It seemed an eternity before the brothers dropped her unceremoniously off at the apartment without so much as a terse goodnight and as she finally climbed into bed, each sore muscle reminding her of the scorching sex she and Dillon had had mere hours ago, she shuddered under the blunt force trauma of a bleeding heart. She felt broken — shattered into a million pieces and left to die — and there was nothing left but to weep into her pillow like the sorry loser that she was. Dillon didn’t want her and she didn’t know where she stood with Vince or Nolan. Good gravy, they could barely look at her but it hadn’t mattered; she’d seen disgust in their eyes. Would they ask her to pack her things? Clearly, she was in breach of contract — she quaked at the ramifications — but why’d they bring her back to the apartment if they were planning to kick her to the curb? But did she want to remain their girl? How could she? Regardless of how Dillon felt, she knew she’d given her heart to him and she didn’t know how to function as if nothing had happened. She closed her eyes and moisture seeped from the corners to wet her pillow as she hugged it tight, breaking inside from the pain and heartache.
#
“Stop pacing you’re giving me a headache,” Nolan said to Vince as Vince wore a hole in the Audubon carpet. He lounged against the overstuffed chair, drumming his fingers lightly against the fine fabric. The situation with Dillon had gotten out of control but how did one stop a runaway train? Their sins were legion — the Buchanans excelled in debauchery not good deeds — but seeing Penny so destroyed plucked at a chord deep inside him that rang a little too closely to regret for his tastes. “Your anger is clouding your judgment. Stop plotting your revenge for a second and listen to me.” Vince stopped but rewarded Nolan with a dark scowl. “We need to decide what the hell we’re going to do about Penny.”
At the mention of their succulent, yet soiled plaything, Vince snarled. “She broke the rules. She must pay the consequences.”
“Come now brother, you and I both know Penny was no match for Dillon’s charm. More sophisticated women than Penny have fallen for his honeyed words and been left broken-hearted for their troubles. Should we truly punish her for being outmatched? We’re the ones who should accept the blame. We didn’t prepare her adequately.”
“He did this on purpose.”
“Of course he did.”
“So what are we going to do about him? Put him in the ground?” Vince growled.
Nolan made a sound of impatience. They couldn’t kill their brother over a woman. Vince flopped onto the chaise, his dark hair mussed, his eyes glittering from beneath the dark strands. “What the fuck does he want aside from messing with our lives? Why couldn’t he have stayed under whatever rock he’d crawled out from?” he muttered, closing his eyes with irritation. “He ruined our Penny. She was so perfect, so exquisite. You know that little breathy moan thing she does when your cock stretches her tight, little pussy? I can cum just hearing that little sound. It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced.”
Nolan agreed. Plowing their pretty Penny had been a delight. But knowing that Dillon had touched her so intimately…argh! He wanted to punch that fucker in the mouth for taking what didn’t belong to him! Nolan calmed himself before he became as riled as his twin. They didn’t need to rage and bluster — they needed a plan. “Bottom line…do we still want her? Or do we turn her loose?” he asked.
Vince’s eyes opened and his mouth tightened in a grim line. “I still want her.”
Yeah, that was the crux of it. He wanted her, too. “She might not want us any longer. What do we do about that?”
“We could force her. She signed a legally binding contract.”
Nolan shot his brother a look of contempt. “Seriously? Like that’s going to hold up in court, not to mention it’s illegal to buy another human being. I don’t even want to think about how many laws we’re breaking for our adventure. Besides, you and I both know the contract is more for the mental part of the game rather than anything truly binding.”
“Yes, but Penny doesn’t know that.”
“I’m sure Dillon has told her by now. Likely he delighted in sharing how flimsy our hold is on her, the bastard,” Vince muttered darkly. “Why couldn’t he have contracted some grave illness while traipsing around the uncivilized world?”
“Because he has the luck of the Irish,” Nolan answered, sighing as he flicked a tiny piece of lint from the arm of the chair. “You know,” he mused quietly, not quite sure if he ought to voice his opinion on this particular score given how volatile Vince became whenever the past was brought up. “We’ve never tried sitting down and talking with Dillon about everything that happened with Isabel.”
“Are you mad?” Vince barked and Nolan knew his twin was wrestling with the same hefty guilt as he but he showed it in a different way. “What good would that serve?”
“I don’t know. It just seems we’ve let this terrible thing fester in our family…maybe it’s time to let it go.”
“Fuck, Nolan you sound like a woman. First of all, Dillon isn’t going to just ‘let it go’ so we can hold hands and sing Kumbayah around the campfire. He believes we murdered his ex-girlfriend. How do you get past that? He never will.” Vince shifted and his gaze bounced away as he added with a shrug, “Maybe it’s a blessing, you know? Isabel’s death…I don’t know. Fuck it, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Nolan remained quiet. God, all their hands were filthy when it came to Isabel. How they’d fucked up. They’d been young, dumb and full of cum as the saying goes and no one had been more modeled after that saying than the Buchanan twins. And Isabel had been the prettiest girl they’d ever seen — almost ethereal with her fine-boned features, white-silk hair and delicate disposition…hell, they would’ve done just about anything to get their cocks inside that soft flesh. Only they’d realized too late that Isabel hadn’t been playing a game, she’d been trying to secure a future for the baby inside her that none of them had known about. “Fuck,” he murmured, rubbing at the sudden ache in his chest. The coroner’s report had stated the fetus had been twelve weeks — which meant the baby had been Dillon’s but she’d never said a word to any of them about being pregnant. Nolan wished he could say they would’ve cared. They’d been such selfish pricks — all of them.