Cody could have prevented it.
Your fault, Cody.
He fisted his hands at his sides and reminded himself he was a cop now, a detective. He put bad guys in jail. He shouldn’t be ashamed anymore.
“Hey?” Only an arm’s length away from him now, she blinked at him, her gaze wide, and he didn’t know what to do except stare.
Up close, her eyes were maybe a little greener than he remembered. A little smarter. Her lips a bit fuller. Her breasts a hell of a lot more—you’re staring at them, asshole!
He brought himself up short and shook his head. “Hey.”
She stared at him, her eyes teary as though she had expected more contact from him through the years, a better hello right now, and still he stood there and willed himself to grow cold against this woman. She wasn’t the girl he’d lusted after as a teenage boy.
He imagined ice growing in his veins and that ice moving up to his heart. Nothing got to him, ever. He didn’t feel, not after his parents had been brutally murdered. No feeling. Ice man. Ice cold on the inside. But that cracked when she beamed at him, and before he knew what the hell happened, she was hugging him like crazy and just like that it felt like she was squeezing his heart. “Welcome home, Cody.”
Right then and there, she had him.
She.
Had.
Him.
But he’d be dead before he ever let her know.
ONE
Six years later
He was home early.
Megan Banks stole a peek out the window as the motor of his SUV shut off, and her breath seized in her throat when she caught a glimpse of him. There he was: the man of her dreams. Her every dream. Her every want.
Her eyes greedily took in his form as he stepped out of his car, the tailored cut of his suit molding to his broad shoulders, his muscles bulging under the fabric of his pants as he strolled over to the house. Cody.
Sensation spread down her thighs as she realized Cody would be here, in his room, any minute. And he’d see that she was here, too. Almost naked. Oh, God.
“Hellooo? Meg? Meg—you still there?”
The voice from her cell phone snapped her back to attention, and her heart began to thunder in her ears. “Yes! Yes, I’m still here. He’s just pulled into his driveway. He’ll walk in any minute.”
“Okay, don’t freak out and stick to the plan,” her friend, Paige Rivers, voice of reason, said. “Just relax, look gorgeous, and whatever happens: Stick to the plan.”
Oh my God, I’m really going through with this …
Megan’s stomach twisted painfully. Her plan had been so simple, initially.
When she’d surveyed it in bed, alone, in the cloak of obscurity: simple.
When she’d driven on her way to his place: simple.
But it seemed so complicated and impossible now.
Her knuckles knotted painfully as she gripped her cell phone. “Remind me why I’m wearing only my bra and panties under my coat please,” she hissed urgently. “Remind me why I’m doing this now, before he walks in through that door.” And I make a complete and total fool of myself.
“You’re seducing him,” Paige said sternly, “because he won’t.”
“But if only I gave him a little more time—” Meg began.
“Time for what, Meg? You’ve been friends since you were kids and although you can’t seem to date each other, neither of you dates anyone else.”
“Still, that doesn’t mean the plan is sound enough to—”
“Oh, it’s sound all
