Todos los capítulos de Kissed The Wrong Brother : Capítulo 11 - Capítulo 20

"Tell me more," Amara said again, sliding onto the chair beside her mother.Celeste's smile didn't flicker. "Oh, it's a long story.""I love long stories. Where did you two meet?""At university. Oxford.""Julian went to Oxford?" Amara tilted her head. "I thought he studied in Boston."A tiny pause. "He transferred. After the first year.""Which year was that? I'd love to tell my sister the details. She's a big romantic.""I don't remember the exact year." Celeste lifted her teacup and, for the first time, actually drank from it. "It was so long ago.""Of course," Amara said sweetly. "It must have been before you were nineteen, when your father started arranging your marriage. Julian turned you down then, didn't he? Wasn't it ten years ago? That's a long time to remember exactly who you were dating."The cup stopped halfway to Celeste's mouth.Amara hadn't planned to say it. It came out of her like a coin she had been keeping in her pocket. Celeste herself had told her, in that hallwa

Amara sat on the edge of the narrow bed for ten full minutes with the photograph in her lap, and she did not move.The woman in the picture was laughing. That was what unsettled her. She had a green scarf, silver at her temples, and Julian's exact eyes, dark and slightly amused. She looked like someone who had never been abandoned by anyone, and certainly never abandoned a child.Amara picked up her phone and called Tessa. It was four in the morning at home, but Tessa answered on the second ring, because ER nurses don't sleep, they just change shifts."If you're calling to say you're getting married in Portugal, I need a dress," Tessa mumbled."Julian's mother is alive. Daniel sent me a photo of her in Lisbon."There was a pause, then the sound of a person sitting up very fast. "Say that again, slowly."Amara told her everything: the letter, the café, the line about why he never came looking. When she finished, Tessa let out a long breath."Okay. Two questions. Is the photo real?""I

Dinner at Café Estrela was loud, messy, and the happiest Amara had been in months.Elena cooked until every surface was covered. She told embarrassing stories about Julian at six years old, and she cried twice into the soup. Julian laughed more in three hours than Amara had seen him laugh in three weeks.At the door, Elena pressed a scarf into Amara's hands. "For the cold walk back," she whispered. "And thank you for bringing my son home."They didn't take a taxi.They climbed instead, up a crooked staircase to a viewpoint where the whole city lay spread below them in gold and shadow, the river black and glittering beyond the rooftops. A guitarist played softly somewhere out of sight. The air smelled of orange blossom and rain.Julian leaned on the stone railing. "I spent twenty years believing I was the reason she left.""And now?""Now I think I was sixteen, and so was she, in a way. She'd been miserable for years." He shook his head slowly. "I can't believe I got to hear her say it

Margaret Voss was not what Amara expected.She had pictured the board chair in a boardroom, in a black suit, behind a wall of steel. Instead she found a small woman in a gray cardigan, sitting at a corner table in a quiet Lisbon tea shop, stirring honey into her cup and looking like someone's grandmother."Sit down, Ms. Bennett. I don't bite before ten."Amara sat. Her palms were damp."I have two questions," Margaret said. "The first. Is there anything between you and Julian Whitlock?"Amara had rehearsed lying all the way over. Then she looked into those sharp, tired eyes and found she couldn't."Yes," she said. "As of last night."Margaret's spoon paused. For one long moment, she said nothing."Thank you," she said at last, and to Amara's astonishment, her mouth curved. "I appreciate honesty. It's rarer than diamonds in my line of work. The second question. Did you provoke the photograph in your window?""No. I think Celeste Halloran paid for it.""I think so too."Amara blinked. "

For one second, the ballroom was perfectly silent.Then someone screamed, someone laughed, and a hundred champagne glasses clinked in the dark as a hundred people reached for their phones. A thousand white screens bloomed at once, and Amara stood in the middle of them, unable to see anything but silhouettes.Julian.She took one step forward, and a hand closed around hers."Don't scream," said a low voice at her ear. "It's me."Her whole body relaxed. "What did you do?""Marcus is very good with breaker boxes." She could hear the grin in his voice. "I gave him a signal when Richard said 'happy news.' He's been waiting by the service door for twenty minutes.""You blew out the power?""Only the ballroom. Only for ninety seconds. I have no regrets."She laughed against his shoulder, helpless. He pulled her behind a marble pillar, into a pocket of shadow where nobody could see, and for a moment they just stood there, her forehead against his collar, his hand warm and steady on her back.