She gave them a sad little smile, squeezed their hands and kissed each of them on the cheek. Her lips by his ear, she promised, “I’ll keep your secret.” When she pulled away, she looked at Axel. “I have to go.”
Was there a slight quaver in her voice?
She let go of their hands and walked around them, walked away from them, and vanished around the corner to the lobby.
Axel’s back thumped against the wall as he shoved his hands in his pockets and dropped his head forward.
Gunnar had never felt so much pain. Not his broken leg when he was twelve and fell off the roof. Not his concussion when he was sixteen and took a nosedive off his motorcycle.
“She isn’t the one,” Axel said, his voice tight. “If she could walk away, she’s not the one. Right?”
Gunnar’s heart shattered. If Dakota wasn’t the one, then he didn’t think the one existed. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting— needing—another woman the way he needed her.
“Right? ” Axel demanded, looking up with desolate eyes.
“Right,” Gunnar said, the word strangled, not wanting to leave his lips.
“Right,” Axel said. He shoved away from the wall.
“I need a drink.”
Gunnar followed him into the hotel lounge, which he was surprised was open at that time of the morning.
Axel sidled up to the bar and plopped down on a stool.
“Ax, maybe drinking—”
“Coffee,” Axel told the bartender. “Very hot and very black.”
Gunnar almost smiled, but it was short lived.
“Same,” he said, sitting down next to his brother.
Long silence stretched as they sipped their drinks.
Then Axel nudged Gunnar with his shoulder. “It’s not the end of the world. It was good while it lasted, but she’s not the only fish in the sea.”
Gunnar scowled at his brother’s profile. You keep telling yourself that, and maybe you’ll even believe it one day.
Axel turned his head. What else can we do?
Axel picked the last plate Gunnar had just rinsed off the counter, dried it and stuck it in the cupboard overhead. A Sunday night ritual at the Falke house, Heidi had cooked, as usual, and the guys took turns with kitchen cleanup.
Though he, Gunnar and a couple of his other brothers lived in the apartments above the outfitters store, the family always met for dinner at their fathers’ home on weekends. Gunnar rung out the dish cloth and wiped down first the island in the middle of the massive kitchen, then the countertop around the sink, while Axel made sure the pots and pans were stored properly, stacked just so in the cabinet, or Heidi would pitch a fit.
The rest of the family was already in the living room, shouting at the television as they watched whatever sports happened to be on.
“Boys.”
Axel turned from the stove to see their dads standing in the doorway.
“The den.” Their dads turned and walked out of the kitchen.
Even at the age of thirty, being called into the den could make his stomach quiver. That room had always been off limits to the kids, unless it was punishment time for some major infraction.
Axel turned a glance on Gunnar, who looked as worried as he felt. In unison, they headed out of the kitchen, knowing that keeping their dads waiting would be worse.
“We’re too old to get the belt,” Gunnar muttered under his breath as Axel turned the knob on the door to the dads’ inner sanctum.
The room was large, holding two heavy oak desks, two recliners—their dads’ thrones as they’d always referred to them—and a leather sofa that faced the recliners across a scarred oak coffee table. One end table stood between the thrones.
“Sit,” Fridrik said. He was the older of the two, by about a minute and a half. His voice was hard, and Axel racked his brain for whatever he and Gunnar had done to get a lecture.
Gunnar sat down and Axel followed, sitting on opposite ends of the leather sofa.
Burke, their other father, raised a highball glass to his lips and sipped his after-dinner scotch. He slowly lowered the glass to rest on the arm of his chair, looked from Axel to Gunnar, then said, “We’re sick to death of watching the two of you mope around the way you have been for the last month. It stops now.”
Axel glanced at Gunnar, who stared at the coffee table.
Fridrik sighed. “Why the hell are you two still here when she’s in Vegas?”
Axel stared at his dads, fixing his features so his surprise didn’t show. “What are you talking about?”
“I told you he’d play stupid,” Burke said in a low, angry tone to Fridrik.
Fridrik explained, “Your mate is in Vegas and you’re here. You don’t see a problem with this?”
“She’s not our mate,” Axel denied, a declaration that lacked any conviction.
Fridrik snorted. Burke shook his head and said, “Really?” in a tone filled with sarcasm.
“We haven’t marked her,” Gunnar said. Neither father seemed convinced.
“If she were our mate, she wouldn’t have left us,” Axel added stubbornly.
Burke laughed at that then took another sip of his drink. “Boys, do you really think your mother just fell at our feet and gave herself over to a couple of catamount shifters?”
Gunnar looked up at that. “She told us she grew up here, that she’d always been in love with the two of you.”
Fridrik burst out in hearty laughter that seemed to erase years from his features.
Burke smirked. “Oh, she was in love with us, all right. Loved playing little games, teasing us to get us sniffing around, seeing which one of us would turn on the other first over her. That woman, bless her heart, did whatever she could to make us jealous. We dealt with that all through school. Until the graduation party.” His face went serious, and Fridrik took over the story.
“That’s the night she found out what we were. She decided to go to the party with Dick Haven, even though both of us had asked her. She was back to playing her little game, seeing which one of us would come after her. We knew it was time to reveal ourselves to her. We loved her, knew she was the one, and we were getting too old to play her games.
“Dick had her in the back of his father’s pickup truck, trying to get under her skirts, when we found her. She screamed, trying to get away from him, and we went a little crazy.”
“I shifted,” Fridrik said with a small shake of his head.
“She was more terrified of us in that moment than she was of Dick.”
“So, what happened? How’d you get together?”
Gunnar asked, obviously engrossed in a story they’d never heard.
“Took us over two years of courting her to convince her we were the guys she’d always loved,” Burke said with a small smile, full of tender love for the wife who’d died just a few years earlier. “And after she agreed to be our mate, she admitted she was happy she didn’t have to choose between us. Because she couldn’t.”
Axel swiped his hand over his face. “This is different. Dakota isn’t Mom. She didn’t have a lifetime to get to know us. She made her choice. Her career was more important than us.”
Burke’s eyes narrowed, and he pressed his lips together, which meant he had a good anger brewing.
Fridrik said, “You both revealed yourselves to her, right?”
He and Gunnar nodded.
“And she didn’t run screaming from the cabin?”
Burke asked.
“We were buried in snow. She couldn’t,” Axel said dryly.
“Don’t you dare mouth off to us, boy!”
“Sorry, Dad,” he said contritely and slouched into the sofa.
“She won’t reveal our secret,” Gunnar said, “if that’s what you’re concerned about.”