Under Her Clothes

A fresh start in a new city and distance from the past—especially his father—had been the main reasons Dom took this job. He hadn’t intended to leave his brother behind, too, at least not completely, but after everything that had happened, it had been easy to let silence take root and grow until it blanketed everything. “If you want to be a great chef, Marc—”

“Oh, yes. S’il te plaît.” One of Marc’s thick, black brows winged up. “Remind me that I could be a great chef, too, if I’d only apply myself. If I had any discipline. If I only wanted it enough...”

Dom clenched his jaw. For some reason, a vision of Colby St. James—scrappy and tough and totally against the rules—rose up before his mind’s eye. “Believe me. It is possible to want this life too much. There are things you should not sacrifice.”

He hadn’t meant to say that, the words peeled from him like the rind from an orange, but for the first time in five years, Dom saw his brother smile. The broad, infectious grin sent a shaft of light down into the darkest parts of Dom’s heart.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Marc told him. “You should not give up your family.”

That wasn’t what Dom had been referring to, but he liked the look of Marc’s smile too much to correct him. Despite the way their father had occasionally pitted them against one another, Dom’s issues had never truly been with his brother. Which, of course, was what made him the perfect emissary to bring Dom back into the family fold.