Deadline (Sandra Brown)

what?”
    “Nothing.”
    “When what?”
    He chewed his bottom lip, but then decided, The hell with it. “When I wanted to hug them and hold on. They were the first blood relatives I’d ever met.”
    Her chest rose with a sudden swell of emotion. “You can hug them any time you want.”
    “Not gonna happen.”
    “Why?”
    “Those boys are going to have enough to deal with just living down their heritage. Having me in their lives would only make the issue muddier.”
    Besides, he added to himself, he couldn’t be around them without being around Amelia, and he couldn’t be around her without wanting her, and wanting her without having her was already killing him.
    “I’m your sister-in-law.”
    “I’m fully aware of that,” he said tightly. “I was aware of it when you walked into the courtroom and things went haywire.”
    “What things?”
    “Things. Everything. I was sitting there wishing for a drink, a pill, cursing Headly for sending me down here, telling myself that I didn’t care about the fate of a brother I’d never known. Wishing my ass was anywhere else except growing numb on that hard bench in the courtroom.
    “Then the doors at the back of it were opened, you walked past me, and all of a sudden I’m being sucked in. By you. Jeremy. Lust. Despair.”
    “What do you feel toward him now?”
    “Hell, I don’t know. I hate him for what he became, what he did, but…” He turned his hands palms up and extended them toward her. “I was holding his head, looking into his eyes when he died, Amelia. My brother. First time I set eyes on him, and he dies .” He gave a bitter laugh over the cruel irony of it.
    “Did you tell him?”
    He shook his head. “But there was a moment, no an instant , of recognition. Connection. Something. Or maybe I just imagined it because I wanted to see it. Doesn’t matter now, though, does it?”
    “Not to Jeremy. I think it matters greatly to you.”
    “I was right not to tell him. He was better off not knowing that the stranger moving in on his family was his brother.”
    “Dawson,” she said softly, “when you and I met, I hadn’t been Jeremy’s wife for a long time. I’d believed him dead for more than a year. Does it bother you that much to know that he and I…That—”
    “That he had you first? Yeah. It bothers me some. But not in the way you’re thinking.”
    “What am I thinking?”
    “That it’s a sexual competition, that I’m afraid you’re making comparisons. It’s not that.”
    “Then what is it?”
    “It’s that I wanted you in the first place.”
    “When I should have been off-limits.”
    “Something like that.”
    “I think we can forgive ourselves for our mutual attraction.”
    “You can forgive yourself because you didn’t know about the relationship. I did.” He’d said they weren’t going to discuss this, but they were. He made an impatient gesture. “Jeremy was a minor obstacle compared with the other one.”
    “Your bloodline.”
    “Which is poison.”
    “Hmm.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I suppose I’ll have to throw the boys back, too.”
    “What?”
    “Well, they’re your blood relatives, remember? Doesn’t that make them just as toxic as you? If I reject you because of that taint, then it only follows—”
    “Stop being ridiculous.”
    “You took the words right out of my mouth.”
    She stood up, rounded the coffee table, and came to kneel in front of his chair. He tried to stand up, but she angrily pushed him back into the seat. “I’m going to have my say. Then you can do what you want, but I’m not going to let you sail out of my life and forever regret that I didn’t say this and wonder what would have happened if I had.”
    She placed her hands on his chest as though to impress upon him her earnestness. “For months during and after my marriage, I couldn’t even fathom myself being in another relationship. Ever. I couldn’t imagine a man’s—any man’s—touch being something I would invite. I couldn’t see myself ever feeling anything like desire again.
    “After some distance from it, when the wounds were no longer fresh and even my sons couldn’t fill a particular loneliness, I began to realize how unrealistic it was to think that I’d live the rest of my life alone. I’m not programmed for a lifetime of abstinence. I’m not talking only about sex but about emotional intimacy. I began to want that again. Need it.
    “Gradually, I accepted the probability that