The Wrong Brother's Temptation novel Chapter 49

Sienna

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She had materialized at his side again and her hand was casually brushing his shoulder, laughing and gently squeezing his arm like she was his long lost friend.

Maybe she was for all I knew.

He looked up and found me across the room immediately, like he’d known exactly where to look, and raised his hand in a small wave.

But I turned around and walked the other way as fast as I could.

“Hey Sienna!” I heard him shout out my name but that only made me increase my pace.

My heels clicked on the marble, night air hitting my face as I pushed through it and went down the garden steps and stopped at the stone balustrade at the bottom, pressing my palms flat against the cool surface and breathing.

“For someone who spent three hours telling me what an excellent actress she is,” said Connor from directly behind me, “you are genuinely terrible at pretending you’re not annoyed.”

I turned around. He was four steps above me, jacket still perfect, looking completely unbothered for a man who had apparently walked out of a formal party to chase me into a garden.

“I’m not annoyed,” I said.

“You walked away from me mid–wave.”

“I didn’t see you.” I lied through my teeth.

“Sienna. We made direct eye contact. I waved at you and you legit turned around and ran the other way”

“I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.” I avoided meeting his gaze.

He came down the remaining steps and stopped in front of me and looked at my face with that reading expression and I fought to keep mine carefully neutral.

“What is going on with you tonight?” he said.

“Nothing is going on. I wanted air. Did you see how many people are there inside?”

“You’ve been frowning at me from across the room for forty–five minutes.”

“I wasn’t-“I stopped, and instead of providing any explanation, chickened out. “I think I’m going to head home actually. It’s getting late.”

“Okay, fine then, I’ll drop you.”

1/4

15:15 Thu, Jul 23

Chapter 49

“You don’t have to. Besides, it’s your family’s event.”

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He glanced down at his watch and his expression shifted briefly and disappeared before I could properly see it. “I was leaving anyway.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer, and I suddenly remembered the way he had been tense all day, asking me to leave him alone. His voice had been clipped and strange, the way he kept saying not today like he was managing a countdown.

“You kept saying not today.” I said slowly. “This afternoon when I was trying to apologize, and when I kept pushing. You said it more than once.”

I watched his face for reaction because I needed a diversion from the colossal mess of my own thoughts. “What’s happening today?”

“I am not sure if you would be interested” He shrugged but his expression told me he definitely hoped I would.

And I was a curious cat so I added, “I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t interested in knowing the answer.”

He gave me a wry smile and then said the next line that felt like a tight slap across my face.

“Today,” he said, and his voice dropped a little, losing its sharp edges and going a little soft, “is the birthday of the most important woman in my life.”

I went deathly still all of a sudden.

This was nowhere even close to a guess I could have taken. And given the way my brain had already been confused, this line ensured the jumbled knot would only grow tighter.

Connor watched my face the way he’d been watching it all evening…reading it, cataloguing every expression on my face and said nothing else, just let the words sit there between us.

There was a most important woman in his life.

I’d been managing the unnamed feeling reasonably well all evening through sheer force of not looking at it directly. But this landed differently. This had weight to it that the unnamed feeling immediately responded to, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t notice.

“Oh.” I said, which was mortifying because I couldn’t come up with anything else.

“I’m going to go celebrate her birthday,” he said, with that careful neutrality he used when he was watching to see what you did with information. “Thought you might want to come.”

Okay, this was growing weirder by the second.

“You want me to come celebrate another woman’s birthday with you?” I asked, my mouth half open.

Connor kept observing me and added, “I thought you might want to know who she is.”

2/4

15:15 Thu, Jul 23

Chapter 49

Part of me absolutely did not want to go.

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1 certainly did not want to watch Connor be soft with someone else, see the version of him that existed without the sharp angles and stand there smiling like an idiot while he gave someone else the unguarded

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