“Penny.” Gray threw the now empty can of soda across the room, where it landed with perfect precision—not—in the window sill above the sink, knocking over the dead flowers someone had brought Hudson on his birthday a month ago.

Aidan let out a slow breath and kept his piehole shut. He was no idiot.

“Did you hear me?” Gray asked.

“Yeah, I heard you. So did the people in China. Look, you knew she wanted to work in insurance fraud investigations before you married her. You can’t be mad at her for that.”

“I’m not mad at her for being who she is. I’m mad at myself for not being okay with it. You remember last year when she went after those bank fraud idiots and they shot her?”

“Yeah, and they’re rotting in prison for it.”

“And Penny’s still got the bullet wound scar in her shoulder.” Gray’s phone vibrated a text. He read it, shook his head, and stood. “She’s on her way home with McDonald’s. It’s a truce breakfast.”

“I love McDonald’s breakfasts,” Aidan said. “I should’ve married her.”

“Mine.” Gray headed to the door. “Go find your own woman. How hard can it be? I even let one into your bed for you.”

“Yeah, well, she was the wrong one.”

Gray stopped short and turned to stare at him.

Shit.

“Wrong woman?” his brother repeated. “So who’s the right woman?”

“There isn’t one. Get out.”

But Gray had become an unmovable mountain, staring at him, doing the Kincaid mind meld thing. “Kylie?” he asked. “From dispatch?”

“No,” Aidan said.

“Yeah, good thing. She’s hot, but she laughs weird. Lori in rentals?”

“No,” Aidan said, annoyed but also trying to keep his shit together because giving his brothers, any single one of them, more information than strictly necessary was like giving intel to the enemy. “Drop it.”

“Yeah, right,” Gray said. “Lily?”

Aidan did his best not to react, but he couldn’t still his mind. He still remembered every second of dancing with her beneath a half moon that long-ago summer festival. He remembered kissing her … falling for her.

Then how she’d left the mountain without looking back, forgetting about him with shocking, heartbreaking ease.

Now she was back. And she’d kissed him like maybe she hadn’t forgotten him after all …

Which was really fucking with him. “I said drop it.”

Gray grinned. “Yeah. It’s Lily.”

Aidan stalked past Gray, yanked open the front door, and shoved his brother out.

Gray was still grinning wide as Aidan slammed the door on his nose and then bolted it for good measure. But he could still hear his brother chuckling to himself. “Dumbass,” he said.

“Yeah. He is,” Hudson said from behind him.

Aidan whipped around. “Jesus. How long have you been standing there?”

“Not long.”

Aidan relaxed again and headed back to the kitchen.