The guy flared his nostrils. Beyond that, there was no sign Brick had tread on sensitive territory. The observation was weirdly frightening.
“I do not have time for everything,” he countered. “But I do have all the fucking time in the world to hear why my little sister threatened me with interesting physical harm while defending your honor.”
And there went all the good intentions of holding on to his poker face. Fortunately, his surprise from the hulk’s first revelation covered well for his second. “Your little sister. Well, damn. Jayd is your—”He peered around with fresh focus. “Jayd is your sister, and this…is Arcadia.”
His new friend cocked his head. “You do not remember anything at all about getting here?”
He dared half a smirk. “Remember that whole define awake question?”
“Fair point.”
The guy’s small olive branch had Brick examining the giant with new understanding. “You’re Samsyn,” he said. “Right? The brother who runs the security forces. We called you on our way out of Paris.”
Hell’s fucking bells. He wanted to clock himself for not seeing it sooner. The soldier’s hair, tumbling over his shoulders, was the same mix of black and mahogany as Jayd’s. He had a bolder nose than his sister, but their proud jawline was strikingly similar. Most blatantly, he stood with the same noble posture that she did—right before emulating her gift for noble indignation.
“Were you listening in?” he demanded.
“Were you not aware we all were?” Brick returned. “To our side, at least,” he qualified. “We were in an SUV, buddy, not a private jet. Not until Bourget, anyway.”
Once the declaration was out, some switch in his brain got flipped. Memories tumbled in, one after the other, exploding with fire and urgency and violence.
“Fuck,” he grated. “Bourget.”
And then fear. Holy crap, so much fear. Thankfully, there were more thoughts on top of that. Anxieties that hogged all the normal placeholders for panic attacks. “Christ,” he blurted. “Is everyone okay? I mean, did everyone…” He slouched back into the bank of pillows. “Sorry.” He pushed out a shallow cough. “Everything just hit me now. Goddamned PTA.”
Post-traumatic amnesia. It wasn’t anything to be fucked with. He of all people should know. After they’d hauled him out at Bamiyan, it had taken a full twenty-four hours for him to remember everything. Even then, the PTA had hit him in strange little spurts.
Nothing about the shit at Bourget came back as a spurt.
But now, the odds were different. Now, the odds involved Jayd.
“Understandable.” Another small truce token from the prince at the end of the bed. “And partially relatable.”
The prince provided no more details. Fine by Brick. Every soldier had their secrets, some more easy to stow than others. So far, he’d been able to get along with the occasional ghosts of Bamiyan with the help of magic tablets in a nifty orange bottle—that was now thousands of miles away, in his abandoned room at the Ritz Paris. While he was certain the panic would mind its manners as long as the Arcadian doctors were keeping him full of pain meds, he had no concrete plan for what to do after that.
Shit, shit, shit.
Or maybe not.
Hopefully, he was correctly interpreting Samsyn Cimarron’s new scowl. The expression that said this island’s security commander wanted him on a plane back out of here as soon as humanly possible.
Once again, fine by him. But not just because leaping dolphins and hibiscus breezes couldn’t take the place of his medication. There was only one thing on this island remotely capable of accomplishing that.
Only one person.
The woman he didn’t dare touch again. Didn’t take the chance of ever seeing again.
“Jayd.”
For that matter, outlawing her name from his head was probably a good idea too. But he’d consider that only after this part. The most vital part of all.
“She’s okay?” he asked Samsyn. “Just let me know that. I won’t pray about anything else. I got her on the plane. I recall that much. But those bastards from the tarmac… They didn’t…”
“No,” the warrior replied. “They did not. She was tired and bruised in a few places, but she arrived in one piece. Physically, at least.”
His pause before those last three words wasn’t lost on Brick. Nor was the slight lift of the man’s right eyebrow.
“Meaning what?” Wasn’t it best to just cut to the chase? If he made Samsyn dick around with coy hints, they might be here until fucking midnight.
“Oh, that is definitely for you to tell me, Mr. Brickham,” the prince replied smoothly.
“Meaning what?” Brick spat. “You’re not really Sherlocking all over me on this because your baby sister had a fleeting crushie-crush on her rescuing knight, right? You know how this stuff happens, man. Shit goes down, adrenaline kicks in, endorphins go wild. She’ll get over it. She probably already has.”
He had no way of knowing if the explanation worked. Seemed Samsyn was jonesing to be cagey about things, dragging out one moment and then the next while pacing back to the side of the bed.
“Yes. Probably,” the guy finally answered. “Which thoroughly explains that, yes?”
Brick followed the guy’s directional nod upward, toward a far corner of the room. The spacious nook housed three black-and-white security monitors. One screen displayed the wide, empty balcony outside the bedroom. The second was a random hallway, which Brick assumed to be the chamber’s outer corridor. It was also empty.
But the third monitor wasn’t.
It showed another angle of the same hallway. Walking along it, looking five thousand kinds of gorgeous in a long silky dress, was his beautiful little Pixie. She was smiling, even radiant. She was also in a hurry.
“That makes her third visit today,” Samsyn offered. “On top of the five she paid you yesterday.”
Brick swallowed. Couldn’t be helped. But his answering tone could be. “Huh. Well, she’s got a good soul,” he rushed out. “Probably just worried. Once she sees I’m fine, she’ll move on.”
Samsyn grunted softly. “From her…crushie-crush.”
Thank God he had fake chortles down to an art form. “Right? You do get it, then.”
“Of course.” The guy flashed a just-between-us-bros kind of look. It was weirdly freakish. “I have certainly had my fair share of a few of those,” the prince remarked. “This one female, in particular…I would even say that her crushie-crush extended into a smashie-smash.”
“Yikes.” Brick frowned and meant it. “How did you handle it?”
Samsyn angled his head down again—this time to bore his gaze directly into Brick’s. His pupils were darker than his sister’s—and as intense as his low, firm reply.
“I married her.”
Chapter Three
As Jayd approached the door to Brickham’s room in the infirmary wing, she ordered her lungs to take in full breaths. Maybe the measured air would help to slow the wild gallops of her heartbeat and lend to the sophisticated air of the dress she had carefully picked out for this moment. Granted, her selection process for the garment was about more than impressing Brickham, though that goal never left the top of her list.