Free Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers by Lily Everett Page B

never lied about what I felt for you, or about how much I wanted you.”
    After a long moment of silence, during which Dylan imagined every possible response ranging from Penny falling into his arms to ordering him out of the house, she said quietly, “I think you can see how I’d find it difficult to put my trust in that.”
    At least she was listening. Pressing his advantage, Dylan sat down on the love seat with her, careful of the nearly visible wall of empty space she’d erected around herself. “I get that, and I’m not making any excuses. It was a stupid, childish stunt…” He paused, hearing himself, then shook his head. “Which, if you ask my oldest brother, Miles, is a fair characterization of my entire life.”
    “Miles Harrington. The head of Harrington International,” Penny said, as if she were still trying to get all the players in this awful farce straight in her head.
    “That’s right.”
    “He—and that man out in the summer cottage—those are the brothers who went off to college and left you to deal with your parents’ deaths alone? So Logan is the workaholic loner, and Miles is the controlling robot.”
    Startled that she remembered what he’d said about his brothers that first night, Dylan shook his head. “No. I mean, yeah, they weren’t around much, but I wasn’t completely alone. I had my grandparents, who were great. Although, like I mentioned before—I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise.”
    She changed tack. “And when you said you spent years drifting through life aimlessly until you finally got a job—you meant until you decided on a whim to impersonate a handyman to fix up your own family’s property.”
    Against his will, Dylan stiffened. “Yep. I ditched college and turned down every one of Miles’s offers to come work for the family company, thereby breaking his heart—or whatever piece of well-oiled machinery he uses in place of a heart. You’re now part of a very elite club, Penny Little: the Society of People Who Expected Better from Dylan Harrington and Were Disappointed.”
    “Stop that,” she said sharply, getting to her feet and hugging her arms tightly around her rib cage. “You don’t get to make me feel sorry for you. This is hard enough already.”
    Dylan blinked. “I wasn’t trying to—but okay. Fine. Look, Penny, I’ll make this right however you want. Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”
    Lifting her chin, a challenge glinted in Penny’s hazel eyes. “I have to go to my shift at the café now. I want you out of this house before I get home. And if you ever come back to Sanctuary Island, I swear I’ll quit this job, because I never want to see you again.”

 
    Chapter Eleven
    “What are you doing?”
    The tense young voice jolted Dylan from his mechanical stuffing of dirty work clothes into his duffel bag.
    Matt stood in the doorway of the guest room, arms crossed tightly over his wiry chest and looking so much like his mother that Dylan went light-headed for a humiliating instant.
    He turned back to his packing and hoped Matt didn’t notice the way his hands shook. “I’m leaving.”
    “Why?”
    Dylan pinched his eyes shut, hanging his head over the bag sitting on his bed. “No one told you.”
    “That your name is Dylan Harrington and you’re related to the people who pay us to live in this house? Yeah, I know all that. I heard everything that went on downstairs.” Matt marched into the room and grabbed Dylan’s shoulder, jerking him around until they were face-to-face.
    “What I don’t know,” Matt continued, thrusting his chin out pugnaciously, “is why you’re running out on us like … like a coward.”
    The kid was trembling with the force of emotions too strong for someone so young to have to handle, and it hurt Dylan to see it. “Matthew. I lied to you and your mother. She doesn’t want me around anymore, and you can’t blame her.”
    Matt made a frustrated noise, his dark blond brows like thunder. “I