Last Heartbreak (A Nolan Brothers Novel Book 5) Read online

Chapter One

  Gray clouds loomed offshore, like angry beasts closing in on their prey. The menacing billows blotted out the late summer sun and cast the island in shadow. As they so often did, Shea’s thoughts immediately veered to his wife.

  Because no matter what, everything always came back to Isobel.

  Droplets of rain peppered the ground, so he ducked his chin and strode across the crowded parking lot to his crew cab truck. Falling behind the steering wheel, he yanked the door closed as a streak of lightning slashed across the shadowy sky. A low growl of thunder rumbled with dark intent as he jammed the key into the ignition.

  Large raindrops pelted the windshield, and the frantic sweep of the car’s wiper blades whisked them away as he steered his vehicle from the lot. On Main Street, he headed inland. Toward her.

  At a stoplight, he stretched forward in his seat to peer up at the inky black storm clouds smothering the island like a blanket. Though he and Isobel lived apart, a separation he’d only agreed to with the hope it might stop the fighting long enough to fix their marriage, he still knew his wife well. This storm would terrify her. So he’d left work on the busiest night of the week during peak time to go to her.

  The light switched and the truck lurched forward. With agonizing effort, he eased his foot off the gas pedal and loosened his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. His heart thundered in his chest, revived with the anticipation of being near her again.

  The loss of her gnawed at him. Every day. The ache never relented.

  Much like the days when they hadn’t had enough to eat. Back then he learned to live with the hunger, but he never got used to the growling pangs. The aching emptiness. Instead, he used them. If he grew tired or frustrated by the circumstances around him, the gnawing in his belly pushed him to keep going. To keep fighting, working, reaching, striving. To never give up or give in.

  The trick had worked, goading him through law school to achieve a lucrative career. He’d gone years without experiencing a pang of hunger.

  He turned the truck onto a secluded drive and began the long, winding journey toward the heart of the island. Near the pinnacle, he pulled into the driveway of the house he’d built. Situated among the treetops, the home had sweeping views of Lake Michigan and the island’s lush, rolling hills.

  It’d taken him years to build the home, the challenge made complicated and insanely expensive due to their remote location. Cut off from the mainland, building supplies and materials could be ferried across a stretch of choppy waters and out to the island in the spring and summer months, but all work ceased during the long, cold winters.

  Easing his truck to a stop before one of the two garage doors, Shea killed the engine. Though far from extravagant, the four-bedroom home was infinitely more impressive than anything he’d lived in growing up. At nearly two thousand square feet, the cottage-style structure was well-built and sturdy. Of course, he wished he could’ve built them a bigger, more extravagant home, but it was a nice house, spacious yet charming, with all the high-end features he could afford at the time.

  In the end, his lack of a fortune hadn’t mattered all that much. With Isobel’s talent for turning any plain, rundown, or flat-out ugly thing into something attractive and pleasing, over time, she’d transformed their respectable, sensible home into a remarkable showpiece. Charm and quaint touches abounded, from the muted beige shingle siding with extra-wide white trim, to the arched front door made of aged oak, and the overfull flower boxes and garden beds.

  The two of them had made their home everything it could be and more. The same way they’d achieved so much else in their eighteen years of marriage. Together. As a team.

  Or so he’d thought.

  Isobel’s compact sedan wasn’t parked in her spot when he passed through the garage on his way to the back door. Inside the house, the familiar sounds of a baseball game streamed from the flat-screen TV hanging on the wall in the living room. Shea pushed the door shut and crossed the stylish, immaculate kitchen. Sprawled out on the overstuffed sofa in front of the TV, Shea found their teenage son, Finn.

  At the sight of his dad, wariness darkened Finn’s light gray eyes. He pushed himself upright on the couch and, pulling the hood of his sweatshirt over his dark hair, swiped the pad of his thumb across his cell phone’s sleek screen.

  The cool reception elicited a pang of regret beneath Shea’s breastbone. “Where’s your mother?”

  Finn rolled his hunched shoulders. “She’s not here.”

  “I can see that. Where is she? Are Connor and Maisie with her?”

  “They’re watching a movie down the hall. Mom’s at dinner.”

  A ripple of alarm chased up Shea’s spine. “At dinner? By herself?” In this storm? She’d be a mess by now.

  “No. She went with some guy.”

  The words punched a hole through the center of Shea’s chest. “Excuse me?”

  Finn lifted his head long enough to pierce Shea with an insolent look. “She’s on a date.”

  Beneath his feet, the ground opened up to swallow him. “Who…?” Fear and fury squeezed the question from his throat.

  Finn shrugged. “I dunno.”

  Isobel was on a date.

  With someone else.

  Another man.

  Another man who was not him, her fucking husband.

  Reaching out blindly, Shea gripped the sofa back. “Where did they go?”

  “Jesus, Dad, I don’t know.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  A sneer curled Finn’s lips. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore.”

  “No matter what’s going on between your mom and me, I’m still your dad.”

  A light flashed in Finn’s heavily lashed, soft gray eyes. Isobel’s eyes. “You haven’t been my dad in years.”

  Shea shook his head to clear it and rubbed the aching wound Finn’s words ripped open in the center of his chest. He couldn’t banish the hurt from his voice when he asked, “What are you talking about?”

  Guilt briefly softened the sharp lines of Finn’s features. Shea’s features. With Shea’s tall, lean frame and Isobel’s exotic coloring, Finn was the perfect mix of both his parents.

  “Nothing,” Finn muttered, returning his attention to the device cradled in his hand. “Just forget it.”

  “I’d like to hear what you have to say. Please.”

  At the “please,” Finn’s head came up. The expression on his youthful face wrenched the knot forming in Shea’s stomach. His son looked at him now the same way Noah once had. With distrust. Derision. Accusation.

  At one time or another, each of Shea’s four brothers had looked at him that way. As did his wife.

  Only the little ones, Maisie and Connor, didn’t view him through the prism of their anger and resentment. At four and five years old, their hearts were full and bursting with love. Love without conditions. Indeed, these last tumultuous years, they’d become Shea’s life raft in the raging storm of his crumbling marriage.

  Finn paused a brief moment before firing his first shot. “You were never around.”

  “I had to work—”

  He rolled his eyes. “You had to work all the fucking time?”

  “Yes. I needed to put food on the table—”

  Exasperation slashed Finn’s features. “Oh, for the love of God, would you look at this place? We’re not going to go hungry, Dad. Jesus Christ.”

  “I said watch your mouth.”

  Finn threw his arms wide. “Look around you. We’re fucking rich, for fucking fuck’s sake.”

  Shea balled his hands into fists so tight his nails dug into the flesh on his palms. “Because your mother and I work hard,” he ground out.

  He’d worked hard because he knew that one small misstep, one whiff of misfortune—a layoff, an injury or illness, a death—and everything could be lost. If he hadn’t worked hard, he might’ve doomed them to a life of poverty and hunger, the way his dad had doomed him and his brothers.

  Flin
ging himself back into the sofa cushions, Finn plopped his feet heavily on the coffee table. “Whatever. I don’t care anymore. It’s not like anything’s going to change anyway.”

  The muscles in Shea’s chest and back had bunched, instinctively readying for a fight, but Finn landed the knockout punch before Shea even set his feet.

  “You want me to tell Mom you were here when she gets home? It might be late. Maybe even morning.”

  Dirty, disgusting images exploded in Shea’s mind of his wife at dinner with another man. Tilting her face up for another man to taste her sweet mouth. Her clothes falling away from her body and another man’s hands trailing over her silky skin.

  Words died in his throat as Finn crammed white earbuds into his ears and dropped his head onto the couch back. He closed his eyes, oblivious to the chaos crashing through Shea.

  So his wife had decided she was done with him, had she? After nearly eighteen years of marriage, three children, and a life built upon the fact of their togetherness, she figured she’d just move on without him? Discard him like the bag of trash sitting by the back door? Cut him out of her life, and while he lay bleeding out on the ground, step casually over his body and carry on her way?

  Fuck that.

  He wasn’t about to let her walk away so easily.

  Isobel’s cheeks ached with the effort to keep her placid smile in place.

  She kept her gaze fixated on Cooper Spence’s wan face, not letting her eyes roam the interior of the island’s nicest seafood restaurant or allowing her mind to recall the night Shea had brought her here on their first official date.

  Six months after Finn was born.

  If Shea were with her now, he’d order the whitefish.

  But he wasn’t with her. He hadn’t been with her for a very long time.

  With a pinch of sorrow, her smile faltered, so she shoveled a bite of salad into her mouth. She chewed the tasteless greenery, and when she swallowed, her stomach lurched.

  Across the table, Cooper took a vicious swipe at the bead of sweat on his forehead. A loan officer at the Thief Island Credit Union, he often appeared nervous and uncomfortable. His job must be very stressful.

  “Thank you for inviting me to dinner tonight.” Isobel stabbed at a hunk of lettuce.

  “Uh-huh.” Raising a glass of ice water to his lips, Cooper drank in greedy gulps.

  Isobel reaffixed her smile. “I assume you want to discuss my business plan. Did you get a chance to read it? What do you think?”

  Heart in her throat, she waited while he sucked down the rest of his water in one long, desperate swallow, trying to appear as though her entire future didn’t depend on the next words he spoke.

  That morning when she’d called him at the bank to schedule a meeting, she hadn’t expected him to agree to see her so soon. After her initial surprise wore off, she’d opened her mouth, ready with the words to refuse his invitation to dinner, but then it hit her.

  Cooper must’ve realized how his dinner invite might be interpreted, by her and others. The island was a small, tight-knit community, and everyone who lived there knew she and Shea were married. Everyone knew they’d been together since high school.

  Everyone knew they weren’t together anymore.

  Though not divorced yet, in every way that mattered, Shea and Isobel were no longer married. They hadn’t lived in the same house for nearly two years, and in that time they’d lived separate lives, not sharing a bank account, or a bed.

  There was no reason she shouldn’t go to dinner with a man who wasn’t her husband.

  Despair had slammed into her with the brutality of a ruthless tidal wave, and she’d sunk to the floor in the bedroom they’d once shared. She stared unseeing at the bleak future stretching out before her. Her marriage was over, whether she had accepted that fact or not.

  Cooper’s reedy voice poked through the curtain of anguish that threatened to suffocate her. “Isobel? Are you there?”

  Blinking rapidly, she’d crashed back to reality. “I’m here,” she said, though her voice was weak.

  With a small shake, she threw off the shadows that hounded her and surged to her feet. No more sadness. No more waiting for Shea to change or decide whether he loved her. It was time to move on. To start over and make a new life for herself. A life without him.

  It seemed impossible, and the despair had threatened to pull her under once more, but she’d steeled herself against it. She didn’t need Shea, or any other man, to make her happy. She could have something better.

  Or something equally satisfying anyway—a career doing something she loved. A business all her own.

  But in order to do that, she needed to meet with Cooper, and the sooner the better. What did it matter if they talked at a restaurant instead of an office building?

  So she’d accepted Cooper Spence’s dinner invitation.

  Now he set down his water glass with a table-rattling thud. “Yes. No. I mean, almost. I almost finished reading it.” He tugged at the bowtie around his neck. “But that isn’t why I asked you to dinner tonight.”

  “It isn’t?” This time, Isobel took a nervous swallow of ice-cold water.

  “No. You see, the thing is…”

  But Isobel was no longer listening to Cooper. His words drifted past her ears without her brain absorbing them while she stared over his shoulder at the form of her tall, broad-shouldered husband bearing down on their table.

  His features, usually a beautiful clash of hard angles and soft contours, twisted with his furious scowl, and his short hair, dark with moisture, stood in perfect disarray. The long-sleeved charcoal gray thermal shirt he wore was soaked through with wetness and clung to his lean, well-muscled torso.

  Like an avenging angel, he stalked toward them, dragging a trail of curious glances along with him.

  Isobel’s heart slammed painfully in her chest. With every step he took nearer to her, the gray dullness of her world cracked and crumbled, falling away to reveal shocking Technicolor. An unsteadying rush of dizziness swept over her and she grasped the edge of the tabletop.

  Shea’s long shadow fell across their table. Slowly, Cooper trailed off and lifted his gaze. The color leached from his already pasty skin.

  Liquid fire burned in Shea’s blue eyes and Cooper shrank back in his chair. Then Shea’s hot gaze swerved to her. His eyes raked over her face and lower, caressing the swell of her breasts where the neckline of her blouse dipped. Her skin prickled everywhere his probing eyes touched.

  For a moment, he looked at her the way he used to, his bright eyes alight with naked emotion and hunger. Her heart tripped clumsily and she started to tremble. Once upon a time, that look, the experience of being the center of his world, had thrilled her beyond any dream she might’ve imagined for herself. It had calmed and comforted her.

  Now it was downright violating.

  Screw him.

  His beautiful, lying lips curved into a vicious smile. “Hello, Coop. Mind if I borrow my wife for a moment?”

  Chapter Two

  Without waiting for Cooper’s reply, Shea clamped a hand around Isobel’s fine-boned wrist and tugged her to her feet with a punch of force.

  “What are you doing?” Riotous color rushed into her cheeks. “I’m in the middle of—”

  With a savage snarl, he pivoted and strode toward the exit.

  She stumbled along behind him. “Shea, you can’t barge in here—”

  He whirled. She drew up abruptly but not before she crashed into his chest.

  “You are my wife, Isobel.” He spoke in a low, lethal voice. “Whether or not that means anything to you, it is a fact.”

  She lifted her chin, bringing her mouth a whisper from his. “Whether it means anything to me? I’m not the one who walked away.”

  “That isn’t fair and you damn well know it.”

  Standing nose-to-nose with his estranged wife in the middle of the island’s most popular eatery, Shea was acutely aware of the intrusive glances from their friends
and neighbors. Indeed, they were all that stopped him from giving in to the primitive need to claim her mouth… and more.

  A spark of fire flashed in her gray eyes. “Don’t you dare talk to me about what is and isn’t fair.”

  “Your date is over.”

  Her anger erupted as a shocked gasp. “How dare you.”

  Years of impotent rage churning in his gut, he hauled her into a darkened room off the main dining area, out of sight of the prying eyes.

  “How dare I?” When she scurried from his reach, he pursued her until her back came up hard against the wall. “I’m not the one traipsing around town with another man.”

  She drove her palms into his chest, as if to hold back his fury. “I am not traipsing. I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Are you fucking Cooper Spence?”

  Emotion distorted her expression, but she ducked her chin before he could pick apart the reaction. “So what if I am?”

  “I’ll kill him.”

  She rolled her eyes, then risked a closer study of his face.

  A frisson of alarm chased across her features. “Do not kill Cooper.”

  He promised her nothing.

  She sighed, and the sound held more weariness than frustration. “Shea, what are you doing here? How did you even know where I was?”

  “Finn told me.”

  “You talked to Finn? What did you say? If you upset him again—”

  Shea cursed. “Finn’s fine. I needed—” He swallowed the hard lump lodged in his throat. “I needed to know you’re okay.”

  The spot between her perfectly arched eyebrows puckered. “Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “The storm,” he said. “It’s a bad one.”

  “It’s storming?” Her gaze darted to the windows on the far wall, which were covered with heavy drapery. “I didn’t know…”

  Instinctively, his hand sought hers. With his fingertips, he stroked the center of her palm and when her muscles relaxed, he nudged his fingers between hers, entwining them tightly together.

  “It’s supposed to pass quickly,” he murmured while the pad of his thumb rubbed the racing pulse point on the inside of her wrist.