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.”