Chapter 1

They couldn’t be allowed to fight. He had to think of a way to stop it—there was no other option. If Rhys fought with her and lost on this, it wouldn’t be only the argument he lost: it would also be his entire relationship with his sister.

Stepping out the front door into the heavy morning fog (a mist that usually clung to the mountainside to some degree at all times at this high an altitude) he followed Maggie’s retreating back to the cliff face, where she stood looking impassively down over the valley far below. Heather surrounded her feet and grew stubbornly in the craggy rocks with some other brave vegetation that was all around. When she heard the crunch of his feet over the crudely gravelled path, all his sister could manage was a cold tone.

‘I didn’t ask for company.’

Under her knitted cap, that soft, dark brown hair was braided past her shoulder blades. Silken hair he had once run his fingers through...

‘I know.’ Although it pained him she wouldn’t even look at him, Rhys kept his tone light when he replied. Even when he stopped beside her to gaze down at the valley, she showed no sign of even glancing in her brother’s direction. You could cut the silence with a knife.

When Maggie spoke again, her words dripped with acid. ‘Did you enjoy yourself last night?’

Rhys swallowed hard.

‘No ... you know I didn’t. I’d had one too many, and—’

‘That’s no excuse.’ Her words were flat, her stare unwaveringly ahead.

What could he say to that, when he knew just how guilty he was? The previous night had been torture; watching his sister smile and drape herself over that sleazeball at his table had just been much more than he could the stomach, and even worse, it was the very same table Maggie had once shared with him...

Unbidden, watching her kiss that dinkwad like that, so softly, a memory had clawed its way to the surface of Rhys’ consciousness: a late night, coming home at eleven after driving up the mountain in the pouring rain; Maggie’s tinkling laughter, her hair darkened and drenched as he leant in to taste the rainwater from her lips; the frantic way she’d responded to his touch as he’d carried his sister to the table. Her guttural made his cock get even stiffer as Maggie encouraged him to push blissfully inside ... Rhys never remembered feeling quite as good as in the moment when he pressed his naked body against hers...

The memories had already been assaulting him since she’d come to visit, arriving just the day before—and with an unexpected, entirely unwelcome guest. Jared, his sister had proclaimed him, adding, ‘My boyfriend,’ without meeting Rhys’ eyes, instead turning to smile at the blithering idiot standing at her shoulder.

So she’d meant every word, six months ago.

‘I fucked up, okay?’ Rhys said now, tone only able to be at all apologetic because he’d hurt her.

The bitterness of her laughter surprised him.

‘You could say that,’ Maggie said dryly, seating herself on a large rock, pulling her knees up to her chest, and rummaging in the breast pocket of her coat. She produced a lighter and joint, flicking it into flame and inhaling deeply before finishing. ‘I thought my first visit back here would be very different.’

‘So did I,’ he shot back, as he settled on the ground a few feet away from his her, the words coming out sharper than he’d intended.

Now what Rhys had so wanted, happened: his sister looked at him, but all he saw was the anger and animosity in her glaring brown gaze. There was nothing of the sweet, shy love and tenderness that had once lived there; none of that soft, open way she’d once looked back at him with.

And the certainly not the flushed, rosy look she got when he was on top of her, eyes languid and half-closed, heavy-lidded. Sometimes her eyebrows would be drawn together, or not, but Maggie’s lips were always red and parted, swollen from his kisses and opened to let out those gentle moans. Her moaning was almost always his undoing, the way she would rise her hips up to meet his thrusts eagerly; something still so sweet and innocent about her demeanor that he almost felt he took her virginity again and again every time he was inside her...

Those memories had haunted his dreams regularly since she’d left the mountain.

Six months is not so long as to forget, not for Rhys, at least. The pain still felt fresh inside. But it seemed Maggie, on the other hand, had successfully done what she’d set out to do. Left him behind, in the dust. Moved on with her life. Carved out something entirely new and different.