The SEAL's Secret Heirs(50)

“A setup,” he repeated softly.

She nodded. “We set it up for you to catch us. It was dumb, I realize. Blame it on the fact that I was young and naive. I was expecting you to confront me. For us to have it out so I could explain how much you meant to me. How upset I was that we weren’t together anymore. It was supposed to end differently. But you left and I figured out that I wasn’t all that important to you.”

A setup. To force a confrontation. And instead, she’d decided his silence meant she wasn’t important to him, when in fact, the opposite was true.

“Why?” He nearly choked on the question. “Why would you do something like that? With Liam of all people?”

His brother. There was a sacred line between brothers that you didn’t cross, and she’d not only crossed it, she’d been the instigator. Liam had put his hands on the woman Kyle loved as a favor. Somehow, and he wouldn’t have thought this possible, that was worse than when Kyle had thought his brother was just adding another name to his growing list of conquests. The betrayal was actually twice as deep because it had all been a setup.

The reckoning was going to be brutal.

“Because, Kyle.” She caught his gaze and tears brimmed in her eyes. “I loved you. So much and so intensely. But you were so distant. Already seeking that horizon, even then. We’d stopped connecting. Breaking up with you didn’t faze you. I figured it would take something bold to shake you up.”

Yeah, it had shaken him up all right. “But that?”

He couldn’t wrap his head around what she was telling him. He’d enlisted because of a lie. Because he’d felt as though he couldn’t breathe in Royal ever again. Because he’d sought a place where people stood by their word and their honor, would take a bullet for you. Where he could be part of a team alongside people who valued him. And found that place.

Which wasn’t here.

“Yeah. Like you used Emma Jane to make me jealous.” She shrugged. “Same idea. Funny how similar our tactics are.”

The roaring sound in his head drowned out her words. Similar. She thought the idea of Kyle flirting with a woman out in the open in broad daylight was the same as walking by Liam’s bedroom and hearing Grace’s laugh. The same as peeking through the crack at the door to see the woman he’d given his soul to entwined with his brother on his brother’s bed.

“Go.” He shoved out of the bed, ignored his aching leg and dressed as fast as he could. “I can’t be around you right now.”

“Are you upset, Kyle?” She still sounded confused, as though it wasn’t abundantly clear that none of this was okay. And then her face crumpled as understanding slowly leached into her posture.

He couldn’t respond. There was nothing to say anyway.

It wasn’t the same. He’d started to trust her again—no, he’d forced himself to forget the past despite the amount of pain he still carried around—only to find that her capacity for lies was far broader than he’d ever have imagined.

He slammed out of the room and went to make the babies’ bottles because he couldn’t leave as he wanted to. As he should. Grace would twist that around, too, and somehow find a way to rip his heart out again by taking his daughters away.

But he wouldn’t give Grace Haines any more power in his life.



Since he couldn’t leave, Kyle stewed. When Liam and Hadley returned from Vail the next afternoon, Kyle wasn’t fit company.

Which made it the perfect time for a confrontation.

“Liam,” Kyle fairly growled as he cornered his brother in the kitchen after Hadley went to the nursery to see the babies.

“What’s up?” Liam chugged some water from the bottle in his hand.

“Grace fessed up.” Crossing his arms so he wouldn’t get started on the beating portion of the reckoning too soon, he shifted the weight off his bad leg and glared at the betrayer who dared stand there scowling as though he didn’t know what Kyle was talking about. “Back before I went into the navy. You and Grace. It was a lie.”

“Oh, that.” Liam shook his head. “Yeah, you’re a little slow on the uptake. That’s ancient history.”

“It’s recent to me because I just found out about it.”

With a smirk, Liam punched him on the arm. “Maybe if you’d stuck around instead of flying off to the navy, you’d have known then. That was the whole purpose of it, according to Grace, to get you to confront her. I was just window dressing.”

“I went into the navy because of window dressing,” Kyle said through clenched teeth, though how his brain was still functioning enough to spit out thoughts was beyond him. “Glad to know this is all a big game to everyone. I’ve been missing out. Where’s Hadley? I’m looking forward to getting in on some of this fun. Would you like to watch while I feel up your wife or would you rather walk in on us?”