Celina (Connelly Cousins #1) (16 page)

“What the fuck?” Kyle protested, grabbing for it.  In his semi-drunk, severely hung-over state, he missed by a mile.

Jamie wanted answers. He hadn’t heard from Lina since his impulsive and less-than-romantic proposal a week earlier. He’d sent dozens of texts and left just as many voicemails, and she hadn’t responded to a single one. Once again, his desperation had brought him to his older brother, who, surprisingly, seemed to be in a worse mental state than he was.

He knew better than to try to get more information out of his brother when he was like this.  If Kyle did not want to share, he wouldn’t, and no amount of effort would change his mind until he was damn good and ready. 

But Jamie was a patient man, to a point.  Simply knowing that Lina was not here and that Kyle hadn’t added her to his impressive list of conquests eased his mind enough to allow him to concentrate on his brother, for a little while anyway.

Kyle got up unsteadily, grasping the end of the sofa for support, then stumbled toward the bathroom.  He didn’t bother closing the door.  Jamie was treated to the sound of an exceptionally long piss followed by a thorough purging of the liquid contents still sloshing through Kyle’s stomach.  Jamie winced.  This was bad, even for Kyle.

When it was quiet for a few consecutive minutes, and Jamie was fairly certain he wouldn’t have to administer CPR in the immediate future, he walked into the kitchen and started making some coffee.  Really strong coffee.  He measured out the appropriate amount, then doubled it and added one more scoop.  In the bathroom, the shower kicked on and billowing clouds of steam soon rolled through the open doorway. 

He couldn’t help but wonder exactly what Kyle was trying to burn away.

Jamie heaved a heavy sigh.  His relationship with Lina seemed to take an even sharper downward turn after that night at the restaurant. What the hell had he been thinking when he asked Kyle for help?  Kyle had been dead set against it, but he had persisted until he made a complete pest of himself.  Kyle agreed just to shut him up, to get him to leave him in peace for a while.  But wasn’t that the way it had always been?

Ever since they were kids, Jamie had looked up to his big brother. Kyle had been older, stronger, smarter. The one who always knew what to do and how to get it done. That hadn’t changed. For some reason, everything came so easy to Kyle. School. Cars. Motorcycles. Girls.

At least that’s the way it seemed to Jamie. Now, of course, he knew better. Kyle worked his ass off; he just made it
look
easy. Jamie hadn’t really understood the difference until one fateful New Year’s Eve, when a drunk driver hit their parents’ car head-on. One day they were in Detroit, enjoying winter break and planning an ice-fishing trip to Lake St. Clair. The next, they were sitting in some lawyer’s office and being told their parents were dead and they were going to live with an aunt they’d never met.

It had changed both of them, but mostly Kyle. He didn’t smile much after that. His grades dropped and he spent most of his free time at the local garage. Sometimes, when Aunt Edna had a glass of brandy, she voiced her disapproval, calling the kids Kyle hung out with “hooligans” and “riff-raff”.

Maybe that was true, but there was little she could do about Kyle at that point. She’d turned her attentions to Jamie instead, encouraging him to “make better choices”.  Surprisingly enough, when Jamie complained to Kyle about her harping, Kyle had taken her side.

Despite their differences, they got along well enough.  They were not overly close, but they had a respect for each other’s choice of lifestyles, and Kyle always had his back. For some reason, it didn’t seem to work the other way. 

Kyle never seemed to need his help for anything.

W
hen Kyle emerged a full thirty minutes later with a towel wrapped around his waist, he felt marginally human. Jamie, unfortunately, had decided to wait him out. Kyle accepted both the cup of the freshly-brewed coffee and the Tylenols with a grunt and tossed them back.

“Look, I’m sorry, it’s just...” Jamie began, dropping into one of the two chairs that flanked the mismatched garage-sale table. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed deeply. “It’s Celina. I just can’t think straight when it comes to her, Kyle.”

Yeah, know the feeling bro.

“My brain just goes all batshit, you know?”

Yep. Been there. Got the T-shirt.

“And when Tammy told me she saw you and Celina coming here, I just thought...”

Yeah, you thought right.
Tammy was one of Kyle’s neighbors; she worked at the same publishing company as Jamie, and owned a house a few doors down. Nice girl, but too nosy in Kyle’s opinion.

“That was a week ago, man.” God, had it only been a week? It felt like an entire lifetime had passed since he’d felt Lina’s soft skin against his own, captured her sweet moans with his mouth. His heart ached and his shaft responded forcefully. Good thing he was already sitting down and Jamie was on the other side of the table. “Why are you here now?”

“Because no one has seen or heard from her since.”

That
brought him back online.

“
What?!?
” Horrible images flooded Kyle’s mind, making his blood run cold. He’d assumed she’d just gone home to lick her wounds. Wounds he’d inflicted. But if she wasn’t there... where could she possibly be?

She was too goddamned trusting. Anyone could have taken advantage of her. And the way she looked when she left... the memory of those eyes, the way her lip trembled as she tried hard not to cry in front of him, would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Lina wore her heart on her sleeve. He knew at least a dozen guys who would’ve jumped on that in a heartbeat. Not because they cared, but because lions always went after the weakest lamb. All they would have had to do was offer a shoulder to cry on or a comforting embrace and she would have seen only good intentions. Good intentions, his ass. One look at her and their dicks would take over, obliterating everything else.

Rage filled him, joining the worry. He’d kill anyone who dared attempt to take advantage of her like that.

Like he had.

More possibilities flooded his recovering brain, sobering him up quicker than the shower or the coffee. What if she’d gone and done something stupid? What if she was hurt? His body rebelled against the thought and he had to fight the overwhelming urge to retch again.

“Just what I said,” Jamie said, startled by the vehemence of his reaction. “It’s like she just disappeared.”

“And you waited this long to come to me?” Kyle yelled, grabbing a pair of jeans off a piece of furniture that might at one time have been a chair. Or maybe an end table. It was hard to tell, since he’d taken out some of his inner torment on inanimate objects over the past week.

He made the mistake of holding the fabric briefly up to his nose. The scent that hit him had him reeling. They smelled like
her
. Cocoa butter and oranges and sweet feminine musk. With a moan he remembered how she had snuggled that tight little ass into his crotch and her wetness had seeped right into the denim...

“I’ve been calling you for days, Kyle,” Jamie said, his eyes darting accusingly over to where the ancient landline unit had been forcibly ripped from the wall.

Hmmm. Forgot about that.

Jamie picked up Kyle’s cell and waved it in front of him accusingly.

Oh yeah, probably should have turned that on
. But he’d been afraid Lina would try to call him. He didn’t want to hear her voice, it would just rip him to shreds. And he could never, ever bring himself to say those things to her again. It would kill him.

Kyle had to remind himself once again why pushing her away had been the right thing to do. It was getting harder to remember, though. What he
could
remember vividly was her scent and her taste – bursting with freshness, yet dark and intoxicating like fine wine; and the feel of her – so soft and yielding against his hardened flesh.

“Been knocking on your door, too, but apparently you’ve been too passed out to notice.”

Yeah, that was the general idea.
If he wasn’t conscious he couldn’t remember any of those things. Or those huge, flashing green eyes. The angelic beauty of her face. The multi-hued golden curls that cascaded well past her shoulders like a sublime waterfall.
Fuck.

Lina’s scent on his jeans brought him back to the world of the living. Deciding to stick with that pair, he pulled them on and reached for his leather jacket. To hell with a shirt. Who had time for that? Lina was missing, and he was going to find her.  And if even one hair on her perfect little head was harmed, he was going to rain hell down on whoever dared to hurt her.

“Have you tried the lake?” he asked over his shoulder.

“The lake?” Jamie looked at him blankly. How could his brother claim to be in love with Lina and not know about the lake? Jamie had been dating Lina for months and she’d never told him about it? About how she’d practically grown up there? How much she loved it? Kyle had known her for little more than a week and she’d taken him there that night of the last full moon...

Kyle glared hard at his brother. “What about her brother, have you contacted him?”

Jamie stiffened. “I would have, if I knew she had one.”

Kyle grunted. Jamie not knowing about Johnny was probably a good thing, because that meant Johnny didn’t know about Jamie, either. “Have you been down to the bookstore? Maybe she’s crashing with Amy.”

“Who’s Amy?”

“Christ, Jamie, do you know anything about her at all?”

Jamie clenched his jaw and glared right back. “How do
you
know so much, Kyle?”

Because I listened, asshole.
Maybe Jamie wasn’t the best choice for Lina after all. What did he do, talk about himself every time they’d gone out? Or – Kyle’s heart did that little stutter-thing again - maybe she just hadn’t wanted to share anything too personal with Jamie.

Because she didn’t love Jamie.
It didn’t matter that Jamie had a respectable job and a Master’s degree, or that he fit the model of the stereotypical “perfect husband/father” candidate to a T. That’s what Lina had been trying to tell him.

And he, like an idiot, hadn’t listened to her.

Instead of answering, Kyle focused on finding his boots. Jamie didn’t seem to expect an answer anyway.

“Big Mo said he thought he might have seen her at
Hog Heaven
a few nights ago, but he couldn’t be certain,” Jamie informed him.

Oh, hell no.
Mo was a decent enough guy, but the infamous biker bar outside of town was no place for a girl like Lina.

He narrowed his eyes.  “What were you doing talking to Big Mo?”

“I was looking for you. Thought maybe you’d be there, and when you weren’t, I asked. Not like you to take vacay, bro.” Jamie looked intently at Kyle. “For the record, I never mentioned Lina,
he
did. Implied maybe you were keeping time with her. Said she was enough reason for any man to disappear for a few days. How does he even know her? And why would he think that, Kyle?”

How did Mo know about Lina? Oh yeah, the bike.

A fresh wave of pain sliced through his chest, remembering her late night visits. She’d seemed to think he was some kind of freaking mechanical genius because he was custom-fitting the small model for her. She’d told him he’d made one of her secret fantasies come true.

Hell, just thinking of how she straddled that damn machine, the look on her face when she smiled at him, made him hard all over again. The ache in his groin was fierce, but it was nothing compared to the ache in his chest currently making it hard to draw a full breath.

Yeah, he was a fucking idiot.

“
Hog Heaven
is a biker bar, Jamie. Not exactly a hangout for virgin goddesses, bro.”

“Oh, so now you’re a believer? What changed your mind, Kyle?”

Kyle pulled tightly on the cords of his steel-toed shit-kickers, refusing to meet his brother’s glare. Soon the tips of Jamie’s expensive sneakers entered into his line of sight. He could feel Jamie’s anger; it radiated off of him in waves.

“Aren’t you the one who’s been telling me all along that she couldn’t possibly be that innocent?” Jamie’s voice grew softer. “You didn’t sleep with her, Kyle, but did you have your mouth on her? Did you have your hands on her? Inside her? Is that how you know, big brother?”

Kyle rose slowly and faced Jamie. They were nearly the same height – Jamie was only an inch or so taller – but Kyle had at least fifty pounds of hard muscle on him. Kyle met his brother’s clear hazel eyes, now filled with accusation. He could not deny it. He saw Jamie’s fist coming up, but did nothing to stop the solid hit to his jaw. He deserved it.

“Damn you! You were supposed to be helping me, Kyle, not helping yourself!”

“Maybe you don’t deserve her, Jamie.”

“And you do?”

Pain seared through him again, a lightning bolt of sharp regret. “No. Let’s go. You drive.”

Without bothering to wipe away the blood trickling from his split lip, Kyle headed for the door. Jamie was right behind him.

––––––––

“W
hat the hell?” Jamie muttered as Kyle directed him to an open parking spot in front of Amy’s Book Shoppe.

“We’ll check here first,” Kyle told him. “Most likely Lina’s holing up here for a while.”

“At a book store?” Jamie asked, confused.

Kyle didn’t answer.  Jamie followed silently as he made his way into the shop and sought out the shapely brunette unpacking the latest shipment of new arrivals. Her pretty hazel eyes lit up at the sight of him.

“Kyle! How nice to see you! Where’s Lina?” Amy looked past Kyle as though expecting to see her friend, her eyes stopping momentarily on Jamie, giving him an appraising glance. One elegant, carefully shaped brow drew up in silent question, probably wondering who he was.

There was little chance she’d peg them as brothers based on appearance.  Kyle’s too-long black locks were nothing like Jamie’s neatly-trimmed sandy hair. Kyle’s face was sculpted with the same hard angles and hollows of their father’s Scottish ancestors, while Jamie favored their mother with classic European features. In black leather and faded denim, Kyle was the quintessential bad boy, while Jamie was the boy next door.