Beautiful Ruin (Nolan Brothers #1) Read online

  Then his dark eyes swung back to her, and for one terrifying, irrational moment, she feared he saw too much.

  Heat warmed her cheeks, and she scrambled to erect barriers, to fight off the invasion and keep hidden those corners no one should see. Even she did not inspect those places.

  His smile lingered. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”

  “A property management company planned to convert it into apartments, but the economy tanked and they lost it to foreclosure. I bought it from the bank three months ago.” Then, because the wine loosened her lips, more words tumbled out. “But everything’s gone wrong. There’ve been delays and setbacks. Expensive setbacks.”

  “Well, I’m glad somebody’s going to save this old place.” His voice filled with some nameless emotion. “It’s a beautiful house.”

  Her heart struck against her breastbone with painful wallops. “I hope to make it beautiful. One day.”

  Dark eyes seized on her face for one aching heartbeat, two. “It’s beautiful now. Only needs someone who gives a shit about it. Someone like you.”

  Raindrops plopped to the earth in a steady patter. Lulled by their rhythm, Mina stared up into his face. A part of her wanted to hate him for leaving and taking with him all that she’d wanted, except she wasn’t able to muster anything more than sorrow and regret for the young girl who’d dreamed of him so often and for so long. Many, many years. Of his easy smile and gentle touch.

  Fifteen years between then and now.

  His face swam before her eyes.

  He swallowed hard. “What is it?”

  “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  A slash of emotion slanted across his well-shaped features.

  Even knowing the wine made her vulnerable, she couldn’t stop the words. “Where have you been?”

  He made a bitter sound, like a laugh except without a trace of humor. Only a pained loneliness Mina recognized all too well.

  Her heart squeezed and she drew nearer to him. His scent carried to her, a tormenting mix of soap and citrus and man.

  Noah stilled.

  She might’ve shrunk back if not for the chord of vulnerability thrumming in his dark eyes.

  She rose up on her tiptoes and touched her lips to his.

  He held himself immobile.

  Mina’s heart stuttered to a stop. “You’re not married, are you?”

  His throat worked as he swallowed. “No. Are you—?”

  She gave a small shake of her head, cutting off his next words. “No. There’s no one.”

  His hand slipped to her waist, and he applied pressure so her body came up snug against his. He bent his head low.

  She tipped her chin up.

  But rather than kiss her, he pulled back. A tiny movement, which might as well have been a slap to her face.

  His features hardened to stone. “Be careful, Mina. You’re not slumming it with the Nolan bastard this time.”

  Hot fury erupted in her sapphire eyes, and she opened her mouth to lash out at him, but at the last moment, she stopped herself. She fell back, putting several feet between them.

  Her youthful attractiveness had fallen away and morphed into something else. Something far better. Her features were sharper, clearer. Like a blurry photograph snapped into focus. Her large blue eyes seemed brighter, her small, straight nose more perfect.

  Her kissable, over-plump mouth was as he remembered. Except hotter.

  She wasn’t a high school girl anymore but a full-blown woman. Small and full by turns, she was all soft curves and gentle roundness. With her baby-doll face and cut-off blue jeans, she might’ve stepped straight off the pages of an X-rated fairy tale.

  “It wasn’t like that.” Her voice held a quiet sort of sorrow.

  Noah shook off the cobwebs of lust. “What was it like then?”

  Hectic color stained her pale cheeks. “I don’t know, but whatever you’re thinking, it wasn’t like that.”

  “If you say so.” He injected boredom into his tone to mask the bitterness.

  “You’re the one who left.”

  She was right, of course. Except, “You didn’t want me to stay.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He couldn’t let the lie go. “I came to see you, to tell you—to talk to you. You just smiled and said, ‘Have a nice life.’”

  Incredulous disbelief stared back at him. “I was supposed to beg you not to go?”

  “If that’s what you wanted, yes.”

  She snorted. Actually snorted. “I wasn’t that naive. I understood what was between us.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  One of her small shoulders lifted. “We were young and having some fun. A wild, random hookup. Nothing more.”

  She tugged on the hem of her sleeve, a self-conscious gesture he recalled from high school. Her hands trembled.

  His ire faded as quickly as it’d spiked. “So, you were using me?”

  She gave a firm nod. “Exactly.”

  “I feel so cheap.”

  Her eyes narrowed at him. “I’m glad you find this funny.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  She gaped at him, her blue eyes now huge in her oval face.

  “It was more than a random hookup, Mina. Wild, yes, but not random.”

  “Of course it was random. It was a one-night stand. That’s the definition of random.” Exasperation amplified her voice. “You might’ve been the best I’d ever had—still random.”

  “It wasn’t a one-night stand. We’d been building up to it for months. Long before that night.”

  She waved off his words. “Technicality.”

  “Fact.”

  She gaped at him as if he’d sprouted another head. He might have, for all the crazy shit coming out his mouth, but it’d lived like a splinter under the surface of his skin for too long, and he wasn’t about to walk away at the first real chance to extract the irritant.

  She folded her arms. “Fine. What would you call it?”

  Though he hadn’t thought of their hookup in years, it all came rushing back to him. So vivid it might’ve been imprinted on his brain.

  It’d been fall of their senior year. The mingled scent of damp soil, dead leaves, and campfire smoke clung to him as he wound his way through a sea of costumed high school and college kids. That’s when he saw her. All crazy-sexy curves and dark, wavy hair of an indeterminate color.

  His feet carried him to her without his conscious consent. The heat from her smile warmed his belly.

  He took in her dirt-stained white dress, torn at the shoulder and the thigh. A pair of feathered wings hung off her back at a cockeyed tilt, and her hair lay in artful disarray, a crooked halo buried in the riotous curls.

  His balls tightened. “Don’t tell me. A fallen angel?”

  “Yes! Thank you. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m okay. Like they think I fell or was attacked or something.” She smiled up at him, a dirt smudge high on her softly rounded cheek. “I feel ridiculous.”

  They drank keg beer and talked for hours, until lust and hunger drove them into the woods behind the house, where he helped her out of her wings and dragged the tattered hem of her costume up her thighs, over her waist.

  He remembered the feel of her legs wrapped tight around him. The rush of moving inside her. The heart of her clenching his cock while her soft moans echoed in his ear.

  An angel, indeed.

  Afterwards, she acted as though he didn’t exist.

  Noah sighed. What would he call it? A hookup. A moment of abandon.

  A mistake.

  His lips curled into a smirk. “I’m keen on your other description—what was that you said? ‘Best you ever had,’ I think you called me? I can live with that.”

  The heightened color on her cheeks deepened to a furious blush. “I said, ‘might have been.’ As in, you might have been the best I’d ever had, and it still wouldn’t have changed anything. I was trying to make a point, not a statement of
fact.”

  “I understand.”

  She trained those doe eyes on him. “Well, I didn’t expect a marriage proposal.”

  A bark of laughter burst from him. The thought of Mina Winslow, the darling daughter of one of the wealthiest, most powerful political families in the state marrying the Nolan bastard was too goddamn funny. “That never would’ve happened.” Not until the words left his mouth to sit in the air between them did he hear them as they must’ve sounded to her ears.

  An awful, despairing look slashed across her face. Large, round eyes gripped him. The color of sapphires, he’d thought once. Vulnerable and imploring, yet somehow guarded.

  “I know that.” She spoke with a quiet dignity that squeezed a spot in the center of his chest.

  A flash of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by a crack of thunder, which rattled the windowpanes.

  He sighed. “I didn’t come here to do this.”

  “Why did you come?”

  Noah hesitated. “I heard something about an arrowhead and a possible archaeological site.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I was curious.”

  He wasn’t sure why he didn’t tell her the truth. That he was an archaeologist and a local university had asked him to assess the site and consider its suitability for an excavation. Maybe a part of him wanted to find out if she’d accept him this time around when she still believed he was a high school dropout.

  “You can’t get to the location in the mud. You’ll have to come back in a few days.” She turned to stare through the French doors. Her gaze searched the horizon like a seasick sailor seeking a stable reference point.

  For a moment, he hesitated.

  With another sigh, he gave himself a mental shake. If he couldn’t get to the site, there was nothing for him here.

  He left her in the shabby ballroom.

  Chapter Three

  Noah darted through the rain and ducked inside the black Chevy Colorado. The truck awoke with a growl, and, knuckles white on the steering wheel, he navigated down Mina’s driveway and onto the winding coastal road leading back to town.

  He pushed back a hank of wet hair from his face and peered through the whirring windshield wipers. Dark clouds loomed offshore, and whitecaps churned and crashed toward shore.

  Gray and violent, remote and forbidding. It summed up everything he remembered about the small island nestled off the western coast of northern Michigan.

  Less than eight miles long and three miles wide, its only connection to the mainland was a ferryboat that made four trips per day. When he and his brothers had come to the island from Ireland to live when Noah was ten years old, they’d viewed the isolated community much as one would a prison sentence.

  His cell phone vibrated across the center console where he’d set it.

  “Noah, its Walter. Did you get a chance to view the site?”

  Sand dunes emerged out of the darkness while beach grasses danced on the wind. “Sorry, no. We were rained out.”

  “Too bad.” Walter’s disappointment carried over the phone. “I’m curious to hear what you think.”

  “I’ll try again in a day or two and get back with you.”

  Noah disconnected the call as he rolled over the stone bridge. Soon, he’d pass by the closed-up factory where his dad, Daniel, had worked on occasion, and the old pub where he could often be found after his shift, drunk and looking for a fight.

  Not anymore.

  The cold rage that leapt to life in Noah’s chest when he thought of his dad didn’t come. It’d been replaced by something else. Something new. Still heavy but less rigid.

  Grief.

  Exhaustion pulled at him, and he scrubbed a hand over his face.

  The thought of returning to his dingy motel room didn’t appeal to him. On Main Street, he drove past the turn-of-the-century brick and mortar buildings. At the last, he whipped the truck into an empty parking space and killed the engine.

  A wall of humidity hit him when he climbed from the cab. Scents both familiar and foreign assailed him. Sun-warmed asphalt damp with rain. The sharp, musty whiff of algae. The hot, sweet tang of food from the row of bars and restaurants crowding downtown.

  He resisted the pull to a time and a place he’d rather not go and focused instead on finding a restaurant to grab some dinner.

  He pulled up when he spotted it—Lucky’s Irish Pub. At least there’d been one improvement in this tired town since he’d left. With a quick glance, he crossed the street and bounded onto the sidewalk. He yanked the pub door open and stepped inside.

  The dim interior enveloped him. When his eyes adjusted to the light, he scanned the room, taking in warm woods and exposed brick. As it was too early for the dinner rush, most tables sat empty.

  He headed for the bar propped up by locals on barstools. Massive and solid, the large mahogany structure was worn with use.

  A stunning piece, as immovable as the brother staring him down from the other side.

  Noah stilled while his mind worked the puzzle before him. The man possessed Shea’s chiseled features and vivid blue eyes, but his dark brown hair had turned pale. At thirty-five, his smooth skin and lean, well-muscled physique stood in stark contrast to his gray hair.

  Alerted by Shea’s fierce regard, the row of men sitting on stools turned as one.

  Shit.

  The last thing Noah wanted or needed at the moment was a family reunion. With reluctance churning in his stomach, he forced his feet to move.

  Wood scraped against slate when one of the men stood. Father John must be in his mid-fifties now. He was tall and slender, with an athletic build, and his clean-shaven face and head provided a stark canvas for his bright blue eyes. The same hue as Noah’s mother’s.

  Ensnared by the electric-blue gaze, Noah fought the urge to squirm like the ten-year-old little shit he’d been the first time he’d met his uncle. With damning eyes, John peered into Noah’s face until Noah’s heart thumped in his chest and echoed in his ears.

  He couldn’t move. He wanted to shout. To bare and gnash his teeth. To demand answers and understanding.

  To beg forgiveness and give none in return.

  But those were the impulses of his youth, long ago tamed.

  Without warning, a wide smile split John’s lean face, revealing one front tooth set a tad forward. “Welcome home, son.”

  A snort of laughter punctured the tension. “Cut the crap, John. You’re retired.” A scar cut through Jack’s left brow, the result of an incident with a hockey stick when Jack was ten and Noah thirteen years old.

  “Resigned.” John retook his barstool. “There’s a difference, ye know.”

  “About time you showed your face around here,” Jack said.

  The bitter swill of swallowed-back resentment clogged in Noah’s throat.

  “How long you in town?” Jack asked.

  Noah hesitated, uncertain.

  “’Cause I’m gonna be straight with you.” Jack studied Noah with steely green-gold eyes. “I need a fourth.”

  Noah blinked. “A what?”

  “A fourth man. So we can enter the Gordie Howe tournament next month.”

  “The Gordie Howe...?” Noah gaped at his little brother. “We’re talking about playing hockey?”

  “Of course we’re talking about hockey. Luke’s in goal, so you’ll be my left forward.”

  The fourth of five boys, Jack’s competitive streak was notorious. He also played professional hockey in the NHL.

  “I haven’t skated in years,” Noah said.

  “And I guaran-goddamn-tee you’re still faster than either of these two.” Jack thumbed his hand toward Shea and the man still perched on his barstool. “If we’re gonna win this thing, we need more speed up front and someone who isn’t afraid to hurt people.”

  Noah narrowed his eyes at Jack. “Are you even allowed to play in amateur games?”

  Jack’s expression darkened. “We’re locked out again. I can do whatever I want.”

  Th
e dark-haired man slipped off the barstool and came to stand next to the others. Noah looked into a face remarkably similar to his own.

  Luke. The last time Noah had seen him, he’d been a gangly teenager with purple hair and guy-liner.

  Noah swallowed hard.

  “They throw a tournament together every time Jack’s in town,” Luke said. “Seems grown men love little more than getting their asses kicked by a pro athlete.”

  Noah returned the sly grin on Luke’s uncommonly handsome face. “You look good, little brother. Not so damn ugly.”

  Luke’s smile flashed wide and bright. “Wish I could say the same.”

  A laugh startled from Noah. Some of the tightness drained from his shoulders as Luke reached out and their handshake turned into a man-hug.

  “It’s good to see you,” Luke said into Noah’s ear.

  “We were talking ’bout taking the Irish Fart out in the morning,” Jack said as he and John reclaimed their barstools. “You should come.”

  Noah lifted one eyebrow. “The Irish Fart?”

  “It’s my boat,” John said. “She’s a real beauty. A thirty-five-footer.”

  Noah couldn’t stop himself asking. “You named your boat the Irish Fart?”

  John’s smile vanished and he shot a withering glance at the others. “No. I named it the Gaelic Wind, but some eedjits can’t seem to remember that.”

  Snickers carried around the trio of brothers. Proof of a shared history Noah knew nothing about.

  Noah rubbed the nape of his neck and stepped up to the bar. “I’m in.”

  He risked a glimpse at Shea, the oldest of the five brothers and at one time Noah’s closest friend in the world. “You work here or something?”

  Shea folded his arms across his chest. “I own it.”

  “You own it.” A sardonic smile twisted Noah’s lips. “Of course you do.”

  “What are you doing here?” Shea’s deep, raspy voice cut through the small group.

  With that, the cozy little family reunion would succumb to the inevitable.

  “I heard about Dad,” Noah said.

  Shea’s brilliant blue gaze sliced to Father John.

  John straightened. “He had a right to know.”