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“Have you known him long?”
    The affection was evident in Carinna’s nearly smoke-gray eyes now, as wel , as she joined me at the island. Smiling, she repeated my move, setting down one beer and uncapping the other. “Pretty much his whole life. The three of us grew up together.”
    I pulled back a long, cold drink as the information settled. Just because she knew him, didn’t have to mean she really knew him. After all, she hadn’t seemed to know how long Ryan and I had been screwing. “Any notable skeletons?”
    “Since you work at the firehouse, you must know that he has a reputation for getting around.” I nodded, and she continued, “He can also be pretty narrow-minded, though he hasn’t acted that way in months.” A thoughtful frown formed on her lips. “Actually, he hasn’t mentioned sleeping with anyone in months, either. Maybe it’s just because Jack and I are together and we don’t share our sex stories with him for obvious reasons, but we used to hash on the details of our love lives as part of our Wednesday-night poker routine.”
    So he’d broadened his horizons and potentially quit sleeping around. Damn, so much for skeletons, not to mention obliterating my guilt.
    “Has he changed in any other way?” I pressed, all but hanging on the hope of a negative find.
    Carinna took a pull from her beer as she considered the question. She set the bottle back on the island. “He is more affectionate with Jack. They’ve always been close, with their dad dying young and Jack basically being a surrogate dad for Ryan, but you know how guys can be about their fear of getting too touchy-feely with other guys?”
    Not to mention their fear of butt plugs.
    I nodded. “I do.”
    A conspiratorial smile returned to her lips. My guilt finally ebbed, and I gave in to my own smile over thoughts of the night that lay ahead.
    As soon as we got home, I was seeing that Ryan made good on his promise from the hospital. If only because it meant showing him the best of pleasure tonight before I doled out the worst of pain someday in the near future, he was going to experience a G-spot orgasm like nothing but a butt plug and a woman who knew how to use it on her man could deliver.
    “Well, Ry seems to have gotten over his fears,” Carinna continued. “He’ll actually hug Jack goodbye when he takes off now, or if they talk on the phone, he’ll say that he loves him before he hangs up.”

    My smile had quavered a bit with the thought of Ryan as my man. It quavered a bit more as Carinna’s words sank in and my guilt once again flowed freely. I could see him acting a fraud to a woman he hoped to fuck, or keep fucking. But he had no reason to act that way around his brother.
    Did he truly feel remorse over what had happened with Jada and was shaping himself into a nicer guy for it? And, if so, did his regret haunt him enough that I should let him off the hook?
    Wanting my mind off thoughts of Ryan and my mood back to relaxed, I took in the expansive kitchen done in all-natural hardwoods and trimmed with a deep shade of green that would be a perfect complement for Ryan’s eyes. “This place is gorgeous.”
    Carinna beamed with pride. “It’s a work in progress, but it is coming along a little more every day.”
    Apparently, getting my mind off Ryan was also a work in progress, that checking out something as routine as kitchen trim could make me think of him. Whatever my plans for the guy, I had to get them figured out pronto and my mushy, moony ass back to Hell.

Chapter Six
Ryan
    “R eady to suffer?” Deitre asked the instant we cleared the garage door and stepped into the kitchen.
    Today with Jack and Carinna couldn’t have gone better. For al her claims that she didn’t do families, Deitre had meshed with mine from word one. She’d admitted to what a great time she had when I pulled out of the B and B, and both my brother and Carinna commented on how much they liked her while she was out of the room. Somehow,