CHAPTER 26
Kelsey’s blood roared in her ears like the engines of Ares jet.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Keira’s voice was nauseatingly sweet.
Kelsey couldn’t reply. Couldn’t get her lips or her voice to work. Not when all her joy in the weekend, in the perfect beach date today, in every beautiful moment she and Ares had shared together, was dying a nasty, brutal death beneath her sister’s gaze. But though her tongue couldn’t move, her legs did what they always had before—stepped back to let Keira in.
Her sister wore an elegant black dress with gold trim. Her auburn hair caught the light, her brows were perfectly arched, and her
lipstick was an exact match to her red-tipped nails. In her stiletto heels, she towered over Keira in her bare feet.
Keira was glamorous, Kelsey wasn’t. Just like usual.
And yet an insistent voice inside her head cried out that it was her body, her skin, and her heart that still sang from Ares kisses, his
caresses. From his total possession.
“You’ve been ignoring my calls since I returned from the south of France.”
“I’ve been busy.” She’d ignored Keira’s calls since that first glorious, wonderful kiss with Ares in Chicago before the wedding.
The kiss from her sister’s husband who was an ex in every way but the legal one.
“Where have you been?” Keira drawled, looking pointedly at the small suitcase on the floor. The one Ares had kicked on its side
before he’d ripped Kelsey’s clothes off.
Her purse lay beside the case, and her jacket was still on the floor where Ares had thrown it. A bowl on the living room side table had
fallen, rolling across the carpet. Her lips were swollen from his kisses. Kelsey could only hope Keira was too busy drilling her about
why she hadn’t taken her calls to notice.
She barely avoided putting a hand to her hair to straighten the locks Ares had run his fingers through. “I just returned from a trip to
see Sally and George.”
“Weren’t you just there for the wedding?” Keira widened her eyes beneath her perfect makeup.
Kelsey’s mind strove furiously for an explanation. The same way she always reacted to Keira, defending, rationalizing. But that
voice inside her was louder now.
You don’t have to do this anymore. You never did.
Kelsey stood taller, her shoulders straighter. “Why I went there isn’t your business.”
Instead of unleashing her wrath, Kelsey smiled as if she’d just reeled in a fish who hadn’t put up much of a fight. “But it is my
business why you were with my husband, isn’t it?” She batted her thick, false eyelashes.
Keira paused. Waited for Kelsey to understand her true meaning.
Like an ice pick to the heart, the realization hit Kelsey that her sister must have seen their tumble through her door. And then, a good
while later, she’d watched Ares leave, his clothes hastily donned, his hair a mess after their lovemaking.
Just as Kelsey’s was. Keira had seen everything, from the suitcase tipped sideways, to the jacket, to the bowl in the middle of the
living room floor.
No. God, no. It was the very last thing Kelsey and Ares needed, for Keira to plunk herself down right in the middle of what was
already such a complicated—and tentative—new relationship.
“You’re screwing him.” Keira’s voice turned malicious, her face lined with rage. “Aren’t you, you dirty little slut?”
Kelsey’s fierce response was instinctive. “Don’t call me that.” Her legs might have stepped aside to let her sister in…but her heart
refused to do the same.
Keira wasn’t listening. She’d never listened to anyone.
“How could you betray me like this? Your own sister.” Moisture glittered in Keira’s eyes. On anyone else, Kelsey might have
thought the tears were real, but she knew her sister too well. The tears were designed to make Kelsey feel guilty, to drive home the
guilt as Keira injected a pathetic wobble into her voice. “I’ve needed you so badly since he left me.” She pointed her finger in
Kelsey’s face, all pretense of tears vanishing. “But you. Weren’t. There.” She punctuated every word with fury. “Instead, you were
off screwing my husband.” Venom smeared every syllable. “What would Mom think of that after you promised her you’d take care
of Daddy and me?” Then she hit Kelsey with her worst. “But you let Daddy die. And now you’ve stolen Ares from me.”
Kelsey knew exactly what Keira was doing. Her sister was a master at making a person squirm, at pushing just the right button to
make her opponent cry or scream or give in. Kelsey knew.
Yet the accusations still cut her to ribbons. Her heart felt raw and bleeding, flayed open as if Keira had the skill of Jack the Ripper.
Kelsey had failed her mother. She’d failed her father. She’d even failed Ares, because she’d never told him what Keira was like
beneath all the glitter and elegance and lies.
But her parents were dead. Ares wasn’t. He deserved another chance at happiness.
And—goddammit!—Kelsey deserved to be happy too.
Nine years had been way too long to wait for Ares. But thirty years had been an absolute eternity of being Keira’s emotional slave.
That story she’d told Ares about the rope swing had been one tiny glimmer of decency in years of bondage. And Kelsey wouldn’t let
one more second pass playing the role of protector that her mother had given her. Just as Ares had to deal with the bad choices his
mother had made, so did Kelsey with her own mother.
Guilt and duty had been her constant companions all these years. This moment brought righteous anger. Hopefully, the future would
bring forgiveness.
But it was anger that gave her the strength to hold her own and say, “What would Mom think of what you did, Keira?”
Keira sniffed haughtily. “You mean be the best wife I could to Ares and still keep my sanity?”
“No.” Kelsey’s voice was sharp enough to cut through Keira’s smugness, her eyebrows rising in surprise. “What you did to Ares was
horrible. Unthinkable. Unforgivable. You lied, not just once, but three times.” She held up a finger when Keira opened her mouth.
“Oh wait, four times, when we count the tubal ligation you never told him about.”
“It’s my body. I can do what I want with it.”
“Except lie about it to your husband.” She advanced a step and Keira actually backed up. Kelsey had never challenged her sister
before. Never gone head to head like this. It was so hard. But so incredibly satisfying. To finally speak up with a voice that she’d
held in for far too long. “Mom would have been really upset by what you did.”
“She would have supported me because she loved me.”
“You’re right. She would have pretended you made a mistake and told herself that what you did wasn’t deliberate. But I know it
was.” Kelsey steeled everything deep inside and said the things she should have said years ago. “I don’t support you. I don’t support
what you did. And I’m not giving you any sympathy. Unless you can admit how wrong you were and ask Ares forgiveness, I’m not
taking your calls, and I don’t want to see you.”
Keira stared as if Kelsey were ready for the asylum, all wrapped up in a straitjacket. “You don’t mean that.” Shock threaded her
words.
“I do.” Kelsey crossed her arms. “Every word.”
The storm built on Keira’s features, her cheekbones reddening, her eyes narrowing, and her lips pursing into a thin, ugly line.
“You bitch.” A tiny fleck of spittle flew out of her mouth. She crowded Kelsey, backing her into the living room. “He might enjoy
screwing you. He might have fun being worshipped by poor little Kelsey who always wanted him but couldn’t have him. But do you
actually think he could ever love you? Because he’ll never stop loving me.” Keira stabbed a finger into her breastbone with an
audible thud. “You’re a fool if you let yourself forget that the moment he saw me that first day, he forgot all about you. It was so
damn easy to take him away from you. But you still hung around all these years, begging for scraps, always underfoot, always
hoping he’d notice you. It would actually be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. My friends and I used to laugh about it all the time.” Her
voice dripped with sarcasm. “Poor Kelsey, the pathetic little puppy dog drooling after my husband. Did you really think you could
steal him away from me? I can have him back with a simple snap of my fingers. I just haven’t tried. But now you’ve given me a
reason to do it.”
Keira’s gaze was rabid, her features a mottled blue-red with her rage.
But Kelsey’s rage was just as potent. “You knew how I felt about Ares back then?”
Keira rolled her eyes. “I know everything about you. How you think. What you’ll do. You’re so pitifully transparent.”
Keira had used Kelsey to prop up her own ego, to make herself feel superior. She’d taken Ares simply because she could. Because
Kelsey wanted him, and Keira couldn’t stand to let her sister win. “You never really loved him, did you?”
Keira waved that away, as if the whole question of love was preposterous. “You didn’t deserve him. You were too weak. He needed
me to push him. To help him become the billionaire he was supposed to be. Lord knows if he’d ended up with you, he’d probably be tossing a baseball to a snotty-nosed kid in a little yard somewhere.” She looked disgusted by the image. “He was meant for bigger things than just being a father.”
Kelsey had always known about Keira’s ugly traits, that she could trample people like they were ants in her path. But this was
diabolical.
Purely malicious.
As a psychologist, Kelsey should have seen it. That was part of the reason she’d chosen her career, to figure it all out. But she never
had, not truly. She hadn’t been able to see the truth right in front of her. Hadn’t wanted to see, because the truth was too close. It was
too difficult to admit that the monster was real, that her sister was a sociopath who had never loved anyone but herself.
Until Keira shined a spotlight and forced her to see.
“You’ve lost him,” Kelsey told the woman who was no longer her family. Blood had bound them together…until poison destroyed that bond. “Not because of me, but because he finally sees what you really are.” She looked at Keira in her designer dress and towering high heels. Really looked for the first time. “He won’t ever be back.”
Keira laughed, a hollow, grating sound. Like the wicked witch. Then she snapped her fingers. “That’s how easy it’ll be to get him
back.” She shrugged, a rude and careless shift of her shoulders. “Or maybe I’ll just take every penny he has after I prove he was
screwing my very own sister behind my back.”
“Then all your friends will call you the drooling idiot, won’t they, Keira? You wouldn’t want them to know your pathetic, puppy-dog
sister stole him away from you, would you?”
Keira growled, tossed her hair over her shoulder, opened the front door, and slammed it on the way out, shaking the whole building.
Kelsey looked at the door, feeling like an earthquake had just rumbled through her. Or a tornado had snapped her up and spun her
hard and fast.
And yet, she was lighter too.
For her whole life she’d kowtowed to her sister. But she never would again.
Kelsey’s career was helping people achieve freedom after years of emotional oppression. Finally, she’d done it for herself.
She wanted to call Ares to tell him her news, her epiphany, her breakthrough. And she needed him to know that Keira was going to
mess with the divorce in any way she could.
Determination—and that growing lightness within her—made her hand surprisingly steady as she fished her phone out of her purse
and dialed his cell phone.
“Kelsey.” She loved the sound of her name on his lips, soft and low and full of need. “I was just thinking about you. It seems like I
can’t stop.”
She wanted to tell him the same, to talk as lovers did. But she needed him to know, “Keira was just here.”
He cursed, four letters that crudely, and accurately, summed up the situation.
“She saw us kiss at the door and disappear inside.” Her heart raced as she remembered the beauty, the passion of their connection.
“She was still watching when you come back out. After.” Heat infused Kelsey head to toes with the pleasure, the joy, and the love
still tingling deep inside her. “After we made love.”
Again, he swore, fury—and frustration—underlying the short word.
“She’s going to use it against you in the settlement. Use me against you. She wants to destroy you.”
“She won’t.” His tone was hard. All the warmth with which he’d said her name was gone now. “I won’t let her, damn it.”
Kelsey was suddenly holding a phone full of dead air. And wondering if, like an emotional vampire, Keira had just sucked away
everything that was good.
No. That was the past talking. No matter what Keira said with that snap of her fingers, Ares wouldn’t go back to her. How could he
possibly do that?
Shoving her insecurities away—the insecurities her sister had built up simply so she could toy with Kelsey—she rolled her suitcase
back to her bedroom and started unpacking. A simple, routine act that would help ground her back into reality.
But Ares imprint was on each piece of clothing. The hungry look in his eyes as he’d stripped her sweater away. The reverence as
he’d traced the line of lace along the top edge of her panties. The deep emotion in his voice as he’d said, I’m yours.
The doorbell rang for the second time that evening. She closed her eyes and took a bracing breath. Keira was back for more. Maybe
she’d thought of some new threat. Clearly, she hadn’t accepted that Kelsey was done taking her crap.
When she reached the front door, she threw it open, ready to do battle.
But this time, Ares filled her doorway.
And her heart.
“I was already on my way back to you when you called.” His gaze was fierce and passionate and protective. “I shouldn’t have left.
But I swear to you, I won’t make that mistake again. And I won’t let her hurt you,” he vowed.
Then he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. The purest vow of all.
