“Cass!”
“I feel nauseous. Seriously, stop. Keep it to yourself.” Roarke spoke past a mouthful of eggs. “You’re our little sister. I don’t want to think about you doing those things.”
Cassidy sighed. “Freaking double standard,” she muttered. “You two”—she stabbed the air with her fork for emphasis—“are living in a dream world. You have sex with everything that moves.” She looked pointedly at Matthew, who shrugged. “Yet you want to think there are still virgins out there waiting for you to deflower them.”
“I hold no such illusions,” Roarke said. “And I don’t sleep with everything that moves.”
“Me, either—to the first part.”
“Good, because you’ll be really disappointed. The only virgin I know is Lorena, and that’s because her father’s kept her under lock and key for the past twenty-five years. I feel sorry for her. I’m surprised he let her out of his sight to be my maid of honor.”
“Lorena’s a virgin?”
Both Roarke and Cassidy turned to Matthew. Roarke noted the heightened interest in his voice. “Why are you so interested?” Cassidy asked.
“I’m not. I’m . . . surprised, that’s all.” Matthew picked up his glass of milk and took a large swallow. He became captivated by the food on his plate.
Roarke suspected there was more behind his brother’s outburst, but Cassidy seemed satisfied and directed her attention to him. “It’s about time you get married and start having a family. You know Aunt Iris is going to mention it when she sees you this weekend.”
Roarke hated having to field questions about his love life, but he resigned himself to its inevitability. He’d been too busy to date seriously, but if he had his way, his love life would be different. The image of Celeste’s face floated across his mind’s eye.
The shock of waking up to an empty hotel room still stuck in his craw. One night hadn’t been enough. He couldn’t forget her, but apparently, she’d forgotten him. After a full week since their night at the Ritz-Carlton, he still couldn’t conceive of a reasonable explanation for why she’d left the way she did. He thought they had hit it off.
“I’m a grown man,” he said to his sister. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll deal with Aunt Iris and anybody else who asks questions. One wedding at a time. Let’s get you married first.”
He forced the last forkful of pancake into his mouth, although he didn’t feel much like eating anymore. He’d finally swallowed his pride and contacted Lucas and Xander a couple of days ago to find out if either had obtained contact information for the other women. He thought he could reach out to her through one of her friends, but no such luck.
He couldn’t understand why she left without a word. It didn’t make sense, as if he’d imagined the passion they shared. He racked his brain in an effort to figure out what had gone wrong. Even worse, he thought about their night together over and over, the torture of it making his body clench in sexual frustration.
“Uh-oh, here comes trouble. It’s your brother,” Matthew said in a low voice.
Immersed in his thoughts, Roarke completely missed the red sports car parking outside the house.
“Be nice,” Cassidy said, smacking the back of Matthew’s hand. “He’s your brother, too.”
“He’s our half brother, and you know as well as I do whenever he’s around, trouble’s close behind. Why’d you invite him?”
“Because he’s our brother,” Roarke said in a firm voice before Cassidy could respond. “He’s not at fault for what our father and his mother did. Try to be nice for a change.”