Dangerous Temptation (Dark Dream Duet #1)(15)

I blinked.

Hitchcock and I had been friends since my first week in town. He was also the new kid, an immigrant from India who spoke flawless English with a heavy accent that a few kids were ridiculing in the cafeteria. I’d sat beside him immediately, blocking his view of the other table and speaking to him over their giggles.

We didn’t talk about the bullying.

I think we spoke about Amrita Sher-Gil’s hypnotic self-portraits instead.

Zoey had joined our little group a few weeks later when her best friend had moved away. We hung out at school during lunch and infrequently on the weekends because I had Brando to take care of, brilliant Hitchcock already had a job at a local gas company in their IT department, and Zoey was on the school varsity swim team.

We were friends, but I hadn’t known, not really, how much I valued them until now. Or how much they had valued me.

“Thanks, Hitch,” I murmured, leaning forward to kiss his cheek.

A weight on my shoulder clamped down and pulled me back from my friend’s embrace. A shiver ripped down my spine like a sticky zipper, rattling my entire frame.

Without looking over my shoulder, I knew who had manhandled me.

Mostly because there was only one man who ever had.

But also because there was an electric quality to the cool September afternoon like an incoming storm pulsing in the atmosphere.

Tiernan had arrived.

“Do you kiss everyone who pays their respects?” His voice was cold, trickling like ice water down my back.

When I went to wrench my shoulder out of his hold, his fingers curled tighter and he hauled me all the way back against his torso. The sudden heat of him against my cold skin made me shiver again.

I tipped my head up and back to look at him. His pale eyes glowed from the shadow cast by his heavy, furrowed brows, the scar bisecting his cheek gone white with strain.

“So what if I do?” I countered, jerking my chin forward.

He snorted softly, the hot breath wafting over my face. “If you want to use your mother’s funeral to pick up men, I suppose that’s your prerogative.”

I gaped at him, fury igniting in the hollow cavity where my heart had been, lighting every cold inch of me with flame.

“How dare you?” I whispered harshly.

“How dare you?” he countered, releasing me swiftly to step forward, accepting Hitchcock’s father’s hand. “Thank you for coming to pay your condolences.”

Mr. Khatri blinked at him from behind his thick glasses while Mrs. Khatri giggled softly beside him.

“Reyansh,” she whispered. “He looks like a young Cary Grant.”

I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

The Khatri family were obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock films, hence the name of their only son.

“If he was scarred and rude as hell, maybe,” I allowed under my breath.

Hitchcock grinned at me. He’d heard all about my mother’s boyfriend.

Ex-boyfriend, I guessed.

Yet, there he was, suddenly standing beside Brando and me like we were some kind of family as he accepted commiserations from the funeral goers. He was all charm and soft misery, the picture-perfect, brokenhearted boyfriend.

It made me sick to watch him.

Worse, it made me hate Aida for leaving us with no one to turn to but him.

“Can we go home now?” Brando asked me, tugging on my hand so I slouched down on his side.

A sob blossomed in my throat and got stuck there when I swallowed hard.

“Remember, Brando, we can’t go home.” Technically, we could go back to the house, but Elena’s firm had already put it on the market to pay off Aida’s significant credit card debts. There would be some money left for us because we had used the last of Dad’s money to buy the house outright, but it wasn’t much. It was funny to think that once I’d taken money for granted. “Mom is gone and we need to find a new home.”

Again.

I didn’t say that, though.

Brando had been too young when Dad died to remember how we’d gone from riches to rags nearly overnight, moving from the pretty mansion he owned in Dallas to this little house in this little town.

“Tiernan can take us home with him,” Brando offered, tears glossy in his big eyes as he looked up at me. “Right?”

“You don’t want to go with him,” I said on a forced laugh. “He’s a mean, old guy.”

I watched as his full lower lip rolled under and wobbled. When he spoke, his voice was threadbare. “But where else will we go? Who’s gonna take us?”

Despair moved through me like a ghost, leaving behind a bone-deep chill.

I didn’t know.

I had no answers and Brando was just a kid, all he had were questions. As his sister, his only family, I felt responsible for comforting him even though I had no idea how to even comfort myself.

“You’re coming with me,” Tiernan said, suddenly in front of us, the rest of the mourners having dispersed back toward their cars, a few lingering to pay respects at the gravesite before they moved on.

“Yay!” Brando cried, throwing his arms around Tiernan’s lower legs, clinging to him tightly even though the older man looked horrified by the gesture. “I knew it.”

“What?” I breathed, sucker punched by Tiernan’s calm assertion.

I’d asked him for help, but never in my wildest dreams had I assumed he would offer this.