“Maybe. I’m not sure about that. He was really your brother, too. Neither one of us has much family left. And these anniversaries are so Goddamn hard.” She sniffed, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. “As if we don’t remember every day. As if we don’t remember his smile or him waiting to walk me home from school. As if we haven’t heard that story about the last girl he kissed a dozen times.”

“Hey.” He moved in, steeling himself as he pulled her in close. But he could smell her hair, and her body felt familiar in his arms. So damned good. “It’s okay,” he told her. “It’ll be okay.”

“I can’t stand to think about that shit sometimes, Jamie. To think about who else he might have kissed after the art teacher’s aide. Who he would have ended up with. God, who knows? He could have married Marie Dawn. Or Allie.” She paused. “No, Allie was always Mick’s, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah. Always.”

It was true. Allie and Mick—that was pure destiny. It had taken some convincing for Mick to get over himself and see that. And Neal and Marie Dawn were right together, too. Out of the group it was just him and Summer Grace who still ran solo. Or not.

Can’t think about that now—not while she’s crying over her brother.

“In some ways it doesn’t get easier, you know what I mean?” she asked, her voice muffled against his chest. He hoped she couldn’t hear the hammering of his heart as he breathed her in. “He’s been gone for twelve years and I still sometimes feel like I can just pick up the phone and call him. Like I’ll walk around a corner and he’ll just . . . be there. Is that ridiculous?”

“No. I feel it, too. About Brandon. Even about Ian.”

She turned her face up to his and those big, blue eyes glistened with tears. It made his breath catch to see her hurting. “Really?” she asked.

“Yeah. Really.”

“But your brother’s been gone since you were seven years old. Do you even remember him that well?”

“Sort of. He was . . . Nah, this is really going to sound crazy.”

“Come on. Tell me, Jamie.”

When had he been able to deny her anything? Well, almost anything.

“The thing is, Ian was my twin, so my whole life I’ve had this weird idea that he’s grown with me, still looking like me. Like if I look hard enough into the mirror, he’ll be there staring back at me.”

“Wow.”

“See? I told you it was crazy.”

“No, I don’t think it is. I think it’s sort of amazing. And sweet.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Traci never understood when I talked about Ian like that.”

“Yeah, well, you guys weren’t married long enough for her to really get you,” she said.

It was true. He’d gotten hitched to the first girl he’d hooked up with after they lost Brandon, less than a year later. It had been a stupid move, and she’d left almost as quickly. He couldn’t blame her. For a lot of things.

Don’t think about her. Not here. Not now.

All he wanted to think of was the beautiful girl in his arms.

Summer Grace snuggled in closer and suddenly he was aware of the soft press of her breasts against his ribs. The fact that they were both a little buzzed on the beer and hurting. And maybe she’d missed him the way he had her this week.

“We should get back to the others,” he said, starting to pull away, not wanting to take advantage of the situation.

“Jamie, please. Just . . . hold me a minute.”

There was no way he was going to argue with her. He let his arms relax around her, pulling in a few deep breaths of the humid New Orleans air. But it was no good. Despite the ache in his chest, he was hyperaware of every soft plane and lusciously sleek curve of her body against his. He shifted so she wouldn’t feel him growing hard.

It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last—he was as certain of that as he was that he should never have touched her. Not Summer Grace. Brandon’s little sister . . .

She’d always been the little sister. In theory, anyway. But it was that theory that had allowed him to resist her until so recently. Because when she’d crawled under the blankets with him when she was fourteen hadn’t been the only time. No, that was just where it had started.

There was that time he’d gone camping with the Rae’s. They’d driven all across the country, and Summer Grace had done it again—slipped into his sleeping bag one morning when Brandon had gotten up early to go fishing with his dad and Jamie was too tired to join them. Her hands had slid all over his body. How she’d known to stroke his hardening nipples like that at barely fifteen . . . and before he’d really woken up and realized what was happening, he’d been lost in a dream where her long, silky hair was falling all over his chest, then dragging lower over his stomach, and his cock had gone so damn hard he could feel the come pulsing in it, ready to explode. When she’d touched him, her fingers tracing his erection through his boxers, his eyes had flown open and she was there—her hands and her hair on him real. He’d nearly come right then—he’d had to bite his cheek hard enough to draw blood to keep from grabbing her, tearing off her little shorts and sheer tank top, which had shown clearly in the dawn light that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He’d groaned, wanting to take those firm, pink nipples between his teeth and . . .

“Jamie,” she whispered.

“What? What is it, Summer Grace?”

She sighed. “When are you ever going to call me Summer, like everyone else?”

He smiled in the dark. “Probably never.”

She pulled back enough to tilt her chin, those long lashes coming down like a sooty shadow over her eyes as she blinked up at him. “Jamie,” she repeated, the rasp back in her voice.

“Yeah?”

She stared up at him, blinking again. There was so much going on in her eyes—more than he could figure out right then. And too much going on in his own head, too. In his body. Desire and the shared pain of what this night meant to them both. The guilt of having left her on her own all week. The deeper guilt of having violated his vow to her brother, and the really dark shit that ran even deeper. Being the survivor, both of their brothers dead and gone and him still standing there.

With his arms around the one woman he’d ever really wanted.

Too much. It’s all too fucking much.

But she was right there, in his arms. His hands gripped her tiny waist as he pulled her in and opened her soft lips with his tongue. Jesus, she tasted good. Like the beer, but behind it she tasted the way she smelled—like flowers and heat.

How was that even possible?

But he didn’t care. It just was. She just was. Hot and pliable in his arms, her lips and tongue as hungry as his. So many damn years of wanting. He deepened the kiss and she pressed closer, her breath a soft pant against his lips, into his mouth as he breathed her in.

He was hard as hell, hard enough to ache. He ground up against her. He couldn’t help it. She was all heat and need—he could feel it coming off her in waves, echoing his own need—a need he’d kept banked for years. Because she was . . .

Forbidden.

“Christ.” He let her go. They were both panting. “Summer Grace, I can’t do this.”

She shook her head. Her hair was mussed, her lips soft and swollen. “Don’t say it. Don’t. I’ve been Brandon’s little sister my whole life. But I’m still me. And I’m a woman, Jamie. I’m twenty-seven years old, for God’s sake! I’m not some kid who can’t make her own choices anymore. I haven’t been for a long time. How long are you going to run from me?”

He stepped back, braced his hand on the iron fencing behind him. “I’m not running anymore.”

“No, you don’t. Don’t lie to me. Goddamn it, Jamie. You haven’t even called me all week.” She pounded on his chest with her small fist, and he was shocked at the anger he felt from her—the anger and the power in her. “I was done with you. I was moving on. Why did you have to fuck with my head?”