“Then why are we having this conversation?”

He turned his back to the window and leaned against the granite counter, his arms crossed over his chest. His eyes narrowed, and I felt my posture straightening automatically under his appraising gaze.

He glanced quickly away. “They’re too old for you.”

I almost spit out my laugh. “Seriously? That’s the problem? Daddy’s thirteen years older than Mom, and no one thought that was a big deal.”

When he looked at me, there was something almost wistful in his eyes. “Sarah is special,” he said.

“And I’m not?” I was teasing, sure, but I was also serious. “Evan’s barely six years older than me, and he’s the oldest of all three of them. Come on, Uncle J. What’s really going on here?”

Instead of answering, he grabbed a corkscrew from where it sat on the counter, and went to work on one of the bottles he’d pulled out for the evening. I watched silently, both amused and frustrated, as he poured a glass, took a sip, and then poured another. When he handed the second to me, I had to bite back an insolent smirk. Technically, I was under the drinking age.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low and even and tinged with a hint of regret. “When was the last time you’ve seen me with my wife?”

The question was so unexpected that I answered right away. “Not for years.” I hadn’t seen his most recent wife, or any of the parade of previous ones, in ages. I knew they’d all left him, but I’d never known why. And since I’d never gotten close to any of them, I hadn’t ever asked.

“Too many secrets will destroy a relationship,” he said.

“I don’t have any secrets.” Except, of course, I did.

Jahn paused, and for a moment I thought he was going to call me on my lie. But then he nodded, almost casually, as if my words were a given. “Maybe not. But he does. His own, and those he holds for others.”

He.

That one simple word rattled around in my head, making me a little dizzy. Because I knew what it meant. It meant that we weren’t really talking about the trio, but about Evan. About the fact that I wanted him—and that Jahn knew it.

I swallowed, embarrassed but also relieved in a weird way. Jahn knew me—possibly better than anyone else ever did or ever would.

But he was wrong about one thing—secrets didn’t bother me. How could they when I held so many of my own?

Now, as I stood in the open living room of Jahn’s condo and listened to Evan speak to the crowd, it was as if Jahn’s ghost had drawn me, Scrooge-like, back to the past, to see that afternoon all over again. I’d been unsure before, believing that, like his best friends, Evan thought of me like a sister.

I no longer believed that.

Jahn’s lecture that night hadn’t just been about warning me to stay away. He’d been telling me that he’d ordered Evan and Tyler and Cole away, too. And while Cole and Tyler might not find that request to be a burden, I’d seen the heat in Evan’s eyes.

He wanted me, dammit.

He wanted me, and he was too goddamned loyal to my uncle to do anything about it.

“Howard Jahn was a man who loved his life.”

The deep tones of Evan’s voice filled the room, mesmerizing and clear. “In the short time that he was on this earth, he not only lived that life to the fullest, but taught others how to do the same. He changed the lives of so many people, many of whom are standing here tonight. I should know. I’m one of the lucky people that he took under his wing.”

I took my eyes off Evan long enough to examine the crowd. They were as enthralled as I was, caught up in both Evan’s charisma and the words that he was speaking. I watched him—this man who’d made a fortune for himself at such a young age—and understood in that moment how he’d risen to be one of the most influential men in Chicago. Hell, if he were a tent preacher, he could have swindled millions from that crowd.

The only one who didn’t look impressed, in fact, was Kevin. I wasn’t sure if he was still stinging from his smack-down with Evan earlier or if he was picking up on my Evan-lust vibes. But since the latter was enough of a possibility to make my highly-tuned guilt antennae hum, I reached over and took his hand—then felt even more guilty because of my own hypocrisy.

“Howard Jahn taught me a different way of looking at the world. In so many ways, he rescued me, and he never once gave up on me.” He had been looking out over the crowd as he spoke, but now his eyes found mine. “We’re here today to honor his memory,” he continued, with an odd kind of ferocity in his voice. “His memory. His requests. His legacy.”

He paused and the air was so thick between us that it took all my strength just to draw a breath. I’m surprised that every eye in the room wasn’t turned to us, watching the spectacle of the fire that blazed between us. Because it was there. I felt it—I felt it and I wanted to burn in it.

I have no idea what he said next. He must have continued talking, because before I knew it, people were raising glasses in a toast and wiping damp eyes.

The spell that had captured me dissipated, and I watched, breathless, as Evan melted into the crowd. He shook hands with people and accepted consoling pats on his shoulder. He ruled the room, commanding and calm. A steady presence for the mourners to rely on.

And never did he take his eyes off me.

Then he was coming toward me, his gait firm and even, his expression determined. I was only half-aware of Kevin beside me, his fingers still twined with mine. Right then, Evan Black was my entire world. I wanted to feel his touch again. Wanted him to pull me close. To murmur that he knew what I’d lost when Jahn had died.

I wanted him to brush his lips sweetly over mine in consolation, and then to throw all decorum aside and kiss me so wild and hard that grief and regret withered under the heat of our passion.

And it pissed me off royally that it wasn’t going to happen because of a promise he made to a dead man.

I’m not sure what I was trying to prove, but I spun around and folded myself into Kevin’s arms.

“What—”

I cut him off with a kiss that started out awkward and weird, but then Kevin must have decided I needed this. That my grief had sent me over the wall and into the land of rampant public displays of affection.

His hand cupped the back of my head as his mouth claimed mine. As far as kissing was concerned, Kevin definitely got an A. Empirically, he was everything a girl should want, and yet I wasn’t satisfied. I wasn’t even close. There was no heat, no burn. No butterflies in my stomach, no longing for more. On the contrary, all Kevin’s kiss did was make me more aware of the void inside me. A hunger—a craving—that I couldn’t seem to satisfy no matter how much I wanted to.

Evan, I thought, and was shocked by the desperate longing that went along with those two small syllables. Somehow the tight grip I’d kept on my desire all these years had come loose. It was as if my grief had shoved me over the cliff, and for the first time in forever, I wished I could just erase Evan Black from my mind. I felt out of control. Frenzied and reckless.

And for a girl like me, that’s never a good place to be.

When Kevin broke our kiss and pulled away from me, all I wanted to do was pull him back again. To kiss him until we broke through my resolve. Until we created a fire out of friction if nothing else. Because I needed that. I needed to get clear. I needed to lose myself in him until the blazing heat that was Evan Black was reduced to nothing more substantial than a burn across my heart.