Chapter 3

Lacey

Grant was crying.

Did you hear what I just said?

Grant was crying.

Grant never cries. I’ve known him practically my whole life. He was the first member of the Brotherhood my father brought to live with us at the mansion. Since the moment my father introduced us, seventeen years ago, I’d never once seen him cry. Not even at my father’s funeral, and he regarded my father as dearly as his own.

Not that we were like siblings or anything. Hell no. Grant was twenty-one when my father found him. He was a grown adult the first time I set eyes on him. He was a man then, and he was a man now. He’d always been all man.

Back then, he was the best safe cracker on the west coast. My father brought him to live with us mostly to keep him out of trouble. He was too talented to end up in a prison cell, my father said. And that was pretty much how the Brotherhood started out, first with Grant, and later with Jackson, Forrester, and Grady.

My father had a habit of taking in strays and giving them the guidance they hadn’t found elsewhere. It was a weird way for me to grow up, surrounded by thieves, but it sure was interesting.

The boys, the brothers, as we called them, were all talented thieves, brave criminals, and they weren’t afraid to put their neck on the line to do what was required. If it wasn’t for my father, they might all have ended up as common criminals.

But the way my father trained them, they realized that a talent for stealing large sums of money could be used for good just as effectively as evil. My father taught them the world was full of corporations and rich men who had more money than they needed or deserved. If someone was willing to take that money and spread it out among the people who really needed it, they’d be performing a valuable service.

And it all started with Grant. My father never intended for it to grow, but by the time he passed away, there were four brothers, and to this day they’re the only family I have. Well, them, and Faith and Sam.

I felt self-conscious as I walked down the aisle. Faith insisted I have the honor of preceding her. She would be following me down the aisle in a moment. Faith’s own family had let her down in life and wouldn’t be attending the wedding. To be honest, I wasn’t even certain her parents were alive. She never spoke of them.

I never knew my own mother, she died of cancer a year after my birth, but for this special day I was wearing her wedding dress. It was light blue. As I stepped carefully down the aisle, beautiful music playing, I imagined what it would be like one day to get married. If that day would ever come.

I looked ahead. Jackson was there of course, with the priest, and standing next to him, tall and strong and handsome as ever, was Grant.

And he was crying.

Just a little, a few tears that barely filled his eyes enough to spill down over his cheeks, but they were there.

He was the best man, I was the maid of honor, and for a brief second, I felt as if I was walking down the aisle to him. As if he was my husband-to-be, waiting at the altar for his bride.

It was a foolish thought. Grant would never be a groom.

I remembered as clearly as if it were yesterday, the day my father brought him into our home.

I was seventeen, a high school junior. I spent my time listening to Joy Division and New Order. My favorite movie was The Breakfast Club. I wore my hair like Blondie. I can’t imagine what Grant thought of me when he met me, but for my part, I was instantly and completely taken by him.

He was like no one I’d seen before. His size, his sheer strength, startled me even then. It was like the time when I was a child and my father took me to the zoo, and for the first time I saw the majesty and power of a grizzly bear.

There was something noble, but also sad and lonely about the depth and darkness of his eyes.

I was so taken by him I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I did all the things girls do when they’re infatuated. I drew pictures of him in my diary and practiced writing my name as Lacey Lucas. I concocted detailed imaginary situations in which we confided our love to each other.

I watched him wistfully as he did his chores around the vineyard, learning the ropes, helping my father. My father taught him that he could use his talents to help people as well as steal money. It was a revelation to Grant, who’d never thought of using his skills for the benefit of others.

It was during those months I first realized there was a desire flowing through me so powerful, so filled with longing and passion, that it startled me.

Usually at the end of the work day, especially when it was hot and the sun beat down on them mercilessly, Grant would shower by the barn with an old garden hose. I’d watch him rip off his shirt and hose down his strong, sweaty muscles, and ashamed as I am to admit it, he made my panties wet. God, it was a delicious torture. To be that close to something so beautiful, so sexy.

At night, I dreamt about his strong, muscular body, and what it would be like to have him wrapped around me. I imagined him pinning me to the wall of the barn, or throwing me onto the hay in the loft, and having his manly way with me.

My first orgasm was while I was spying on him. Believe me when I say it came as a shock. I was seventeen. I was sitting on my bed, peering out the window at him as he hosed himself down, and my hand naturally went inside my panties.

I’d touched myself before, but never to the point of climax. I didn’t even know it was possible. I wet my fingers and began stroking my clit delicately. I imagined it was Grant touching me, on our wedding night, so fired up with desire for me that he was ready to burst. I was so naive back then. I thought it had to be our wedding night.

I guess I always wanted Grant to be my first. My first crush. My first kiss. My first love. My first everything.

I could clearly see his face, the brooding depth of his dark, brown eyes, as that first orgasm rushed through my body. The pleasure of it surged through me like a flash flood. To this day, I still picture him showering with the hose when I orgasm. No matter who I’m with.

But nothing ever happened between us.

There was sexual tension, sure. There was more chemistry than in a scientist’s laboratory. I was crazy about him, and I’m sure he had a thing for me too. We saw each other all the time. We even went out of our way to spend more time together, but it was always in a teasing, playful way. It was flirtatious, fun, happy, but never anything more.

He had too much respect for my father. He didn’t dare lay a finger on me, much to my frustration, and by the time my father passed away, it was too late.

By that time, we knew each other too well.

We were like family. Hell, we were family. We’d done each other’s laundry. We’d fought over the last slice of pie at the dinner table. We’d shared my father’s pickup truck on weekends, him to go down to the Rusty Nail and pick up the waitress, me to get to whatever high school party was happening.

Ugh, he’d even seen me throw up. He helped me keep my first drunken escapades from my father’s attention, but the truth was, I’d have preferred to be seen by my father than Grant at those moments.

He’d also beaten up boys who hurt me. For that, I would forever be grateful, even if it meant I had to keep my romantic life secret from him now.

No. It was hopeless. Nothing could ever happen between us. I’d seen too many of the chicks he brought home, and watched them escape the mansion before sunrise as I sat at the dining table with my Cheerios. He had the libido of a stallion.

I’d also heard him talk too many times about how marriage wasn’t for him. How he could never settle down, never tie himself to just one girl.

It was a tough lesson, my first broken heart before I’d even been in a relationship, but I suppose I can’t complain. Grant took care of me like I was family. Since my father’s death, he had my back. I know he’d never let anything bad happen to me.

But my feelings for him have haunted me. Every man I’ve ever been with has been compared, top to bottom, to Grant.

And they’ve all been found wanting.

First, there were the kids I dated in high school. They were all boys and could never measure up to Grant. Muscle, sweat, suave, nerve. He was cocky back in those days. He’d say things he knew would wind me up, just to get a rise out of me. It was our way of releasing the sexual tension.

And I guess it worked. We behaved.

Later, when I reached my twenties, I had some real relationships. At least, as real as they ever got with me. But I was never able to get one-hundred-percent committed to the guys I was with. And I guess at some level they could tell, because more than one of them cheated on me.

I always told myself I deserved it, because even though I was completely faithful, and even though I did everything in my power to make them happy, in my heart, it was only Grant I wanted to be with.

In my heart, I was only ever really faithful to one man.

And it had led me to a very lonely place.